In e-commerce marketing, as everywhere else, there’s always room for improvement. As obvious as this may seem, many marketers seem to have a blind spot when applying this principle to their product videos. It’s as though the effort of producing the initial video content is so great that once it’s done they simply can’t face the thought of going back and improving on it . Of course this behavior pattern makes little impression on Google’s ever-changing algorithm, not to mention the fact that no company operates in a vacuum, and although you might be resting on your video laurels, you can bet your last dollar that your competitors will continue to keep looking for ways stay ahead of the game.
Are Your Product Videos Search Friendly?
Fight the Zombies with AMAZING content – This preview image from a product video generated for Knife Depot uses the zombie apocalypse meme to generate curiosity and clicks
Google has a difficulty analyzing what the actual content of your video is about. You can help it along by adding some textual content to your product video pages. A title, short description and tags go a long way towards enabling correct indexing of your product videos. If you’ve not created and submitted a video site map you’re leaving money on the table.
Assuming you run a blog consider adopting the practice of embedding your product videos in your posts. Blog posts featuring product videos give you and your audience the opportunity to get creative both in terms of how the videos/products are introduced and in terms of the interaction your audience can have with them.
Your blog is also the perfect setting for a wider range of video content – Useful how-tos, unboxing videos, humorous skits relating to your industry, and review interviews are all video content to consider for your blog.
Engage Your Visitors
Not caring about the content you put out there is the biggest mistake you can make. Fifty-word posts and dull poorly produced images and video will get you nowhere.
Content must be INTERESTING. Put yourself in your visitors’ shoes. Would you find your videos helpful or annoying? Are they useful, educational, inspirational, or solely promotional. Is there quality such that you feel comfortable displaying them? If your videos bore you, they’ll be sure to bore your website’s audience too.
No less important than the initial interest you’re able to create is how you capitalize on it and request an interaction from your audience. Obviously the best case scenario is to be able to generate a sale, but there are other interactions that can generate value for your business. Getting people to share your content is free advertising. Soliciting reviews and feedback will give you access to market data that would be costly to source otherwise.
Re-purpose Your Ecommerce Video Content
Any quality content you create will require investment. It stands to reason that you’ll want to make the most of that investment. Any quality material you’ve crafted can and should be syndicated via as many relevant channels as possible – blog posts, newsletters, Facebook page and Twitter feed, etc. etc. etc. Video can be further syndicated via the multitude of video platforms out there. The obvious target is of course Youtube, but newer platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Vine are all interesting opportunities, and have an advantage insofar as being associated with fairly well defined audiences.
To summarize when your content is already there, you don’t need to constantly wrack your brain trying to develop new ideas. It’s a better investment of your time to tweak and use / re-use material you’ve already invested in.
Successful e-commerce marketing is all about creating engaging content. Cost effective e-commerce marketing is about finding creative ways to syndicate and re-purpose it.
