Episode XI Studios

As the economy slows, there is a natural tendency to stop marketing efforts. Company leaders often believe by cutting the marketing budget the company will “save” money on the bottom line. I have seen small, medium, and even Fortune 500 companies make this huge mistake. The end results are slow sales and a difficult time bouncing back long after the economy does.

Keeping your name in front of your client base should ALWAYS be a top priority for every business owner or marketing director. Many of us don’t get thirsty until we see someone else with a beverage, or we see a magazine ad, or TV commercial. Marketing is an ongoing process through good times and bad. As marketing efforts increase, sales are sure to follow.

How to reach prospective customers with video marketing

Video communication is an efficient means of reaching prospective customers, of promoting the presentation of your products or services. The use of videos on the Internet brings numerous advantages. It is a great solution with great impact on the visitor. It combines the advantages of “classic” TV advertising with the Internet’s most important characteristic, interactivity.

The ad becomes thus more attractive to the Web surfer, who becomes more receptive to what you have to offer. Online marketing is therefore more cost effective than regular TV ads, simply because, on the one hand, it’s less expensive to produce and disseminate, and on the other hand, it makes customer targeting a lot easier too.

A Definition

If we were to define the online video marketing concept, it would be as a marketing strategy used by companies in order to promote products and services, by making use of short, catchy, informative videos, with the purpose of inducing awareness to the prospective customers about the promoted products/services and enticing them into purchasing the above-mentioned products/services.

Characteristics of Online Video Marketing

It is common knowledge that nowadays people enjoy more to watch a screen (be it a TV’s or a PC’s) than reading. Information is delivered at a higher rate via images than through text.

The main advantage that Internet marketing videos have over the traditional, text format approach is that videos can get to the point much faster and waste less of the precious time of prospective customers. Instead of having the Web users go over some pages of text, trying to figure out the message that you’re actually trying to convey, you can deliver the same message in a small percentage of that time in a more attractive and inciting manner.

When to Use Video

Marketing videos can be used when a company decides to promote, a bit more aggressively (in the good way), one or more of its products/services. They can help reach the prospects better, on a well-trodden path, that of visual advertising, laid before them by television. Given that more and more people nowadays turn to Internet in search of information, served hot and fast, Internet marketing videos come naturally to supplement the Web user’s need for new, for useful, for sensational.

Advantages of Video Advertising

If you decide to use video in your marketing campaigns, it’s a very good option. It is catchier than other types of advertising. It captures the Web user’s attention easier and transports your message to prospects much faster than simple text.

A video ad can contain a demonstration of a product’s use and usability. Add to that a human face and a very pleasant voice (or even a well harmonized combination of a woman’s voice with a man’s), and you can have your prospects wrapper around your finger. By using these techniques, the prospective customer can relate more to your company and to what you’re promoting.

A Few Tips

It is important not just to take the video you made and put it in a video directory and just sit back and wait for it to bring you loads of prospects. The road to a nice result is similar to the regular Search Engine Optimization way. Bear in mind that videos are a gourmet dish for search engines, so it’s best that you take some time and prepare it accordingly. Use the right ingredients, so to speak.

Today’s technology offers you many opportunities to track traffic and analyze results. Take your time and make an effort (which will be rewarded in the end) to measure the impact that your videos have had on the prospects and to measure their performance. Search for tools that can tell you how much of your video was played before the visitor closed it, how many prospects actually decided to pay your site a visit after watching your video add on a different website, how many of these visits converted into sales, and so on.

Just because you have invested some time and effort in one or several videos, it doesn’t mean that you should leave out content. It’s still an important part of your business. Offer your visitors enough information on the site. Remember that marketing videos are meant to promote your business, to inspire Web surfers to visit your site and, luckily, convert into sales.

Many experts advise to use the videos on the first page. It’s like handing out your business card. The first page recommends you, and we all know that first impression counts. Don’t tuck your marketing video away, on some page that a visitor might not even get to. Make it visible. Anyway, give your site visitors the opportunity to skip your video. Maybe they’re not in the mood for watching it, and the last thing you want is an annoyed visitor.

Optimizing Videos for Search Engines
Optimize not only for video search engines, but also for content search engines. A good approach would be to use meta tags for the content (text) of the page where your video is placed.

Give relevant names to your videos. It’s highly improbable that your video will show up in the SERPs if it is called “12032002.mov” rather than “XYZ- antivirus-demo.mov”.

Use keywords in the video titles and their descriptions. Video search engines will find it much easier to index your video files and link it to your web pages.

Use anchor text if you link to the video from other pages of your Web site.

Make sure the video files you submit have the proper extension.

Make it short. Say in 2 minutes what would take a normal person 10 minutes to read on paper (or on a Web page).

SEO professionals recommend creating separate video site maps, which can be submitted to video and content search engines alike. Both kinds of SEs will index these site maps.

Remember to include RSS feeds. Metadata can be inserted here.

Research, measure, test, report and optimize.

Promoting a Video
The keyword for the success of any online marketing video is “submitting”. The best choices are video hosting sites like YouTube , Yahoo! Videos , or Google Videos . The main advantages are that your videos will be hosted for free and they will not take up any of your site’s bandwidth.

Share your videos. If you really want to make yourself known, allow users to be able to link to your videos. Viral marketing videos are the best way to make companies (and, subsequently, their products/services) known across quite vast Internet user communities. They carry a company’s name across the Web at far greater speeds than any other marketing tool in existence.

Don’t forget to add such phrases as “Tell a friend” or “Visit our Web site” at the end of your video.

Conclusions

Use online marketing video to supplement the “traditional” TV ad campaign. Online and broadcast go hand in hand, they don’t exclude one another. Online marketing videos give you the opportunity to communicate important messages to people more accurately and efficiently than ever. Use videos to differentiate your business from your competitors’, to make yourself known and stand out of the crowd.

The Internet marketing videos must be short enough no to get Web users bored and drive them away from your site. Video ads on the Web must be significantly shorter than those usually seen on TV. Web users don’t like to waste time, and they are fed up with never-ending ads.

Published on: July 23, 2007
http://www.avangate.com/articles/video-marketing_87.htm

As proud member of the James K Polk Masonic lodge, I offer this short video, briefly explaining Freemasonry, to our customers, vendors, and friends. I was given the honor and total creative freedom to create this video, thats gives website viewers a glimpse into the world’s oldest fraternity-Freemasonry.

There are few days in my life that I will cherish and remember until death. One of those days is the day that I got married, another is the birth of my wonderful children, and lastly is the day that I was raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason.

To create the top 20, Fortune and its survey partners at Hay Group asked the experts — in this case, more than 3,700 people from dozens of industries — to select the 10 companies they admire most. This year’s winners all have strong records of innovation, leadership, and financial strength — and their employees know it

Apple

Top 20 rank: 1
Rank in Computers: 1
It is a tribute to its CEO that Apple, which ten years ago seemed headed for the slag heap, is No. 1 on this list. Steve Jobs has always had a knack for weaving magic out of silicon and software. But who knew he could build a $24 billion (in sales) company on the strength of a portable jukebox and a computer with a single-digit market share?

His pitch, as he leveraged the success of the iPod, was very simple: Apple products work, and if you buy more than one, they work better. The company (if not its stock) is on a tear, but even with the economy weakening, it will be interesting to see how economically sensitive this growth engine is. - Philip Elmer-DeWitt

Psychologist tell us that the reason that you remember some things and not others is because those events that you DO remember is attached to an emotion. Thus is the secret to turning emails into viral emails. Invoke emotion.

Take a look at your movie collection. How often do you watch the funny ones? How often do you watch the dramas? Humor is a power emotion, so much that ancient writings state that “laughter is good medicine”. 

Make your email campaign, video marketing, or webpage fun and humorous…you have a winner. Face it, people want to have fun..and if they can work and have fun too, the sky is the limit.

Of course, you can combine drama and humor.

Remember the Duke Mansion…while planning your holiday parties this season

The Christmas and New Years parties are probably the most anticipated social events of the year. If you haven’t already booked a spot for your holiday parties we’d like to remind you about the Duke Mansion. There are very few places in town with ability to boast the Southern charm and history that the Duke Mansion can. On top of being a beautiful spot for festivities, the food is top notch regardless of whether you have 15 or 300 people at your soiree.

For more information, please contact Tim Miron at the Duke Mansion at 704-714-4400 or by email tmiron@dukemansion.org

Multimedia provides different means of communication and multiple touch points for your audience. Clearly, it is not a single execution, but rather a strategy that reinforces and enhances the brand experience by using a wealth of media opportunities to make the brand message pervasive and easy to recall.

So, I asked myself this question: what will truly make these recommendations stick? What metaphor can I draw inspiration from that will encapsulate the ten best marketing practices and make them indelible in your memory?

Believe it or not, the answer that came to me is Bazooka bubble gum. If you have a piece handy, take it out and look at it. If not, then these virtual versions will have to do:

Bazooka Joe and engagement marketing

Interactive pundits say we’ve struck on a new kind of marketing, a means of communication that engages the audience with the brand. It’s an original and unique advertising approach that immerses the customer with the brand, and it even lets the customer reshape and market it in his own unique way.

But is it so new? Surely, there must have been engagement marketing long before the internet. Something we can draw inspiration from, something that can guide us. And then it struck me, that moment of clarity, an epiphany.

Bazooka gum is the perfect metaphor for the ten best interactive marketing practices, all rolled into an engaging little cube.

Whoa slow down, don’t start chewing just yet (virtually or otherwise). Take time to ponder the genius of it all.

Note the prominent logo positioned above the fold, no less. The color palette is primary, unforgettable and easily recognizable. And finally, check out the simple, user-friendly size, comparable to a 120×60 banner.As you can see, Bazooka gum is a veritable poster child for a Dynamic Logic Study.

So let’s get to those ten best practices.

Multimedia provides different means of communication and multiple touch points for your audience. Clearly, it is not a single execution, but rather a strategy that reinforces and enhances the brand experience by using a wealth of media opportunities to make the brand message pervasive and easy to recall.

Take Bazooka gum for example, it uses two media effectively: the paper wrapper communicates the brand while the gum inside delivers on the brand experience.

But an even better example of the effective use of multiple mediums would be the global product launch campaign of the adidas_1 running shoe, “The world’s first intelligent shoe.” It used seven separate communication vehicles simultaneously — outdoor, website, downloadable video player, traditional interactive ad units, rich-media video ad units, IM environments and email — to create a record-setting sale of all the inventory in stock.

MSN homepage	MSN themepack	Outdoor
Screendragon	Site	Webmail

In order to view each piece, simply click on them. The only exception is the downloadable, personalized desktop video player; for that you’ll have to visit their website.

Best Practice #2: Opt-in

Opt-in communication vehicles provide an incentive for audience participation while respecting the privacy of the user. A successful opt-in execution entices the user to engage and encourages the user to share.

So you might ask, what does opt-in have to do with bubble gum? Not much, but you do have to decide if you’re going to heed the siren song of sugar and unwrap that pack.

Opt-in is all about our volition in action. Take the “Veronica Mars” campaign for the UPN network. The interactive ads were coupled with commercial-break appeals to dial an SMS code on your cell to hear the latest gossip from Veronica herself. Once the teen audience opted-in they heard five separate messages from Veronica.

The three-pronged media approach worked. It was the perfect media mix for the teen demographic that chooses to opt-in by the thousands.

Opt-in

Expanding Banner

Voicemail

To view the interactive ad just click on it. If you want to hear the latest high school gossip click on the cell phone.

Best Practice #3: Personalization

One of the most compelling aspects of the digital space is the ability to create unique user experiences. This is why I came to interactive advertising. It just seemed so cool that one person could look at the exact same website at the same time as another and each person have his or her own individual experience.

On a website, this has come to be expected. In an interactive ad it is what makes the space unique.

Likewise, everyone who unwraps a pack of Bazooka Joe expects a personalized experience. How you ask? Joe tells you your fortune. Yours and yours alone. (And if you are anything like me, then you’re boasting about your fortune to someone else the moment you unwrap the gum.)

But how much better would it be if each piece of Bazooka gum could give you a new fortune over and over again?

Enter the O’Gradiator. Developed for the Nickelodeon Channel, the O’Gradiator rich media ad unit was designed to create buzz for the new cartoon show: “The O’Grady’s.”

The O’Grady’s cartoon show is about a weird group of teenagers and their rather bizarre experiences in high school. It’s all about the smart-ass comeback and the clever putdown. The goal was to deliver this experience in an ad. By typing in a question the user cues a random video clip that answers that question. Ask your own question get your own answer.

Personalization

Best Practice #4: Tell a Story

All good advertising tells a story. Online, the only thing restricting good storytelling is time.

So how do you tell a good story in eight seconds?

Bazooka Joe gets by, by telling a story in comic strip form using from one to four frames, with images and copy.

But to effectively tell how big Dolby Audio Technology is, Dolby related its story using only sound effects and animation.

Using the simple nuance of a man walking his dog, a user-initiated lightning storm begins and the two pause a moment to watch the fireworks. In the most simplistic fashion Dolby demonstrated just how big their audio technology is and delivered on the tagline, “Dolby Takes You There.”

Dolby Takes You There

To view the interactive ad just click on it.

Best Practice #5: Include a Compelling Offer

A compelling offer or promotion always lifts response in an interactive ad.

Bazooka Joe doesn’t miss a beat. Bazooka gum always includes an offer with the comic.

As a twelve-year old boy, the sea monkey offer was a big hit for me, but not much for my mom. After dead sea monkeys stunk up my whole bedroom, the bubble gum offers were decidedly not an option anymore.

Then again, offers and promotions are the foremost strength of the direct response online advertising. Vonage successfully employed the space to increase subscriptions to their VOIP service from 3,000 to 500,000 subscribers in just 18 months. Capitalizing on the large format and extra file size of an interstitial, Vonage made it easy to display multiple offers and products in one elegant ad unit.

Interstitial

The Voice of Reason

To view the interactive ad just click on it.

Best Practice #6: Make it Immersive

Always try to employ microsites and larger ad units to pay off the brand experience. It deepens the engagement and extends the brand.

Remember Bazooka gum isn’t all branding, comic strips and fortunes. There’s a genuine immersive experience in every sugary square.

So go ahead, pop it in your mouth and enjoy the experience. Ah, sweet.

But if you think sugar is fun, check out the Golden Eye microsite created for EA’s new James Bond game. The game pays off the whole premise of this new Bond game, “are you bad enough” to take on Bond. By creating a series of questions that challenge your manhood, the microsite let’s you find out if you’re the tough guy you think you are.

Game: Diabolical Assessment

To play the game just click on the image.

Best Practice #7: Usability

Whatever you create online should be intuitive and user-friendly. It is particularly difficult for a designer to see flaws in the usability of their creation, but that’s when a good UI expert can be of supreme value.

As you placidly sit there masticating your bubble gum, please reflect on how easy it is.

Bazooka Joe knows that the most immersive experience should also be the easiest.

Take for example the “Land of the Dead” super banner. Everything about it smacks of usability.

Note the position of a super banner, at the top of the web page right below the address box. There is no need to flash “Roll over to see the video.” It’s already playing. And, as the user drags their mouse right over the banner after they have entered the URL, the video expands to reveal the full screen experience.

Expandable Banner

Site

To view the interactive ad just click on it.

Best Practice #8: Effective ROI

It’s now taken for granted that clients demand accountability.

CPA, CPC, cost per ad nausea… effective interactive advertising is usually measured by dollars returned on investment.

Effective ROI is where you find it.

A stick of Bazooka gum still costs less than a tenth of a cent to make. At two cents a pack, that’s a pretty good return on investment!

Online, the accepted means of getting the highest ROI is through search keywords and text links. But who would have ever thought it would exist in an IM window.

The adidas_1 product launch (I mentioned it back in Best Practice 1) included branded IM environments. ICQ, the popular instant messenger in Europe drew a 21 percent clickthrough rate, which contributed in driving half a million visitors to the adidas_1 website in the first week.

Instant Messenger

To view the MSN Messenger Theme Pack just click on it.

Best Practice #9: Reshaping the Brand

The most interesting trend in personalization and brand affinity is the ability for users to take part in brand advertising. Anyone with Flash, a digital video camera and video-editing software can create their own commercial in a matter of minutes.

Sometimes it’s fun, like blowing a bubble from a square piece of gum.

But it can also have a darker side. It’s still debatable whether Volkswagen planned the Polo Suicide Bomber commercial or not. We could be witnessing the power of a disgruntled creative director. But nevertheless, millions have viewed this commercial online, whether Volkswagen intended it or not.

Always try to take in account user manipulation of your brand.

Video

To watch the video just click on it.

Best Practice #10: Send to a friend, viral sharing

Back in high school, I once saw teenage girls share a piece of bubble gum.

As a teen I thought, ummm, tres provocative! As a parent I think, disgusting.

But as an internet advertiser, it’s the Holy Grail.

The only trick to creating send-to-a-friend virality is to create something so fun — or shocking or provocative — that the user will adopt the experience as his own and send it to a friend for bragging rights.

Throw in a competitive component and it gets even more interesting.

Last Valentine’s Day, 1-800-Flowers wanted to differentiate their brand from the rest of the order-flowers online companies. Aimed squarely at the male market, they developed a strategy of empathy and understanding. What male adult between the ages of 18 and 35 doesn’t like to play video games? And when they do send flowers, they want to send the right signal: “I love you, but I don’t necessarily want to get married.”

Enter the Cupid Shoot Out interactive ad unit. While the user is busy keeping pesky cupids away from the bouquets, 1-880-Flowers is displaying new bouquet inventory at every level and building affinity with their audience.

Pass along was a forgone conclusion.

Game

To play the game just click on it.

Conclusions and Recap

As we blithely chew our gum, let’s review where we’ve been.

For an interactive advertising campaign to be truly effective, or for that matter, chewing gum to be fun, it should at least contain one or a combination of the following elements:

• Use of multiple media
• An opportunity for the user to opt-in
• A means for personalization
• Story telling
• Include a compelling offer
• An immersive experience
• An intuitive and user-friendly experience
• A strategy for effective ROI
• An understanding that the user may manipulate the brand
• A provision for a “send to a friend” option — a.k.a., virality

And remember (as I store my gum behind my ear) — if you make it sticky, they’ll always come back for more.

By Mike Yapp

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