Treepodia – The leading Product Video solution for e-commerce

If you’ve been following the buzz in Online Marketing circles these past two weeks you’ll have noticed the big story on everybody’s mind is Google’s gradually increasing reliance and integration of social data into search results. In case you’re wondering what that means in plain English -

Google is now customizing our search results based on data it’s pulling from our personal social circle, and other personal indicators it has about us

Variations in search are nothing but new – we’re probably well aware of the variance in results for queries between google.com and any of Google’s nationally localized sites (i.e. google.co.uk, google.de, etc.), but this new step is something beyond that. Google is now serving each of us with a unique set of results based on what it knows about us PERSONALLY.

A really simple example of how this influences results is below. The screenshot on the left is Google’s search results for my surname, from a browser session where I was signed in. You’ll note my own LinkedIn profile ranks in at #6. On the right hand side I conducted the same search without being signed in. My LinkedIn profile is absent from the results:

Personalized Google search

So What?

Many of the pundits writing about this recent change are taking offence at what they view as a serious offence against their privacy. While I feel it’s not my place to weigh in on the moral aspects of this change, I will say I believe Google doesn’t really have a choice, if it wants to retain it’s position as the leader in RELEVANT search results. There are two main reasons why I think this must be the wave of the future:

#1 – Is that really number 1?

As the web continues to grow exponentially, presenting sites in a simple ranked list format is becoming increasingly irrelevant. It’s a simplistic form of rating that doesn’t really match the complexities of the paradigm.

An easy example is a search for “technology news”. When I ran this search Cnet news came out ranking in at number #1 (from a non-personalized session).

Really?

Is Cnet the “best” site for that query?

Aren’t Techcrunch, engadget, Mashable, CNN’s technology section, etc. etc. etc…. just as deserving?

#2 – Personal IS Relevant

Consider the following situation – Your anniversary is coming up and you’d like to surprise your spouse with a cool date at an Indian restaurant. You have two choices for selecting a restaurant to go to:

• Option #1 – Search your local food directory for a restaurant that might be a good fit
• Option #2 – Ask a foodie friend for a recommendation

Obviously option #2 will yield better fitting results for your date - because your friend knows you. They’ll naturally rule out all the options that you’re less likely to enjoy, leaving you with a selection that matches your choice in decor, budget, location, etc.

This is precisely what Google is tapping into now.

The reality is that the answer to the question “Which is the best Indian restaurant in town“, is entirely subjective, and probably even changes depending on the type of evening you have planned out (going out with a bunch of mates to eat Indian you might choose a different spot than where you’d go for a romantic dinner for two…)

What this means for ecommerce and why product videos matter even more

Online vendors are going to have get used to a web where the old and tried SEO techniques that worked to push them up the SERPs will gradually be replaced (Google’s detractors say “supplanted”).

Increasingly we’ll be all viewing customized and personalized results where for every query the top results will be determined by whatever related content our friends have been sharing, reviewing, commenting and buzzing about. It’s here I believe vendors with video integrated into their sites will truly enjoy an advantage for the simple reason that video content is far more likely to create that type of engagement than boring old text-and-images.

But I’m willing to put this to the test:

For the vast majority of products successful online sales are heavily correlated to the quality of the images and video on the site.

It follows that successful and efficient management of your website’s product images can be a major contributor to your site’s success. As we’ve listed here before, it’s definitely a critical factor in determining the quality of your product videos.

It used to be Image Management was exculsively the realm of photographers and graphic designers, however with more tools being made available for free and online use, this is no longer the case.

Today any ecommerce professional so desiring can efficiently, manage, edit and work collaboratively, with his or her website’s product images, using only free tools, and more specifically Google’s Picasa and Picasa Web Albums service.

The underlying logic for selecting Picasa is this:

It’s Free, excellent, and hooks up to a reliable backup…

Picasa is "built-in backup"

Managing and arranging images

Picasa Web tools is a full featured photo management solution backed by a powerful and FREE software suite, both owned and maintained by Google.

There are a bunch of things you can do with your photos using only Picasa’s web interface:

• Organize and label photos and albums
• Set sharing rules and notifications
• Provide geo-location for images
• Edit images
• Collaborate with others

Picasa is great for product image gallery management

Collaborative work

Picasa’s full integration with all of Google’s other products, and the availability of Commenting for the images on the web, makes collaboration easy and intuitive:

Editing images

There are many types of tasks you might want to accomplish with your images, but it’s safe to bet Resizing and Cropping are going to be at the top of the list…

Resize/crop:

Identifying site image size
Start by identifying what size you need to crop/resize your photos to.

If you’re not sure go to any product page, right-click on the main product image, and save-as. Now check your downloaded image’s properties to identify it’s size. Alternatively if you’re browsing with Chrome you can simply right-click and select Inspect element to reveal the product image size via the Metrics tab:

Identifying image size with Chrome

Entering resize values
When resizing match your site’s smallest value (width or height) to that of the edited image:

Resizing product images with Picasa

Cropping
Set your crop area by dragging or setting constraints for shape and size:

Cropping images with Picnic

Whatever edit’s you make don’t forget to Apply and Save your work before closing down Picnic

Uploading to your site

An important tip to remember for keeping your photos in order, is to associate all the images for a particular product or category in a single folder. This works well when you want to batch download photos for work on your local machine:

The ability to download entire albums at a time is a HUGE time saver

…and just as well when you want  to upload/update the photos on your site (see below).

Naming and locating images 
For extra SEO value it’s well worth your while to give all your product images meaningful names (i.e. avoid file names like prod-123.jpg, instead go for descriptive names like professional-makeup-remover.jpg). Finding image folders to accomplish tasks like this is easy via Picasa’s desktop solution:

Locate your product album by right clicking the album name in your desktop version of Picasa, and selecting Locate on Disk

Tracking product photos is easy

Easy upload
Uploading and updating images to your website’s backend is now simply a matter of following these steps:

1. Access your product’s Image Management console via your shop’s backend (shown here: Magento – details on how to manage Magento product pages can be found here)
2. Browse to find the correct image folder
3. Select the images you want upload
4. Click Open
5. Click Upload and save your changes

Updating product photos is easy when they're kept in order

Cool Bonus!

It also enables you to take advantage of Picasa’s video creator to make videos for your products and upload them to Youtube:

Picasa enables you to make product videos for Youtube pubilcation

More on that here:

Recently we began working with Proctor and Gamble to help drive up the engagement, conversions and sales, on their Olay brand ecommerce site. I figure this is a great opportunity to revisit a topic that we haven’t really talked about in a while:

How do we create automated product videos anyway?

Our product video platform generates individual product videos by automatically pulling existing product descriptions, attributes, images, etc. from an ecommerce website’s catalog data feed , and using them to generate short video clips for each product in the catalog.

Treepodia automatically generates product videos by utilizing an ecommerce website’s existing data. Click the image above to go to Olay's site and see the live video.

What are the advantages of automating the process?

1. For limitless scalability its really the only way to go

The most obvious advantage of automating the process of creating, publishing and syndicating product videos is that its the only way ecommerce vendors with hundreds of products on offer can scale up adoption of video presentations for their entire catalog without breaking the bank or spending months and years in video production. This particular point was again validated again just recently by Marc Joseph, founder and president of Dollardays.com, in an interview he gave us:

“…When we found Treepodia we knew we’d found a value proposition that would give us more bang for our buck by producing thousands of product videos that would rank in product searches, rather than hoping for the one BIG viral video to come along…”

 2. Always up-to-date, but never any hassle

Another advantage is that because the videos are generated from the vendor’s product feed they’re guaranteed to always be up-to-date. Any change made to the products on offer is immediately reflected in the videos, regardless of whether its just a minor adjustment to the prices of a few select items, or a major overhaul of the catalog for seasonal sales or other promotions.

3. Seamlessly matched to your site by definition

Automated videos are based on a video template designed specifically for the client, and in close collaboration with their web-design team. As the screenshot above demonstrates the resulting videos are perfectly matched to the website’s branding and page layout.
This is rarely the case with product videos created via outsourced video production companies, that often have a tendency to push their own creative agenda…

Considering that the difference between success and failure often rests on how well e-tailers are able provide convincing descriptions for the products they sell it’s surprising how often one still runs into poorly written, and what’s worse, poorly conceived PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS.

Rather than bitch and moan about it I  figured we might as we’ll dedicate a post to a few simple tips that, should you choose to implement them with dedication, will make a world of difference to how your customers perceive your offerings and will ultimately improve your conversion rates (CVR) and online sales figures.

So here goes:

Sell BENEFITS instead of features

People Buy BENEFITS, not Features

Probably the most commonly made mistake in marketing is the attempt to sell a product on its features alone. Here’s an example of two descriptions for a fictional health care product that should help illustrate the difference between selling on features and selling on benefits:

FEATURES:

“Doc Darnell’s Potent Poultice is made of the finest ingredients known to modern medical science and is served in a durable, yet beautifully crafted, travelling vial. Composed of only the finest herbs and extracts this wonder drug not only solves aches and pains of all sorts, but is guaranteed to solve baldness too!”

BENEFITS:

“Are you suffering from Aching joints? Headaches? Baldness? – Doc Darnell’s Potent Poultice will heal your pain instantaneously!”

As odd as this may sound initially, when we think about it the fact this mistake is so common makes perfect sense:

Marketers tend to be very well versed in their products and hope to impress consumers into a purchase by sharing their expert knowledge, whereas consumers are much more focused on simply understanding how a product will SOLVE THEIR PROBLEM.

People Expect Details

Online customers are usually devoid of any opportunity to interact directly with a salesperson. In most cases they have no one to turn to with the questions and worries they have about their planned purchase.

What they do have at their disposal is the opportunity to click “Back” and seek another provider if they don’t feel their questions are fully answered on any particular vendor’s site.

E-tailers that want their audience to stick around and spend money on their site MUST make the effort of providing detailed product descriptions and great product images to have a FIGHTING CHANCE to make a sale. We at Treepodia also have some very convincing statistics on how effective adding videos into one’s product listings is in terms of increasing sales…

Ecommerce and product video's immediate ROI

People Believe People

Whenever possible it’s always a good idea to provide a story illustrating how your product gave value to your customers. The best way to do this is by offering clients an opportunity to submit reviews and testimonials about the products you’re offering. This might require a volume of traffic that you’ll find difficult to reach, so another alternative is to actively solicit feedback from customers you know bought your product, and to get their approval for posting their testimonials on the product’s page.

When soliciting feedback of this sort always aim to understand how the product helped your customers improve their life and stress these points in the testimonial.

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Image Credit: apdk

Going to Movies - Things to Consider When Adding Video to Your Ecommerce site

With the Holiday season just round the bend you’re probably thinking about how to boost your conversion rates and adding videos to your site is one of the best ways to do that. Adding video to your site is no longer as complicated as it used to be, but there are a few points you need to consider to make sure your video solution matches your needs:

1) Video Production

Choosing how your videos will be produced is the most important choice you’ll have to make. You can opt to go with any one of the following methods, or a combination of a few:

• Create your own videos in-house
• Use your manufacturers’ videos (assuming these exist)
• Community videos & consumer generated content
• Outsource to a professional video production company

Automated product videos
Combining any existing videos you may have with automated videos is guaranteed to provide your site with the biggest Bang-for-your-Buck. You’ll get more videos for every $$$ than with any other production method. Further advantages are:

• Fast deployment - Automated videos for your entire catalog can be generated in a matter of hours, no matter how many products you offer.
• Dynamic - Videos are dynamically created so updating your videos with new products, prices & messages can be done easily and as frequently as required.
• Analytics - Platforms like ours include a built in analytics panel allowing that shows you how your videos are performing.

2) Content Delivery Network – CDN

When viewing entertainment videos we’re sometimes willing to tolerate slow streaming video but this is hardly the case when we’re watching commercial content. We all have zero tolerance for poorly delivered marketing materials. You must make absolutely sure that your video providers’ CDN is reliable no matter where your audience is located.

3) Billing

It’s always a good idea to make sure you have a clear understanding of what your paying for and why. We base our billing on a risk-free pricing model where you only pay for videos that were actually viewed by your audience. This type of pricing model is referred to as “Pay-Per-View” and is based on the same principal as Google’s Adwords “Pay Per Click” advertising.

4) Integration and Deployment

Integrating video into your site is as simple or complex as adding any other feature. Make sure you understand all the implications, be sure to run proper testing and have a plan for reverting back in case something doesn’t work as planned. The best methods for large scale video integrations are based on addition of code to your product page templates. A parameter for the SKU can be used to automatically match the right video to the right product. This type of implementation also means that adding new videos will not require internal resources.

5) Analytics and Stats

Access to actionable analytics is crucial for your success. It’s important you have a good understanding of how your new video component is contributing to your site’s overall performance. Be sure that your solution have a reporting tool offering you information on video views which you can then correlate to your sales data:

• Measurements for your video’s conversion rates
• Comparisons of CVR for visitors who watched video and those who didn’t
• Support for A/B testing of multiple video versions per product.

6) Offsite Video Syndication

Video portals have become so popular that Youtube is now ranked as the world’s 2nd most popular search engine and the 3rd most popular website. Syndicating your video content to these portals can give you excellent visibility and generate an increased awareness for your products and brands. Our platform syndicates your video content automatically guaranteeing that every video you generate will get the highest exposure possible.

7) Search Engine Visibility

Once you have video content you’re bound to want to utilize it for SEO purposes (otherwise you’re simply leaving money on the table…). Search engines give a higher value to pages with video content granting them priority placements ranking at the top of search results however search engines need help identifiying your video content via a “Dynamic Video Sitemap” – which is similar to a regular sitemap but dedicated to your video content. It gives the search engines descriptive information of your video content that makes it easier for users to find a particular piece of content such as a video title, description, duration, location, etc. Our platform automatically generates Dynamic Video Sitemaps for all your product videos, and is always kept up-to-date with your new video content and new products

Conclusion

I hope the above  list serves you as a good starting point for helping you identify the solutions that best match your needs and finding an ecommerce video vendor that can provide them.

If you have any questions or additions please post them in the comments below!

The WOW factor

Another guest post from Ben Powell online marketing tutor at webcoursesbangkok.com

What Is A Viral Video?

Funnily definitions for viral video don’t abound online as you might expect. The one I found was a tad dry for my taste so I suggest this focused one instead:

“A viral video is the Youtube video all your friends share on Facebook with the subject line “Funniest thing ever!”

Sure, a wider definition exists, but if you make it big on either of these platforms – you’ve done well for yourself…

Viral videos are a phenomenon – Short videos that get millions of views on may different websites around the world and yet have no advertising or marketing to promote them, and no Hollywood star acting.

How on earth do they spread?

They all have one or more ingredient of what I call:

The WOWAH formula

What is the WOWAH formula?

let me explain… in video form…

W is for WOW

These are the videos that depict someone or something so amazingly awesome and fantastic that you have to exclaim”

“WOW, How Did They Do That?!?”

This video has had over 4 million views and was if you can watch very carefully its an ingenious advertisement for Ray ban sunglasses! (Highly recommended! Check their other videos as well). In my opinion one of the best online and social media marketing campaigns I’ve seen to date. That said I personally think the brand shot was so brief it missed the point a little…

Another site that fits nicely into this factor is Swedish Hero.

Its WOW is about the fantastic technology used to create it. Again a brilliant online marketing campaign that uses the power of sharing to its full advantage.

O is for OMGLOL!!!

These are the ones that usually get the highest hits and are so funny you can’t help but laugh and share on your social networks!

This was a fantastic social media campaign from “Old Spice”. It got over 16 million views and spawned a whole meme culture. The best quote for me:

“I’m on a horse”

You’ll understand after you watch the clip!

W is for WHAT?

Videos of this category are those that make you exclaim:

“What on earth was that person thinking?!?”

Amazing, but difficult to use for business. If you’re really smart and lucky you  just might be a hit…

17 million views and counting. I’m pretty sure it changed this kid’s life…

A fast thinking Toy Manufacturer Marketing Manager should have offered that kid a sponsorship deal!

“When defending myself from hoards of imaginary storm troopers I use the (insert brand name here) Light Saber” –

…cut to kid doing thumbs up.
I’m sure you get my drift…

A is for AWWWWW…

Anything with Pandas, Kittens, Puppies or Babies is a sure fire winner.

That’s so sickeningly cute I think I’m going to die. 71 million views.

Its is hard to manufacture this sort of video however Evian water did a pretty good job, of course they used a budget the size of Sudan’s GDP, but they did take almost all the essential factors into account.

25 million views.
Evian also followed up with some great off line marketing as well, I really want one of these t’s!

and finally

H is for Hmmm…

These are the ones that do the more professional circles, the nicely produced info graphics that tell us some astounding facts and figures about whatever industry that we may be in..

So if you’re thinking about creating a viral video for your business or for fun take these factors into account and you just might have something.

The one last take away factor that you must remember is

Take it easy and send it to your friends

Let them judge if you hit the magic WOW formula before the rest of the world…

Most Etailers Have Poor Decision Making Processes

It never ceases to amaze me how despite the extensive online availability of massively powerful tools for improving conversions and sales, the vast majority of marketers & e-tailers still rely, almost exclusively, on “gut-instinct” (their own, or that of others) as the only system for making the decisions that manage their business. In my humble opinion this may well be the main cause such a vast percentage of online businesses fail, despite the relatively low overhead cost that going online offers when compared to a brick-and-mortar business.

Great Technology is Friendly - it works without forcing YOU to understand it

From my experiences only few online retailers bother to study the statistics of their website traffic closely, and even fewer do so effectively – i.e. know what indicators are the most important for their business and how their day-to-day operations influence them.

This is a particularly sad state of affairs because the ineptitude can’t be traced back to a root cause that makes sense, for example a desire to avoid expenditure on software or resources. Some of the most powerful tools available for gathering statistics and acting on them effectively are available online for FREE.

Are You Optimizing Yet?

One example of an extremely powerful tool, that far too few people are using, is Google’s “Website Optimizer” service, which allows etailers to test how various combinations of changes to their website content will affect conversions, in order to choose the most effective one. Website Optimizer lets etailers choose what parts of a page they’d like to test – headlines, images, design styles, etc., and then runs an online experiment directing a portion of the site’s traffic to each variation in order to determine which content users respond to best.

Why Not?

Over the years I’ve studied this failing rather extensively as it represents what to me is a very intriguing paradox:
On the one hand the very fact a person succeeds at opening a business would seem to indicate a certain level of competence and diligence, however on the other hand that very same person is often unwilling or unable to carry that effort through by providing it with all the opportunities it requires for success. This despite the fact that this person often acknowledges freely their awareness that their ineffectiveness means they’re “Leaving money on the table” and losing their business as a result. The most obvious question to ask would be WHY???

Why Not Indeed…

After spending a fair deal of time pondering this I’ve come to the conclusion that the fault is NOT exclusively that of the entrepreneurs, a degree of blame must be laid at the feet of the developers and engineers that provide these incredible marketing tools.

Most Powerful Online Marketing Tools Are Too Complicated To Use

A well known paradigm of technology development is that all too often engineers develop products without consulting enough, or even at all, with their target audience. At the end of the process they end up with a product that is intuitive and easy enough for THEM to use, but NOT so for anybody else…

I think this may well be the case with many of the marketing tools available online today. Although they’re powerful and effective, and at times even free, they’re engineer-friendly design makes them simply unusable by the vast majority of the population. The fact someone is a great marketer, a driven sales person, and an industrious entrepreneur, is no guarantee that one has the skill sets required to operate a bit of software designed with an engineering audience in mind. Some might say that the exact opposite might be true (think why so few engineers become effective business owners…).

What could be done otherwise

One of the reasons so many people love Apple’s products, despite their technological limitations, poorer features and complete reliance on Apple’s closed marketplace, is because these products don’t require you to learn how to make them work. They simply work for you.

Apple’s products are designed around the core understanding that:

People don’t care about technology. They care about what technology can DO FOR THEM.

Why We’ve Opted For Automation

This truth can be extended just as easily to the world of ecommerce – At the end of the day when presented with the question:

“Do YOU want to increase your revenues by becoming an expert at operating our software, or do you want US to increase your revenues for you?”

9 business owners out of 10 will prefer to simply have their revenues increased (& the 10th is likely to be a “Power User” type with a strong affinity for technology…). This is precisely why we at Treepodia opted to automate as much of our service as possible, and are constantly pursuing new methods for increasing this automation.

We believe wholeheartedly that we serve you better by not burdening you with technobabble you don’t really care about ,and focusing you on what you do care about instead:

Your business results and bottom line revenue.

Now you tell me:
Assuming we GUARANTEE your ROI,
don’t you actually prefer it that way?…

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/firepile/438134633

Images & Video are vital to Marketing your Tourism Business

So, you’re a world weary traveller who has spent the best part of forever trotting the globe and you’ve lucked upon the most idyllic beach in all the world and lo and behold you have just acquired the lease on, what might possibly be the most beautiful little hotel that has ever graced God’s green earth (unless you’re in Florida and it might have a slight brown tinge to it..)

You have worked your fingers to the bone fixing the guttering here, a door hinge there and now you’re relaxing on your favourite chair looking at your hard work in all its resplendent glory, sipping an iced tea and feeling, well…. pretty bloody chuffed with yourself. Now to get some customers…..
You’ve built it, they should come right?
No.

You need to get the word out there and the most obvious and cost effective way is online, there are, as of 2009, 6,767,805,208 people on the internet… you only need a small percentage of them to know who and where you are, and once they see your little gem, they will come flocking!

So, where to start?

1. Build a site and work on your Search Engine Optimisation (S.E.O)

This of course is the most obvious step in the whole process, build a site or if your reading this you may not have the skills to build it yourself so, find a reputable designer in the area and have a chat.

A tip is to have a look at the websites of other hotels in the area, and it’s more likely than not you will find on the bottom of the page the designers contact details. It also helps you get a better idea of how your site could look. If you’re in Bangkok get in touch with www.chachinggroup.com (gratuitous self promotion there) and have a chat.

What you also need to do is think about your keywords. Keywords are one of the many things that Google looks for on your site when people type in search queries. What you want to do is have a think about the words that someone would use to describe your hotel and make sure that the information that you write on your site contains those keywords.

2. PPC and PPM ads

You may have noticed that when you search on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other pages ads come up at the top and on the right of the screen, the same type of ads are also visible as you browse Facebook. These are paid ads that you can purchase to help drive traffic to your site. They’re relatively inexpensive and are targeted towards keywords and demographics that you determine making them highly effective and a worthwhile investment on the whole.

3. Business Marketing via Affiliations

The hotel industry is characterized by the fact that there are literally hundreds of affiliate reservation sites you can list your hotel with. These sites take a small percentage of your booking fee for the promotion they provide your business. Its worth taking a little loss here as they’re working their butts off to market your services. Since you’re getting someone else to do all the hard work for you, it stands to reason they be compensated for it…

Affiliate sites have the added advantage of providing links back to your website, which helps improve your Google ranking, thus placing your website higher in Google’s search lists. Always a good thing.

An additional form of affiliation is with complementary businesses is in your local area. Think whether there are conference centers or large arenas nearby that host events. These can be a great resource for you as they normally attract large out of town crowds that may well need the accommodations you provide. Get on your local event center’s website, have a look at what is coming up, and get in touch with the organisers, you can offer a discount for any of their members or attendees coming to the event.

4. Promote Your Business with Quality Content

In the new online world, “Content is King”. This means you need to think long and hard about what your site is saying to people and how you’re interacting with them.

It’s not enough to say ,hey were a hotel and we have rooms, and we have room service, and we have a mini bar, and we have a shower and on and on. You need to give something to your audience that they won’t find anywhere else, think of something that your demographic is really interested in.

5. Images and Video are Vital to Effective Marketing in the Tourism Industry

Like the fashion industry, hotels have a relatively easy job when comes to providing enticing and alluring images, but that doesn’t mean you can get cocky! Maintaining a high-quality image policy on your site is absolutely essential for your site to appeal to your audience.

You need to show, with images at least, and ideally with videos as well, just how scenic your hotel is. You need to represent that escape that everyone sitting in their office wants. That photos have to convey the joy, relaxation, beauty and comfort that your hotel can give them. A couple of happy-snaps taken by your friend’s-cousin’s-nephew-twice-removed of a bed in a badly lit room, plus one of the pool, will simply not do. Get a professional to do it. Spend the money and get it done right.

If you have even just a little extra in the budget, the biggest recommendation I can offer is to enhance your site with video as well, long slow panning shots of your foyer, cutting to the barman making a cocktail and serving it to a happy smiling couple lazing by the pool on a sunny day, will go even further in capturing your clients’ imaginations.

Nothing can capture the true essence of a holiday like video can, and again spend the money and get it done properly.

10 gazillion hours of YouTube holiday videos can’t be wrong now can they?
People just seem to love those flickery moving images…

6. Manage Your Online Persona and Monitor Mentions of Your Business

You have a facebook page and you have people commenting on it and you’re not answering them…… not good at all.

Your brand has come online offering you the opportunity to have a conversation with your clientèle.

You need to talk to them, you need to represent your brand like you would a person. Think of your online marketing as having a conversation with your customers and potentials. Let the world know who your brand is and be sure to listen and respond to what people have to say or ask about it.

Remember that people are incessantly bombarded with cheesy marketing messages – you need to stand above the rest. The way to do this is to invest in your brand’s personality. The more you invest in explaining to people who you and your business are, the more likely it is that some of the audience will identify with you.

Oscar Wilde once wrote:

‘The only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about’

A truer word has been penned.
Be aware of your brand name mentions. There are a host of free and paid tools available online that can assist you in tracking mentions of your brand name and the most crucial thing to do is react to those mentions.

Everyone enjoys reading praise, unfortunately you’re probably going to read some less enjoyable references as well. Negative postings regarding your hotel need to be dealt with carefully and patiently. Post apologies and offer to make amends. Don’t be argumentative or defensive. A lot of potential customers will be reading your response, so be nice…
Remember to thank people who give you praise, that sort of thing goes a very long way.
This is a list and review of some of those services you can use: http://mashable.com/2008/12/24/free-brand-monitoring-tools

7. Market and Advertise Where Your Potential Clients Hang Out

More and more people are spending a lot of their time reading about, and interacting with others who share their interests online. You need to find out where they are and direct some of your marketing efforts at them. Banners can do this quite effectively, especially if the banner is targeted. Don’t just slap your brand name up and hope for the best, target them. Be sure to include information relating to your audience in your ad, and not just to your offering.

Make sure the site you choose to spend your ad budget with has plenty of traffic. You don’t want to spend good marketing dollars on a forum that has two members who do little more then share pictures of Megan Fox in a bikini. Here too a little research on your part will go a long way to ensuring your money is well spent.

8. Market in Context to The Times

You may have noticed recently that there have been a few planes cancelled throughout Europe due to a pesky cloud that stopped a lot of air traffic, why not use this to your advantage?

Try to use events, both global and local, to create your own marketing advantages. For example:

‘In Jamaica the smoke will help you fly’

Note that a tongue-in-cheek  approach has to cater to your customers’ sense of humor. The line above would do well with the backpacker crowd, but probably less so with a more settled demographic.

It’s worth noting that government agencies often do sponsored promotions for inbound tourism. For example the Thai government is currently advertising in China, Hong Kong and Japan to promote to Thailand after the recent civil problems. This is a bandwagon you want to get in on. Promoting your hotel using the tax money you pay is not only great ROI, it also feels good too. Note that when advertising abroad you should consider translating your marketing materials (copy, banners, ads, etc.) into the local language. Just make sure you can trust the person who is doing the translation for you, you don’t want to have your slogan end up like some of these: http://www.everyjoe.com/articles/top-13-worst-slogan-translations

9. Be different and stand out!

Have a look at your competitors, see what they are doing and then do something else.

Are they all talking about how fluffy their pillows are?
Are they talking about how convenient the shopping is?
Do they boast the coolest pool in town?

That might be fine for them, but what’s different about you?

Make it funny!
Make it interesting!
Describe your hotel from the perspective of  the cat that roams the garden.
Let your customers describe their stays and use that.
Anything, just make it interesting!

Benjamin S Powell is the sales and marketing manager for the Cha-Ching Group – one of Bangkokg’s leading web agencies specializing in servicing Thailand’s booming Tourist Industry. He’s a Web marking enthusiast who blogs about Online Marketing and Advertising.

image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bmanolakos/3958897626

Captico

The Challenges

Let’s be honest. As an ecommerce retailer you really want one thing: People to buy your stuff. It doesn’t matter if you sell a product, a service, or tea-cup pigs, all of your other goals and needs fit under the giant umbrella of getting people to buy your stuff. In an effort to achieve this goal, clients always tell me the same things:

- “I want more traffic to my website.”

- “I want to be listed first on search engine results.”

- “I want people to come back to my site again and again.”

- “I want people to interact with each other on my website.”

The Solutions

It sounds simple, but the truth really is this: If you want repeat visitors and business to your site, make it a place people WANT to come back to! Give them a reason to come, a reason to stay, and great content that is easy to share with their friends! But I won’t leave you with such vague advice. Lets look at practical solutions for getting your site in front of people.

• Search engine optimization (SEO) is a phrase often bandied about by internet marketers, social media experts, and service providers. Basically it is a term used to encompass a variety of techniques used to increase a website’s ranking in search engine results. Using specific keywords in your page titles, urls, content, links, and even in your photos and videos makes your site more visible to the bots that crawl through the web looking for and categorizing content. Building useful information into your site, like how-to guides or tutorials, provides material that ranks well on search engines as people are more inclined to share it with their friends or colleagues – resulting in more links, more traffic, better search engine result listings, and more sales!

• Encouraging your visitors and users to actively engage with your site and each other through product reviews, discussion forums, or even something as simple as enabling comments on your articles or blogs will help with your SEO as well as increase repeat traffic.
• Once you have people active on your site, make it easy for them to share your content with others – use bookmark and link tools to social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, or Digg. These sites are free to set up accounts on and can be used to drive traffic to your site. (Check out these guides for help on Setting up Your Twitter Account and Setting up your Facebook Page) This kind of off-site linking also helps with your SEO campaign.

• Showcase your products or services in an easy to understand and transparent way! Data continues to show that consumers research items online before they buy. “If we look at the success story of any unique product or service that was launched and required a change in consumer behavior, the ones that were successful were those which were able to win customer’s trust and offer a clear value proposition to the customer.” (http://www.technetto.com/blog/e-commerce-in-india/) Video is an excellent way to detail and highlight the features and functionality of your offerings. It is the closest thing to physically picking up and turning over a product like a shopper would do in the store and you can address common questions or misconceptions in your branded environment! Plus video SEO is HUGE, not only encouraging viewers to share with their friends, but also increasing your search engine ranking as video is 50x more likely to show up than text in google search results!

These practical tips will go a long way in increasing your market share. If you feel overwhelmed, don’t be afraid to ask for help! You may have friends or colleagues experienced in social media or who know enough basic SEO to get you started, and there are also great companies out there who can ramp up your business. So pick a task and get out there and sell your stuff!

Guest blogger: Corrie Davidson is the New Media Coordinator at Captico, LLC, a technology strategy firm focused on website development, online marketing solutions, and mobile applications.

One of the interesting facts regarding the evolution of human cognition is that, as a society, our attention span  is dwindling.

Attention spans have shrunk by over 50% in the past decade

According to a Lloyds research tracing the causes of home accidents, attention spans have shrunk from 12 minutes in 1998 , to around 5 minutes in 2008. The Lloyds research states that when asked respondents blamed ‘stress’ (18 percent) and ‘decision overload’ (17 per cent) as the main reasons for poor short-term memory and flagging attention spans.

Product Videos – How long is too long?

The relevance to online videos, of course, is that attention spans matter particularly in terms of determining the length of your product videos. You want to make these videos long enough to deliver all of your pertinent facts, yet short enough to maintain viewers’ interest until the end. The question is, what’s that magical length?

There are two basic stats you might consider when determining your norm:

1. The length of an average commercial
2. The length of an average online video

How have commercials evolved?

In terms of average commercial length, Wikipedia delivered an adept and, in light of the aforementioned dwindiling of attention spans,  predictable answer:

“In the 1950s and 1960s, the average advertisement’s length was one minute. As the years passed, the average length shrank to 30 seconds (and often 10 seconds, depending on the television station’s purchase of ad time)… However, today a majority of advertisements run in 15-second increments (often known as “hooks”).”

In other words, with the progression of time, commercial length has been reduced to about 15 seconds, with a maximum of 30. Sounds (and views) about right.

What’s the length of the average Online Video?

In terms of online video length, the average length is according to ComScore a whopping 3.5 minutes. This figure may be surprising until one realizes that ComScore’s number factors in ALL online videos, including full length television episodes on Hulu, etc.

Less is More – Keep your videos as short as possible

In general, as the saying goes (and for good reason), we say, keep ‘em short and sweet – more along the lines of traditional commercial lengths at most. While video may grab shoppers’ attention, it will likely only hold it for a short time. And remember, not everyone who presses play, will watch your video all the way through.

How Much of a Typical Video Online Is Actually Watched?

At 60 seconds more than half your audience is gone

As the above graph based on a TubeMogul study shows, at the 30 second mark you’ve already lost a third of your audience and after a minute you’ve lost more than half, so try and get all your information in as soon as you can, in the shortest amount of time necessary.

Beyond that, as with all elements of video, you will need to continually do testing to determine if length, is influencing your results (and to what effect), and adjust accordingly.

Image credit: DeaPeaJay