Online Video as the Modern Day Yellow Pages Ad

Remember Yellow Page’s “Let Your Fingers Do the Walking” slogan? That simple tag and the campaign surrounding it creatively expressed the value of the Yellow Pages for the average consumer: one book that contained the names, addresses and phone numbers of virtually every local business offering whatever particular good or service you were looking for. In fact, the slogan was considered good enough to earn an onorable mention in Ad Age’s 1999 Top 10 Slogans of the Century awards.

Let Your Fingers Do the Walking

Looking at the Yellow Pages effect through a modern day lens, one could even say that the Yellow Pages was the original search engine, as it provided a centralized means of search and discovery for countless millions of consumers. Over time, the utility and ubiquity of the Yellow Pages guaranteed its role as an essential element of the US commercial paradigm, and by extension, a powerful brand legitimizer. After all, how could you trust a company couldn’t be bothered to list themselves in the Yellow Pages?

From my perspective, the most effective Yellow Page Ads were the half or full page ones which usually contained one or more pictures of a particular company’s place of business, featured product, or even its owner. Such ads conveyed brand legitimacy and instilled a measure of semi-conscious trust in the mind of the consumer. I suppose this makes sense, as we humans tend to trust the tangible; we place more credence in that which we can see for ourselves- a picture is worth 1,000 words, and all that.

It’s too bad the technology wasn’t there for those Yellow Page ads to somehow have included video. After all, if a static (still) picture is worth 1000 words, surely a dynamic (moving) video must be worth a helluva lot more than that. Imagine the legitimacy and trust a brand could’ve garnered by embedding an in-ad video - perhaps a product feature, a how-to, an intimate walk through of the company’s digs or even a personal message from employees and owner(s).

Search Engine as Yellow Pages

Let’s extend the search-engine-as-Yellow-Pages analogy to its logical conclusion. If the search engine is the modern-day Yellow Pages, a brand’s website is its “ad,” and the written copy, images and videos housed on the website collectively form its content.

This is good news, for unlike businesses advertising in the original (offline) Yellow Pages, today’s brands are now able to use all kinds of content media - including video - to more effectively convey their brand message. This simple fact is not lost on the modern day consumer.

Today’s computer-literate, smartphone-toting consumers are increasingly turning to online video for entertainment and information discovery, two broad actions which both ultimately influence purchase decision. A new survey from Animoto designed to explore how online video impacts consumer decisions and drives brand engagement for small businesses bears this notion out. The survey found the positive impact of online video on consumer brand perception:

• 96% of respondents agreed that videos were helpful when making online purchases
• 71% of respondents said that watching video content leaves them with a positive impression of the brand
• 64% of respondents find it useful to watch videos to learn more about the company from whom they are considering making a purchase
• 58% of consumers consider companies that produce video content to be more trustworthy.
• 93% of respondents find video helpful for post-purchase instruction

The Value of Online Video for Brands

Taking a cue from the Animoto survey, here’s my take on the value of online video for brands:

• Builds brand trust and legitimacy with consumers
• Creates three-dimensional, intimate brand awareness (YouTube 2^nd largest search engine on earth)
• Helps brands efficiently convey large amounts of information quickly
• Drives purchase action and stimulates post-purchase consumer engagement

Perhaps most importantly, online videos can be made relatively quickly and inexpensively. Today’s consumers are not particularly sensitive to production quality - they are looking for substance over form. As any parent with a smartphone will attest, you have to be especially lame to not record videos of your children when it is so darn easy to do so. The same is true for brands. There is something fundamentally de-legitimizing about a company that can’t be bothered to press a few buttons and show themselves off to the world.

So get off yourself and hit the record button. It may just save your brand.

(via)

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Seven tips for maximising engagement with online video ads

Online video has grown massively in the past two years to the point where it is no longer a ‘nice to have’ and is instead a vital part of many brands’ marketing strategies.

Statistics included in our new Online Video Best Practice Guide show that more than 200m people in the EU7 (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia and Turkey) watch an average of 20 hours each of online video every month.

And as people are becoming more comfortable watching video online, the power of video advertising is also growing.

To help brands take advantage of this opportunity, social web video platform Ebuzzing has put together seven tips for maximising engagement with premium video advertising...

1. Keep branding discreet

People have an unconscious aversion to being persuaded, so they are more likely to be turned off by video content that includes huge corporate logos.

Rather than immediately going in for the hard sell and shouting the name of your brand, include logos discreetly.

2. Story matters most

With video advertising, engagement is key. You need your audience to feel involved enough with the content to keep them watching for the entire ad.

Therefore, marketers need to think more about the enjoyment a video offers to a viewer instead of how well it serves the brand.

While product managers may not agree, with online video the story matters more than the product.

3. Kick off with a bang

The window of opportunity for grabbing the consumer’s attention is small, so video ads need to hook people in within the first five seconds.

The best way to do this is by creating an emotional connection, so give them either joy or surprise. People get bored easily and long drawn-out stories can cause people to stop watching.

4. Build an emotional roller coaster

Even if your video is quite short, your audience will quickly lose interest if the emotion is constant throughout the ad.

To maintain engagement, the video must briefly remove viewers’ feelings of joy and surprise and then quickly restore them again.

5. Have multiple scenes

Having multiple scenes/mini stories is more effective than only having one or two.

Each scene should have its own dose of emotion - great examples in practice are VW’s The Force and Evian’s Roller Babies. 

 

6. Surprise but don’t shock 

While surprising the viewer will help keep them engaged with the ad, people won’t share something that is too shocking or crude.

To give your content the best chance of gaining shares online, it needs to be something that people will be willing to have their name associated with.

7. Target people that are prone to sharing and have a voice

There are tactics that marketers can use to ensure that there content is viewed by the widest audience possible, such as hosting it on YouTube, but ultimately the most effective way of building an audience is by getting viewers to share it.

Social influencers are often the best people to target when it comes to distribution as these people have extroverted and egocentric personalities on the social web and are most likely to share content.

(via)

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Data in a social age

Like. Tweet. Follow. Mention. Comment. What do these all mean to a marketer?

There’s no doubt that social has gone loco in the past few years and every big brand worth its marketing salt is investing in a strong social presence as part of their multichannel strategy.

But so what? What is social delivering?

What is it adding to the marketing mix, and how do we know if you’re any good at it?

The big challenge with social right now is data. 

A recent Econsultancy report highlighted the social paradox – it’s the area of marketing with the highest growth in terms of investment yet it’s the channel we struggle most to measure in terms of impact.

There are a few contributing factors; the lack of clarity in terms of metrics that define success, confusion about what data you are permitted to collect and how to interpret this data.

Let’s start with measurement metrics. 

A marketing director at Diageo recently commented that “size matters” and was subject to a fair amount of flak from his peers and experts.

Initial attempts at measuring social success were based on number of likes or followers; but any good database marketer knows you can have 2m people on the database, but if they are not actively engaging with your brand then they are not delivering value.

Social is about driving conversation and engagement and any measurement should be based around these areas.

What am I allowed to do? 

There seems to be apprehension and uncertainty relating to social data and permissions, probably because some of the rules and regulations are currently being defined.

Obviously you need to follow the letter of the law and, if in doubt, there are countless experts who can tell you the legal standpoint on this data.

However, I think the easiest approach to social data involves our dear old friend common sense. You should treat social as you do other channels.

Consider what data will be useful to you and only put effort into this data.

But don’t just think about what you want, think about it from the consumer’s perspective and what is acceptable to use from an ethical standpoint.

The best decisions will be made by marketers who also think about the consumer’s point of view.

What does social data mean?

We all know data is useless without some interpretation; data needs to be translated into insight that is actionable.

Social data is often collected and approached with 'that’s interesting' versus 'I know X therefore we will do Y'.

Having clear goals from social will help you define actions based on the data you collect; if you’re know what you’re looking to achieve then modelling or data interpretation will have a direction. 

But social is not an island

Social data should not be considered in isolation. You’re missing a trick if you don’t consider what you can glean from social to help inform your other channels and marketing across the spectrum. Data is most powerful when you have the bigger picture.

So like data, it can provide you with insight. 

(via)

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How video marketing powers SEO

While there is plenty of disagreement among marketers as to the best method to improve your search rankings, there is one specific strategy that is sure to benefit your business. What’s the secret sauce? Believe it or not, leveraging your online videos is often key to increasing search rankings. 


We all know that the search engines use social signals as a factor in their overall ranking algorithm, and as the role of social signals becomes increasingly important, so will the role of online video in your overall search and social strategy. 

This year, the number of consumers viewing videos online is predicted to reach 169.3 million in the US alone. With numbers that significant, what marketer would argue against the tremendous opportunity video can offer to enhance online presence search rankings?


Customers prefer two minutes to ten

Let’s face it; most people would rather spend two minutes watching an interesting video than spend ten minutes reading an article. Consumers are extremely busy, and they are constantly bombarded with messages that may or may not be relevant to them.

Video is the fastest way for your company to show your audience why they should do business with you. Not only is video a great way to share your story, it’s also a great way to build links back to your site, and if all of the stars align, maybe your video will even go viral. This is where the major search engine optimization benefit comes into play.


Videos are shared

In their simplest form, search engines bring searchers the most relevant data to their query, and inbound links help the search engines determine the data’s relevancy. When viewers find your video to be valuable content, they are likely to share it, thus facilitating the linking-fest.

Whether it is in the form of information, humor, controversy, entertainment, instruction, or inspiration, the video needs to be compelling enough to make the viewer want to share it. The more shares, the better for your overall online presence.  


Videos increase engagement

A recent comScore study showed websites that contain videos hold a viewer’s attention two+ minutes longer than sites without video content. Visitor time spent onsite is just one more factor that the search engines are looking for to determine relevancy. The fact that your website can hold your viewers’ attention is a big thumbs up.Another recent study, from aimClear, states that videos in universal search results have a 41% higher click-through rate than plain-text results.


It is no secret that SEO is essentially one giant puzzle with numerous moving pieces, but with universal search, videos offer businesses one more way to get heightened exposure in the search engines. According to a Forrester research study, having a good online video marketing strategy can actually increase your likelihood of achieving first page Google rankings by up to 53 times. For as popular as online videos have become, video marketing is still widely underused by businesses.


Grab it while you can

The “video” search is far less competitive than the “everything” search on Google, yet most marketers are ignoring this opportunity to jump ahead in the search results by implementing an online video strategy. There have been many instances where I have performed a web search using the “Everything” option. A particular business may not rank in the top ten positions on the first page, but when I perform the exact same search using the “videos” option that same business is number one.

This is a tremendous opportunity for businesses to get a one up on their competitors. Granted, the content contained within the video needs to offer value to the viewer. Google tends to show favoritism to informative videos versus strictly sales videos, so this is something that you may want to keep in mind as you develop your strategy. 


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