Online Video Marketing in 2009

I can see an online trend these days. Online video marketing showing a good trend. If you are thinking about video marketing online in year 2009 do the following. It will really work. Make sure you create videos with the following guidelines.

1- Do not present just pictures

2- Make an human connection or interaction

3- It better to record videos in 3D view because it attracts the viwers.

4- Do not include much text- keep it simple

5- make it short and sweet.

Go through my earlier post on YouTube video marketing. You can also get some guidance.

If your video is ready try doing the following steps. It will work well and you can see your video results in search engines after few hours specially in Google. These amazing steps were taken from webtvwire.com.

• Submit to social video bookmarking sites.
  Digg.com, Video Bomb, Flurl, StumbleVideo – all these sites have the potential to send a lot of viewers if enough people vote for your video. But make sure you are not spamming.

• Email video blogs and websites to tell them about your video.
  Email blogs which post interesting online videos. Use Google and Delicious to find such blogs.

• Email blogs that talk about your videos topic.
  If your video is about an Apple Mac then email Apple Mac blogs, if your video is about making pizza then email recipe blogs.

• Submit to regular social bookmarking sites
  Don’t forget the regular social bookmarking sites like Delicious, Reddit, BlinkList etc. These sites will link to videos and if enough people vote for it you can get a lot of visitors

• Submit your video (or a teaser video) to the busiest video sharing sites
  YouTube is busier, but so is Daily Motion, MetaCafe, and many others. Check out a huge list of video sharing sites here. If it’s a teaser video or you want people to visit your website write your website in the description and also show it within the video. If you can submit

• Post your video in relevant discussion boards and forums.
  Read their rules first and don’t spam. Make sure what you post is relevant to the forum and choose the busiest forums to post in.

• Tag and describe your videos
  It is important to put the keywords that describe your video in the associated tags and description so search engines know what your video is about.

• Read the SEO guide for video
  The video search engine Blinkx published a guide on optimizing your video for search engine traffic.

• Send out a press release
  If your video is especially news worthy you may want to send out an online Press Release.

• Make videos regularly and create your own website and MySpace
  A one-off video may get popular but if you make videos regularly and place them on your own website AND MySpace you can build up a large following.

• Enter competitions
  There are plenty of video competitions out there so look around and enter any you can for more exposure. For example the Network2 contest, BrioBox contest, Acceptable.tv etc.

• Get help from your friends
  Get your friends to help by adding you to their MySpace, bookmarking your video on social bookmarking sites, adding your video as a favorite on YouTube, posting about your video on their site etc.

• Choose the right thumbnail
  When ever you decide to watch a video it is heavily influenced by the thumbnail (the little picture of the video clip) that you see first. If you can choose the thumbnail do so and make it sharp, clear, eye catching and relevant to your video.

• A catchy title
  A catchy title is just as important as a catchy thumbnail to encourage people to click that link to watch your video.

• File Sharing
  This is often forgotten but if you are giving away your video for free why not distribute a copy for free over file sharing networks. Depending on the niche of your video this can work well. Don’t forget to include the name of your website in your video.

For more great video marketing idea visit a post on techcrunch

The new dimensions of E-CRM

In the fast moving online world it is easy and cheap for businesses to establish the internet presence. In the online world building relationship with customers can bring a strong competitive advantage. A online CRM strategy can be benefit for an organization in the following ways

 

• It reduces the cost of communication with customers
• It improves sales targeting through better customer segmentation
• It simplifies the customer retention strategies
• It encopurages the development of a comprehensive database, with all staff being allowd access to important information
• It increases the loyalty.

 

But an article I went through recently it says that only 30% of the online retailers are thought to have CRM strategies. Which means online retailers can use e-CRM effectively in order to develop a straong stance in the market.

 

I thought to put all important steps of e-CRM in the following way

 

Step one- Identifying the online customer – The firms has to identify the customer segmentation well. Each market segmentation needs to be identified thoroughly. Are they are transactional users, non-transactional users, high value customers etc. Organization need to consider whether the respources are targeted to the high value users as attached with the pareto principle.

 

Step two Website design – In the online world in order to develop a strong relationship the website should provide the customer a good experience. The website design should be based on the industry its operates and the customer segmentation it targets. Eg- A firm operating in the travel industry should not use colors related to gaming sites. The web site should also encourage return visits. This can be done by using attractive and updates web contents.

 

Step three – Information gathering and handling- Firms need to develop strategies for gathering and analyzing information about the customer activities. A proper development of database is important. Rather than just developing a database firms should think about data mining to target effective communication and life style , behavioral identification the customers. Web tracking should be enabled such as time spent on each pages, web logs etc.

 

Step four – Communication with customers – There has to be always one to one communication with the customers. The customer complaints and queries need to be answered quickly, also it is always important to display a FAQ page in the web. The organization has to determine the communication ways according to the target segments. Whether its email, bulleting boards (site communication) etc

 

Loyalty and trust – Step five – Trust can be seen as a single important element in CRM building online. Because in the online world there is no physical interaction. Building initial trust is very important. There are few sets of questions the firms need to answer

Is brand development is based on recognition of arrtibutes of the customer base?

If loyalty programmes are used, is it cost effective?

Have customer attributes are identified?

Are there are community platforms?

 

As an e-marketer I can see the importance of the above five steps. Firms need to keep all these steps into mind rather than just developing CRM strategies without any clear and cut goals.

 

16 hot online marketing Trends 2009

Year 2009 is going to be the major challenging year for many business because of the economic slow down and crisis. But online marketing seems to set a good growth rate in future. As an online marketer I did a search in order to identify 2009 online marketing trends and came across with some good trends published in strangecorp.com. I hope these are really fantastic points

Keyword inflation will continue

The need for advertisers to improve the effectiveness and measurability of their advertising spend will become more acute. As more budget moves to digital, the marketplace will become increasingly crowded, with the extra demand pushing up paid search costs. Keyword inflation, also called cost-per-click (CPC) inflation, is running at 20% for 2008 across all markets (according to Jupiterresearch), and we believe the figure for 2009 will remain high despite the downturn.

Conversion optimisation will be key

Assuming the current level of keyword inflation, conversion rates will need to improve to keep CPA at the same level. The pressure will be on for advertisers to find solutions that can really improve their return on investment (ROI) by offering end-to-end optimisation for search, display advertising, affiliate marketing and email marketing.

Consumer thrift will shape online behaviour

As the recession bites, consumers will increasingly shop online in search of deals and bargains, especially through auction websites and ad listings. So Craigslist, Gum Tree, eBay and many more websites will, in all likelihood, see their traffic rocket.

Great Creative will be required

This may sound obvious, but it needs to be emphasised: digital marketing will continue to rely heavily on creative to achieve its objectives and make the campaigns and strategies work. Good creative is what makes your display advertising disruptive, your landing page user-friendly and your website trustworthy. It communicates your message and builds affinity with your brand. And although in times of economic downturns, emotional matters can seem less important to the bottom line, creative is THE key element affecting all online marketing channels and, therefore, ROI.

Internet Explorer 8 will affect online advertising

The launch of Microsoft’s browser Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is massively important, since it is the default browser on Windows boxes. And while it may not be as sleek as Google’s Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, most consumers will happily muddle along with IE8 oblivious to alternatives. The privacy browsing capabilities of IE8 will have an impact for online advertising if there is widespread usage, since it blocks the tracking cookies at the heart of online advertising and traffic analytics.

CPA buying will become more widely negotiated

The CPA (cost-per-action/acquisition) digital advertising buying model will become more widely negotiated. The biggest online advertisers are already spending over 50% of budget on CPA media and in difficult times, where direct response is more important than branding goals, more advertisers will be looking to this model.

Data privacy and security will stay in the headlines

Data security and privacy issues are likely to continue to hit the headlines throughout 2009. Whether in be Phorm or GCHQ snooping on what we’re up to, or government agencies and businesses losing more unencrypted data in laptops, dongles and CDs.

Qualitative analytics will have greater emphasis

Knowing what your website users did is nice, but knowing WHY they it did will become crucial. We predict that there will be huge growth in the use of qualitative data in analytics and decision making in 2009. User surveys, email questionnaires, internal search analysis, user complaints, customer service forms, FAQ feedback, A/B and multivariate testing, eye tracking and click-density analysis are all going to become essential tools in your quest for qualitative data that will help you improve and optimise ROI.

Mobile advertising will flourish

With Google supplying mobile hardware (G1) and software (Android), and bidding on the wireless spectrum, it is clear that the people at Mountain View wish to develop this market to its full potential. 3G smartphones with large-ish screens, such as the iPhone, BlackBerry Storm and G1 all allow mobile users a close-to-normal web-browsing experience. And as mobile usability improves, so will mobile Internet use. Google is moving fast to develop, exploit and control mobile advertising by dictating the platforms and mechanisms we use to browse the web on our smartphones, while also leveraging the mobile wireless spectrum.

Local search/localised services will grow

Search engines, browsers and hardware manufacturers will continue to put their weight behind the localisation of search. Why? Three main reasons: 1.) Results are more relevant, 2.) advertising can be more accurately targeted, and 3.) it gives search networks a massive additional inventory to sell at a local, rather than regional or national level.

The reason why 2009 is the year for local search to take off is that the Gears project (an open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser) offers a geo-location API, as does Mozilla Geode and Yahoo! Fire Eagle. There will also be high-speed packet access (HSDPA)-ready laptops and netbooks, on top of the existing GPS smartphones and palms, all of which will allow the UK search engines to retrieve a more meaningful geo-location than is currently available via Internet provider (IP) lookup.

RSS newsfeeds will go mainstream

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an ideal platform for online marketing and communications as it provides marketers with 100% deliverability and a qualified audience. Having come through the early-adopter doldrums, RSS will most likely see a surge in uptake in 2009, moving into majority usage thanks largely to built-in support in the new IE 8 browser.

More user behaviour metrics will be applied to the Google algorithm

Speculation that Google will shift its algorithm to favour more user behaviour metrics is growing. In fact, Google has openly discussed these algorithmic approaches in a patent application called ‘Information retrieval based on historical data’ (http://tinyurl.com/5fpfj) filed back in 2003.

Netbooks will impact web design

Netbooks, the smaller, low cost laptops built for web browsing are the fastest-growing category within laptop sales. They are expected to account for 10% of laptop sales and 8% of all sales (by volume) in 2009. The new crop of netbooks will have HSDPA (3G) built-in, making them ideal for business users on the move.

User generated content (UGC) will be King

A Universal McCann study in 2008 found that only 14% of users trust advertising, whereas 78% trust recommendations of other consumers. This highlights something many online marketers have known for a while: user generated content can be very beneficial.

Social media opportunities will expand

According to research by Universal McCann, 73% of users read blogs and 36% think more positively about brands that have them. In addition, 83% of users have viewed video clips (proven to offer significant uplift in sales), 49% have downloaded podcasts and 38% have subscribed to an RSS feed, while 57% have joined a social network. We could go on, but suffice to say that social media has well and truly arrived and if you don’t use it to your advantage, then you’re missing a massive opportunity.

APIs and mashups could be the Next Big Thing

Far be it from us to predict the next Facebook or Last.fm success story, but the odds on it being a mashup are not bad. Application programme interfaces (APIs) allow desktop and mobile applications to access web data and services directly, giving rise to services such as iTunes, RSS readers, desktop weather widgets, Xbox Live and Play Station Network, to name but a few.

Building on this, mashups bring together, manipulate and present complex interrelationships of data as information resources that were previously inconceivable. Growing fast in number, the beauty of good mashups is that they have real synergy, making them greater than their component parts and thereby providing richer user experiences and deeper information resources.

CRM and B2B – Married Couple

What’s business to business (b2b) without CRM. Not much, every good marketers those who are connected to b2b business knows that much of the process of converting prospects into loyal clients rests on customer service. Recently in an article published on Marketingprofs Andy Hasselwander defined b2b CRM value chain in four components.They are:

• Marketing Management. Deciding who you are. This is your company’s “marketing nerve center, where all core decisions are made about the customers and the brand,” Hasselwander explains. “The functions of marketing management [include] product features, packaging, and value propositions,” he says.

• Outbound Management. Telling the world who you are. “The outbound function should entail communications (TV, radio, email, etc.); experiences (product [and] service); and influentials (the media … bloggers … etc.)”

• Customer-Focused Branding. Targeting individuals. “I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to think of the B2B brand as the collective set of attitudes and perceptions latent in the individuals inside the decision-making units at your firm’s customers,” he says.

• Inbound Listening. Hearing what they’re saying about you. There are five primary elements of listening, according to Hasselwander: sampling (tracking studies), chatter (Web or otherwise), engagement (two-way conversations), purchases (buying behavior) and loyalty.

The Point: A good plan can boost your CRM. Using these four points as a model “brings together the core functions of both branding and CRM in a B2B context and provides a framework upon which to hang more complex ideas,” Hasselwander concludes.