Thursday, October 9, 2014

Time to Create a Video Marketing Strategy?

Marketing statistics are showing the potential power of online video in terms of audience, engagement and response, but successful video marketing requires a careful strategy. A recent MarketingProfs article by Michael Litt, CEO of video marketing platform Vidyard, comes to the aid of video neophytes, suggesting five basic steps for achieving video marketing goals. Step No. 1 is to decide what your video content seeks to accomplish for the brand, including defining the audience, its needs and desired added value at the outset. Step No. 2 moves on to selecting video story topics (questions from the target audience are one starting point) and then the type of video (webinar, how-to, leader interview, product demo, customer testimonials, case studies, etc.) that fits with the story-telling. Step. No. 3 is to assess resources and budget and clearly assign responsibility for video creative and content. Whether the video is put together by an in-house team or outsourced to an agency, don't neglect key stakeholder feedback during the process. Next, decide where the video will reside on your website and direct customers and prospects there. Note that YouTube is a great distribution channel but it serves competitors and distractions, too, so make sure you have links to your site within SEO-optimized YouTube descriptions and a destination on your site where prospects can learn more. Finally, measure results by setting up metrics-gathering from video platform and distribution, including attention span and drop-off rates, click-through rates and video consumption patterns. For more detail, go to http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2014/26187/five-steps-to-creating-a-video-marketing-strategy

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

How B2B Can Succeed With Native Advertising

Native advertising has big fans in consumer online marketing, and business-to-business marketers are being urged to take the plunge. B2B strategists who resist embracing native ads after disappointing results from traditional banners and pop-ups should consider these statistics provided in a recent MarketingProfs article by Helen Grimshaw: 52% of people who click on native ads have purchase intent, compared with only 34% for banner ads; 70% want to learn about products through content rather than traditional advertising; and 75% of publishers already offer some type of native advertising. Just to be clear, native advertising is a form of paid media that seamlessly integrates with a site to add value to the user experience. So native ads work best, Grimshaw advises, if the B2B campaign masters two strategic elements: placement and relevancy. As an example of successful placement, Grimshaw cites Relendex, a secured peer-to-peer lending company, which created co-branded online pages with Property Week magazine, a commercial property publication with a large audience of lenders and borrowers. The partner pages used semantic ad targeting technology to serve up educational links to Relendex's site. Grimshaw's example of smart relevancy comes from Delta Airline's TechOps division, a full-service aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) company. TechOps got the word out that it offered MRO services for any airline, not just Delta, by placing native ads with Flightglobal, an online news and information provider for the aviation and aerospace industries. The campaign used semantic search technology to create links between Flightglobal's articles and Delta TechOps's related content. For more detail on results, read http://www.marketingprofs.com/opinions/2014/26145/why-b2b-marketers-need-to-embrace-native-advertising