Integrated Branding Blog | Movéo

Hosting videos on your Site vs. YouTube

Many marketers are already aware of the benefit of using video in B2B marketing. But once you’ve decided on this strategy, you still have to decide where you’d like to host the videos - your own Web site or YouTube. There are pros and cons to each, which I explain below.

The benefits of hosting videos on your site are that the user will be spending time on your domain and that links to the video will empower your domain and not YouTube.com. When a user is on your site, you have the added benefit of promoting your brand. YouTube does allow you to customize your channel, but control is limited.

Some companies may not have the time, bandwidth or resources, however, to implement videos on their site. There is a level of programming involved and you will have to embed some type of video player. If the technical issues are too much of an obstacle, you might strongly consider the YouTube route.

Creating a YouTube Channel and uploading videos is very simple and can be accomplished in a matter of minutes. You can also optimize your videos by giving them appropriate titles and tagging each one with related keywords.

It’s important to remember that YouTube is currently the second biggest search engine in the U.S. as far as volume of searches. Using YouTube allows your videos to be found by users who are searching within YouTube.com, as well as those who are using Google or Bing.

B2B Customer Loyalty

Brand loyalty is often associated with B2C companies, although it can be argued that customer retention is just as important (if not more) in the B2B realm.

In the past, we've discussed some of the differences between B2B and B2C in the buying cycle. More often than not, a B2B purchase is much more involved because of technical aspects of the product, higher price and multiple people involved in the decision process. Consider this and that the market for B2B products and services are smaller and you see that retaining customers is a critical component in B2B marketing.

We've recently conducted two studies on this topic. Read the results in our latest article, The Million Dollar Question: How Loyal are Your Customers?

B2B Videos for Search are More Important than Ever

Image courtesy of Search Engine Land

As search engines and social media continue to evolve, it has become more important than ever for B2B companies to use videos for search.

What does this have to do with search engines?
In today’s world, which is heavily influenced by social media, search engines return results that include Web pages, blogs, products, images, videos, maps, local businesses and more. It’s called social, universal or blended search. Because of this, it’s important for companies to create content in these ways so that they might have more visibility. Not every form of content is appropriate for every company, however, so it’s important to find which are relevant.

Why is video generally a good option for content for B2B companies?
This one’s pretty simple, if you think about it. In many cases a B2B purchase can be very technical and research intensive. Videos make it easier to explain content and give the user a break from having to read an extremely long document. In addition, it gives the B2B company a chance to show their product in action. This does not in any way mean that written content shouldn’t be available as well, just that having the extra option can make the process much easier for you and a potential client.

So, whether you create a YouTube channel or host the videos on your existing site, make sure to consider this option if you are a B2B company. Not only do you give the user what they want, but your videos have a chance to increase your brand visibility in search results.

Just because your email was not opened does not mean it was not effective

For years now, many of us e-marketers have worked under the assumption that an unopened email means your subscriber is disengaged and uninterested-- until now. A recent study by Alchemy Worx has revealed that unopened email communications have measurable impact on brand awareness and can lead to increased conversion activity (sales) across other communication channels.

How you ask? Through the "Nudge Effect."

What is the Nudge Effect and how does it work?

The Nudge Effect is a way of influencing people's behavior without telling them exactly what to do. Alchemy Worx puts it this way,: "when sorting their emails, your subscribers will see your brand impression first in the 'from' column and in the subject line. What you need to do is provide the information in the subject line that encourages the subscriber to retain the information you've provided. It's a subtle yet powerful opportunity that makes even an unopened email a source of potential success across all your channels."

The Alchemy Worx study showed how emails featuring a company's brand name and a subject line that communicates the email's contents and how it benefits the user (key point here being you need to communicate the benefits) can influence a purchase decision even when the recipient fails to open the email. They were able to correlate spikes over time in purchases from recipients who received emails but did not open them over those who received no emails at all.

Image courtesy of Alchemy Worx

So, shed those frustrations with unopened emails and low click rates and rest assured that even when your subscribers don’t open your email, its presence in their inbox leads to a tangible impact on brand awareness and sales via online and other channels.

Read the complete Alchemy Worx article here: Dela Quist on the Nudge Effect

Nonprofit social media marketing on Facebook

Because of the valiant deeds that many non-profits perform, it's no surprise that people can have a strong emotional bond with a particular organization that may have helped one of their friends or family members in the past. Because of this affinity, it's reasonable to believe that a non-profit can successfully find friends to follow them on Facebook.

Just think about the number of people involved with a non-profit organization. It's very likely that many of them have Facebook accounts, simply considering the number of people that use this platform.

It is free to setup a Facebook fan page. It just takes someone to manage it and make sure that content is being provided. Posting event updates and pictures to your page is a great way for a non-profit organization to start.

A brand roundtable discussion for Amazon Basics

Image courtesy of FastCompany

Our branding guru, Kevin Randall, recently assembled a roundtable of branding experts to share thoughts on Amazon's newest venture - Amazon Basics. Kevin's colleagues included professors from Stanford, Harvard, MIT and Northwestern, along with strategists from Interbrand. The full list is below:

Jennifer Aaker - Professor of Marketing at Stanford's Graduate School of Business

David Martin - President of Interbrand New York

John Quelch - Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School

Mark Ritson - Associate Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan School of Management

Scott Davis - Senior Partner at Prophet

Alex Goldfayn - Technology Tailor

Tim Calkins - Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management

Jez Frampton - Group CEO of Interbrand

Martin Straw - former President of Interbrand

Scott Miller - Chairman Zyman/Core Strategy Group

Eric Joachimsthaler - CEO Vivaldi Partners

Get details about the group's thoughts by reading Kevin's article on Fast Company.

Integrated search engine marketing campaigns

Pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) marketing can benefit from each other when integrated. If you are currently running campaigns in both channels, or considering doing so, it is important to know how the two can feed off of each other to create a successful integrated search engine marketing campaign.

SEO is a process, just like PPC. One difference, however, is that PPC campaigns generally draw traffic to your site immediately, whereas an SEO effort can take some time. One way to jump start your SEO keyword research is to test out keywords on particular pages using PPC to see which produce the most conversions. This can shave of weeks or even months of time off of an SEO campaign.

One way to discover how relevant your PPC work has been is to take a look at the Quality Score (in Google Adwords) of each of your keywords. If a particular Quality Score is low, it often means that there is a low level of relevance somewhere in your mix of keyword, ad and landing page. All three of these usually need to have a high level of relevance to guarantee a successful campaign. In some cases, you might consider breaking up the Adgroups, but you can also use SEO tactics to optimize the ad and/or landing page to correlate with the keyword.

Each campaign is unique. But using an integrated approach can make sure your campaign is efficient in a smaller amount of time.

Customer service monitoring online

image courtesy of Patrick Thibodeau

Online discussions have revolutionized how businesses must serve their current and potential customers. Through savvy tools, companies can monitor what people are saying about their brand, which puts them in a position to have customer service representatives react.

One such tool is a product from Salesforce appropritately named Salesforce for Twitter. An interesting function of this program allows you to automatically turn Twitter mentions (@ replies that include your Twitter handle) into customer service tickets.

Rich Cherecwich explains this well in an article on iMedia Connection: "For example, if a subscriber had a problem with their Comcast service, they could simply tweet at a Comcast account, and that tweet would be turned into an active ticket, similar to phoning a corporate call center."

If you've used any of these products or have others to recommend, we'd love to hear about it.

Additional online monitoring/organization tools worth looking at:

Social Mention

Google Alerts

Seesmic or TweetDeck

Twitter Search

The neuromarketing debate

Image courtesy of FastCompany

In short, neuromarketing is the science of studying how our brains react to marketing messaging. Some marketers are now measuring our brain activity for insight into how and why we act as consumers.

Neuromarketing certainly has its flaws, but so does traditional research. In a recent article, titled Neuromarketing Hope and Hype: 5 Brands Conducting Brain Research, Kevin Randall says, "It is commonly accepted that traditional market research is flawed because consumers don't know, can't articulate, or will even lie in a focus group about their purchase motivations."

Some critics find the research to be bogus, while other opponents fear that marketers are doing to much to try to control how we act. It's just the beginning of debate that is sure to grow as research continues. What are your thoughts on the issue?

More articles by Kevin Randall:

This Five-Letter Word Is Key to Marketing Success: B-R-A-N-D

Does Branding Pay Off for Colleges? Harvard Thinks So.

3 social media marketing tools that track your brand

As a company, it's important to know what others are saying about your brand. Thankfully, there are tools to help us keep track of what is being said and who is saying it. Here are three tools to help discover these online conversations:

socialmention
This site allows you to create alerts, just like Google Alerts. You'll receive e-mails of the latest mentions of your company on blogs, bookmarks, comments, images, events, news, videos, audio and Q&A.

TweetDeck
Download TweetDeck and you can keep track and organize conversation on Twitter and Facebook that involve your brand. You can also save searches and see who is replying to your Tweets. Best of all, it's all in one window that you can customize.

Keotag
Search for tags that mention your brand (or any keyword). It's simple to use - just type in the keyword you'd like to search and then click on the engine you'd like to search through. There are a number of engines available including Technorati, del.icio.us, MSN, Digg, Reddit, Yahoo! and YouTube.

Know of any others? Feel free to mention them in the comments.