Many marketers in the online video world mistakenly assume that video is only effective when selling to Millennials.  Today, I had an opportunity to share how to use video successfully when marketing to boomers and older Americans along with Dan Ackerman Greenberg, Founder of 750 Industries, a San-Francisco based technology company focused on video and social marketing.

BJ Fogg, Director of Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab and author of Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do, invited us to share our thoughts on online video with AARP’s Social Impact Team during a day-long session he hosted in Washington, D.C.  Dan focused on using video with social networks, and I focused on how to strategically apply video across channels according to a Lifecycle Marketing Methodology.

Dan and I beamed into the event virtually using Tokbox. Although there were a couple of technical glitches, overall it was a fun experience and highlighted the power of video as a collaboration tool.  My slides from the event are posted below thanks to SlideShare.  There are some stats in there including some from a couple of relatively new studies highlighting online video’s appeal across demographics.  I hope you enjoy it.  Last - many thanks to BJ for the invitation to participate at this event.  He is doing some cutting edge research at Stanford on using video as a persuasive tool and I’m looking forward to seeing what great ideas and academic frameworks he comes up with next to help us all persuade more effectively!

I used to think of an online retailer as a company that sold products and services on its web site.

Now, I’m not so sure.  I started thinking about this after I saw Karmaloop’s online video effort and then blogged about it. Now, I’m diving into things like Borders’ Books & Music’s efforts at bordersmedia.com or Amazon.com’s new shopping experience at windowshop.com. If you haven’t seen Amazon’s effort yet - do.  It’s super innovative.  Start consuming some of the media and you begin to wonder… is this a retailer or an entertainment company?

It’s likely that many retailers will never cross the boundary between entertainment and commerce.  But, seeing efforts like these, I have no doubt many will.  We’re already seeing signs of the convergence between the entertainment industry and the e-commerce industry.  Look carefully, and you can see it happening with the retailers that sell media (e.g. books, music, videos) and retailers who cater to the MTV generation.  If you’re able to stretch your thinking a bit, it becomes easier to see how even “mainstream” retailers will begin to blur the lines.  I’m not talking about QVC or HSN-style video production, infomercials or even short-form online video ads.  I’m talking about retailers seeking to more deeply integrate themselves into the daily lives of their customers by delivering lifestyle content that features products or services sold by the retailer either via product placement, blending of commercial content and entertainment content, or through mid-roll advertising.  That’s just a starting point.  Retailers actually want to begin selling ad inventory within lifestyle content to complementary businesses and turn video into a new source of revenue - essentially becoming their own media companies and furthering the fragmentation of media in our society.

What do you think about this vision for the future of video commerce?

Happy Selling!  And, Happy Thanksgiving!

Last week, I met with Kerry Murdock (Founder, Publisher, Editor of Practical eCommerce) to discuss video commerce best practices.  If you’re interested in listening to the podcast, you can find it here. It’s about 15 minutes long, so you might just want to put it on in the background while doing other work!

I also wanted to point out a couple of other recent articles on online video for e-commerce.  One was written by Jennifer Meacham of Practical eCommerce on Nov 19, “Video Boosts Online Sales, Merchants Confirm.” The article points out yet more examples of e-commerce merchants profiting from the use of online video as well as some cost-saving tips and tricks.

Cindy Perman, a writer with CNBC.com also pubslished a great article last week on how retailers are increasingly turning to video to sell their products on the web.  Her article, titled “Web Sales Tactics: Virtual Salespeople and Zombie Videos,” showcases why more and more retailers are making the jump into video commerce.  My favorite stat from the article?

“In September [2008], 32.6 million unique users watched video on a retail Web site, up 20 percent from a year earlier, according to comScore.”  Wow.

GetElastic also published an article today on combining online video with affiliate marketing.  In upcoming posts, we’ll dive into the subject of affiliate video marketing and its place in the broader video commerce picture.  Until then…

Happy Selling! (and Happy Thanksgiving!

There is a lot of enthusiasm in the market about the use of online video in a retail environment.  Still, many retailers struggle to transform that enthusiasm into action.  In order for video commerce to grow within your organization, try to remember the following:

1) Online video has implications for multiple functional areas of your e-commerce business.  Carefully weigh the benefits and risks of a ‘go it alone’ strategy.  The most successful video commerce initiatives have broad organizational support.

2) Collect formal case studies and directional evidence of video’s impact across functional areas of your business to help sell your case internally.  Take delight in your role as ‘chief video detective.’  Remember the golden rule of business: “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me?)  Present the business case for video commerce to others in terms that will help them achieve their own goals.

3) Think about online video applications using a strategic framework to better organize your own thoughts and help others within the organization think about what’s possible.  A single, agreed-upon framework for video commerce applications will help align various stakeholders in the business and increase the probability you can rally people around a video commerce initiative.

4) Prioritize the rollout or expansion of online video using a simple planning methodology.  Because resources are scarce, you probably want to apply video in the areas that a) generate the highest return to the business, b) are easiest to execute, and c) align most closely with the organization’s objectives.

1.  Build organizational support for video commerce.

If you are a midsize to large retailer, video likely touches multiple functional areas (and perhaps multiple groups) within your organization.  Do not underestimate the power of broad organizational support to help spur adoption of a formal video commerce program.  Below are some functional groups that might have useful input into your video commerce strategy:

Executives: mainly concerned with understanding video’s impact on organizational performance metrics (revenue, profitability), and strategic alignment with broader organizational initiatives.

Usability and Customer Experience: mainly concerned with video’s impact on the shopping experience on-site, brand consistency, impact on site performance metrics, both sales and service issues.

Product Management: mainly concerned with possible impacts of adoption to the existing site roadmap, priority of video versus existing/competing initiatives, upcoming resource availability.

Technology/IT: mainly concerned with resource availability, technical requirements, available expertise, and need for one-time and ongoing technical resources.

Affiliate Management: mainly concerned with video’s impact on affiliate performance and overall affiliate contribution to revenues.

Online advertising/display: mainly concerned with video’s impact on display performance (lift), requirements to deploy to ad networks, and online display’s contribution to customer acquisition and revenues.

Email marketing: mainly concerned with email campaign performance.  Can video increase performance of email campaigns either through embedding video imagery within email messages or on campaign landing pages?

In-store marketing: (for multi-channel retail) mainly concerned with video’s impact on the retail sales floor.  Is it useful in a kiosk strategy or when helping sales associates on the floor close a sale or upsell the customer to high margin service offerings?

Creative production: mainly concerned with creative’s input into the process.  What kinds of creative resources are required?  Is the required production expertise in-house?

E-Commerce management: mainly concerned with requirements to manage and execute the program on an ongoing basis.  What is the impact on existing staff?  Are new hires needed?  Who will own the program internally?  Does it align with broader e-commerce objectives (increase sales, boost profitability, compete more effectively in a given category, etc)?

I just pulled the preceding list off the top of my head.  It’s not an exhaustive list of concerns each functional group is likely to have (or even necessarily representative of how all e-commerce organizations classify business functions), but rather a reflection of the fact that video can touch many functional areas.  By meeting with key stakeholders within each area to gather thoughts about online video and potential impact on e-commerce performance, you will be in a better position to truly assess the overall organizational readiness for video commerce and objections you are likely to encounter as you plan the rollout.

2.  Collect formal case studies and directional evidence of video’s likely impact across functional areas of your e-commerce business.

I read blogs as a good source of new information, check out vendor web sites, and read as many whitepapers as I can find.  In video commerce, knowledge is power.

Your enthusiasm for or interest in video commerce can be inspiring to others, but be careful not to let enthusiasm ‘roll over’ perfectly sound ideas or isolate you within the organization (translation: barnstorming straight into the CEO’s office proclaiming “video is the future” without some organizational support and a reasonable business case is not likely to get you very far).  Instead, first ask your counterparts about their existing knowledge of video and how they think video could impact their functional area of the business. You may want to offer to search for case studies or articles to share with colleagues, but remember your ability to generate a willingness within others to find this information may be more powerful than if you’re doing all the work by yourself.  Just as important, when others begin to think about the possible applications of online video for their functional area from the perspective of internal potential rather than external validation, you become much more likely to gain support and momentum to compensate for online video’s relatively early stage of adoption in the retail industry today.  Translation: there are case studies out there, but your ability to find *exactly* the right one at this point in time (e.g. from a direct competitor) might be somewhat limited.

Last - remember the Golden Rule of Business. People want to know what’s in it for them. Why should they care about online video?  If you talk with someone that’s not already a “convert” to video commerce, then relish in your role as a detective to help uncover information.  Be careful in your presentation of facts or case studies you may find, however.  People don’t like to be “corrected” so even if you do uncover useful information, try and give credit to others for inspiring your work as a way to help generate buy-in.

3. Think about online video applications using a strategic framework to better organize your own thoughts and help others within the organization think about possible video commerce programs.

As a person with a background in email marketing, I am a huge fan of the lifecycle marketing methodology.  Lifecycle marketing is a marketing approach designed to pinpoint customers with relevant messages as they move through the customer lifecycle.   Of course, there are important differences between email messages and video content, and therefore it is not possible to parallel the applications of the content completely for both mediums.  But - the great thing about the customer lifecycle is that it’s relevant regardless of the media used.

Customer Lifecycle:

ACQUIRE >> CONVERT >> GROW >> SERVICE >> WIN BACK

Below are two grids of the customer lifecycle illustrating possible roles for video within each lifecycle phase.  The grids are designed to illustrate examples only and are not exhaustive.  Your own organization will have its own strategies and programs to slot into the lifecycle phases.

1.  Video placement by customer lifecycle phase:

2.  Video content by customer lifecycle phase.

It’s worth mentioning that today most of the efforts with online video in a commercial context are centered on the acquire phase (display advertising) or the convert phase (converting shoppers on your site through merchandising).  Such applications, while worthy, do not fully exploit video’s potential to acquire, convert, grow, service, and win back customers.

By sitting down with stakeholders in a collaborative fashion to expose online video applications, then mapping them to the customer lifecycle, you stand a better chance of a) striking the best entry point for your video commerce program and b) identifying deficiencies in the current video commerce program or gaps in the strategic thinking around online video.

4. Prioritize the rollout of online video using a simple planning methodology.

According to a survey we ran this summer on the VCC board, the #1 reason people have not already started a video commerce program or invested in expanding an existing video commerce initiative is “not knowing where to start.”

By conducting a formal Program Prioritization Exercise in a collaborative setting with involved stakeholders, it becomes much easier to determine “where to start.”

Before you conduct this exercise, however, make sure you have taken the necessary preliminary steps:

1.  Educate yourself as much as you can about video commerce.  By now, I am guessing most people reading this blog already read the whitepaper, Building an Effective Video Commerce Strategy. Pages 7 - 16 provide tips and tricks on setting the stage for online video and some of the most common video applications for increasing conversion rates and acquiring new customers through off-site channels.  The “Developing an ROI Focused Video Commerce Strategy” section is useful background material to breeze through before you set out on a path of video commerce world dominance.

2.  Make sure you understand the cross-functional nature of video. Interview others in the organization about video’s likely impact on their functional area, then gather their ideas and thoughts about possible ‘winning’ video programs.

3.  Use your own knowledge and the knowledge you’ve gained from your peers to complete a sample lifecycle marketing grid (the one in this blog is just an example - your programs will likely be a lot more specific e.g. “launch a viral video on YouTube” or “acquire 10 videos from our manufacturers and place them on our product pages” etc).

Once these items are out of the way, do the following:

4.  Gather all of the relevant stakeholders in a room for the first part of the Program Prioritization Exercise.  Explain the purpose of the session (to assess video’s likely impact on the business and begin to prioritize thinking around video). Emphasize the meeting as a “brainstorming session” where creative thinking is encouraged.  Show the lifecycle marketing continuum containing all of your ideas and others’ ideas you have already carefully gathered (put it up on a nice big PowerPoint slide, if possible - it’s a great visual aid).  Explain what the continuum is and why it was chosen.  (If you have another approach, use that if you don’t like the lifecycle method).  The point of this part of the exercise is really to make sure that everyone in the room is looking at video from the same perspective so people don’t start going on wild tangents during the meeting.  You might want to share the lifecycle marketing grid with each stakeholder before the meeting as well to make sure it is understood in advance.

5.  Review each program on the grid briefly (no more than 10 - 20 seconds allotted to each one) and then verify that everyone’s ideas are represented so no one feels left out.

6.  Ask if anyone else in the group has any additional ideas to submit.  Take them down in your notes.

7.  Prioritization time.  Ask each person in the room to score each program on the following:

1) The expected return to the business, on a scale of 1 - 5

2) The ease of implementation, on a scale of 1 - 5

3) The strategic value of the program to the company (optional - on a scale of 1 - 5)

You may wish to share a visual aid for this step so people can see the reason they are being asked to score each of the programs (see below).  This exercise tends to work best (and go faster) when you verbally go through each program one at a time, then get a consensus score from the group.

A bit of advice when you’re prioritizing and another reason to use this approach.  IT IS WAY TOO EASY TO MAKE PLANNING FOR VIDEO WAY TOO COMPLICATED.  YOUR purpose of holding this meeting is not to spec programs.  Your purpose is to build consensus, identify which of the programs represent “quick wins” and which represent ideas best left on the shelf.

8.  Adjourn the meeting once all the programs have been rated.

9.  Go back to your desk and plot the programs on the prioritization grid.  Once you’ve plotted them, you will have a much better idea of where to start.

10.  Call another meeting to review the results of the grid (or, if you want to save a meeting, email the results around and ask for feedback).  Again, focus on achieving consensus and verifying the results.

11.  You are well on your way to launching into video commerce.  Once the Prioritization Exercise is complete, you can move onto Executive Approval or creating more formal programs required for approval.

Hopefully this is helpful.  Before I go, I want to extend a special thanks to Melissa Shaw of Shaw Strategic Services. She is the one who taught me about the general lifecycle marketing framework. Thanks Melissa - and to the rest of you… Happy Selling!

I was surfing around tonight when I discovered an Akamai whitepaper released this September called ”Online Video: The New Merchandising.” (there’s a link to download the whitepaper at the end of this post).

Part 2: Video Commerce - Don’t Forget the Commerce Part!

Using video search engine optimization (SEO) to drive more customers to your web site.

As I sat down to write Part II in this series of blog posts on using video for e-commerce, I was quite surprised to find such a wealth of knowledge already on the Internet focused on best practices for implementing video SEO.  So, rather than introducing any “groundbreaking” video SEO techniques in this post, I will attempt to distill some of the top-level best practices already out there into an easily digestible format, link you to some other posts that elaborate on the details, and add some of my own commentary to color the discussion so video SEO is viewed through the lens of video commerce.

What in the heck is video SEO anyway?

I love Kieran Hawe’s definition: “Video SEO at its core is about the discoverability of video content via search engines like Google Video, Blinkx or any of 1000’s of Video Search Engines out there. The bottom line goal of Video SEO focuses on getting your video content to the top of search engine rankings - within both the standard search results page and video search results page.”  Kieran, by the way, is my new hero for maintaining such an awesome, information-rich blog (linked at the bottom of this post).

What do I need to do to help search engines find my videos?

Good question - but it’s not the right question for a video commerce professional to ask first.  In video commerce, driving traffic to your videos is only worthwhile if it drives customers closer to a sale or increases the number of transactions you are able to achieve.  I can not state this point strongly enough!  Eyeballs are great, but sales are what count in video commerce.  In a slowing economy, this is more important now than ever before.  Don’t fall prey to thinking that your video commerce initiative will be wildly successful just because some of your videos show up high in Google rankings.  Go talk to the CFO and see how much he cares that your videos are at the top of an organic search query while the whole company is wildly whiffing on its Q4 sales targets… point made!!

My number one rule of video SEO as applied to video commerce is:

Drive traffic to videos that are driving customers into your purchase process.  

If all you are doing is driving traffic to videos outside your site that don’t offer a clear way for users to get back onto your site (I see a lot of retailers do this with their YouTube channels, for example), or to videos on your own site that offer no clear path to a sale - then it is reasonable to question whether you are truly implementing video commerce or instead are just experimenting with video as an awareness tool.

I’ll get off the soapbox now and move onto some tactics you can use to boost video SEO:

1.  Use keyword-rich text on your video pages.  That includes things like descriptions of the video, tags of the video, and potentially even a transcript of the speech from the video on the page.  Related photos and news on a video page can also improve SEO, but one rule of thumb to be aware of is that when it comes to video SEO, the best practice is only to show one video per page.  Your video pages should ideally also use permalinks.  An example would be http://video.beauty.com/v/1269/prescriptives-all-skins-mineral-makeup-spf-15-level.  The video itself should also include a descriptive name (e.g. cool-video-of-bob-barfing.flv).  The page title should be relevant to the video, and meta tags on the page should include relevant information to the video playing on the page.

2.  Use links within your video player.  Google now is indexing .SWF files.  This represents an enormous SEO opportunity for Flash files served outside your site or even within your site to appear in Google rankings.  Kieran wrote an excellent post about this recent development.  Keep in mind that Google is not indexing .FLVs (the actual Flash videos), but if your video player is a .SWF that uses embedded links, then those .SWF links may be indexable.

3.  Syndicate, syndicate, syndicate.  A staple of a successful SEO strategy is ensuring that relevant sites link back to your own site.  Let your users do some of the work for you by supporting blog embeds, social network embeds (e.g. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter) and embeds to sites like StumbleUpon and digg.  Also, push your videos out to video sharing services and affiliates (just remember to link back to your site whenever possible!).  The use of descriptive anchor text with your embeds can also help with SEO.  

4.  Use Google Video Sitemaps and mRSS.  Google Video Sitemaps let Google know that a video is playing on a page.  You can create one using Google’s webmaster tools interface, and there are also tools on the market that will create them for you automatically.  mRSS is supported by many video search engines and Yahoo.  It provides search engines with important information used to index your video files.

5.  Read more about Video SEO.

I mentioned Kieran’s blog several times here already and strongly encourage a read:

http://webtribution.com/2008/08/11/video-seo-guide-and-best-practices/

ReelSEO is a frequently updated site with many articles relating to video SEO:

http://www.reelseo.com/video/seo/

This looks like a great resource - admittedly I didn’t make it all the way through:

http://www.seowiki.blinkx.com/index.php/Main_Page

This article is a bit more high-level and more specific to online video advertising:

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/search-seo-6-tips-for-better-video-seo_19955.html

You’ll have to be a MarketingSherpa member to read this article (they offer a free trial).  I have been pretty impressed by MarketingSherpa’s presentation of educational content along with real-world examples:

https://www.marketingsherpa.com/barrier.html?ident=30900

On May 5, 2009, the VCC will hold an organized discussion on video commerce for the Shop.org annual online marketing workshop.  This will be a ‘down and dirty’ session that covers winning tactics to manage a successful video commerce program.

I’ve been a longtime member of Shop.org and really admire the work they’ve done in the online and multi-channel retail space.  The events are typically geared to a more senior audience and advanced discussion.  I’m excited to represent the VCC there.  If you would like to help with the discussion by participating as a panelist, feel free to email me at justin [a t] video [d a s h] commerce [d o t] org.

A special thank you to Brett Hurt, Founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice and Founder & Former CEO of Coremetrics for introducing the VCC to the folks at Shop.org who are organizing this event.

On Thursday, January 8, 2009, the Video Commerce Consortium will host a webinar, “The ROI of Online Video.”

The webinar is perfect for e-commerce professionals, online marketers, product managers, affiliate managers, usability experts, technologists, and video production experts who may be contemplating launching or expanding a video commerce program in 2009.  It will cover actual case studies from online retailers that are already successfully generating positive ROI from video commerce, pitfalls to avoid in a video program launch or expansion, and a series of ROI strategies to manage costs and maximize revenues for program planning, management, and measurement.

You can find an overview, bulleted take-away list, and register here.

After interviewing over fifty e-commerce retailers from the Internet Retailer Top 500 List about the current state of their video commerce programs, it became clear to me that online marketers, merchandisers, affiliate managers, product managers, technologists, and executives are all intensely interested in learning more about video commerce.   At the same time, I see people craving more information about how to limit the risk of getting started with online video while maximizing its impact and effectiveness on the top line and bottom line. Hence, I decided to write a whitepaper you can download here:  Building an Effective Video Commerce Strategy.

The purpose of the whitepaper is to provide the video commerce neophyte with a methodology for getting started with and expanding the use of e-commerce video, saving valuable time and cost that might otherwise be spent fumbling through the process of a video commerce program launch.

Additionally, the whitepaper provides a framework to serve as a guide for video placement, content strategy, and general production best practices. It includes common sense tips and tricks to benefit e-commerce merchants of all shapes and sizes, culled together in a single place using a variety of sources across the Internet. Case study material, charts, and the video commerce ROI worksheet are all handy tools for any online retailer to have on hand. 

You can download the whitepaper here:

Building an Effective Video Commerce Strategy

Just got back from an event hosted by TheFunded at Tesla Motors in Palo Alto.  The event is designed for entrepreneurs of startup companies, and I have to say the energy was pretty awesome - always inspirational to be around people that have big ideas working hard to make them realities.  It just made me want to blog, goshdarnit!

Frank Han - One Smart Dude.

While there, I met Frank Han, former EVP & GM at HSN.com, Founder of Glimpse.com, Co-Founder of eToys and SVP of Caesars Entertainment.  Frank is currently an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Redpoint Ventures & Greylock Partners, busy thinking of The Next Big Thing.  Which brings me to Video Commerce.  Our conversation was wide-ranging, wandering from the promise of retail video distribution, to live video streaming online in a retail setting (pure-play and multi-channel) to new retail startups moving into video or planning to, and other new tech startups working on the problem of how to make video work in different ways for commerce applications. Finally, what really excited me was the general discussion of how video has the potential to transform the norm for shopping experiences online - meaning video has the potential to be much more than just another tool in the toolbox, but in fact, could represent an entirely different paradigm for the e-retail experience.  At the end of the conversation, I felt super pumped and inspired about the future of video.  There’s a lot of experimentation and innovation going on now in this space.  We’re all lucky to be involved in video commerce.  Together we are really inventing the future of video for e-commerce!