Michael Boland, Senior Analyst, The Kelsey Group is moderating this panel. He gives an intro on why video is important for local and important for small businesses. Video is to integrate the branding capabilities with the internet (direct response). There are many yellow page sites that are integrating video with business profiles. There is a lot to talk about here and each will present...
Frank Rocco, VP Marketing & Sales, EZ Show, Inc. is first up. He shows a demo of a commercial video on the web. It shows how its hard to make videos on the web, but his company makes it easy with a "Do it yourself" system. Honestly, this guy is doing a demo of his product, which you can watch at ezshowstudio.com. It looks like iMovie to me but what do I know. It allows you to add ads within a web page easily, like youtube but more customizable and branded for your site. They also give you tracking solutions for advertisers.
Boland asks him some questions more about the software.
Andrew Bennett, Director of Strategy, TurnHere is next up. They are different in that they only provide original content. They use a "first person documentary style." He showed a case study for yellowpages.com, citysearch.com and so on. The challenge is to create a highly scalable and economical merchant video profile product for IYPs to offer to advertisers. TurnHere's solution is to develop effective local business video templates and recruit and train filmmakers across the country. Status is TurnHere has produced thousands of local business videos across the US. He then shows a video demo of an ad for a local business. The video really did justice to this guy's business, as opposed to what text could do. He showed a Google Maps result that contains a video in one of the tabs for the business in Google Local. It shows up in Google web search. He ended early due to technical issues with the computer.
Peter Goldstein, President, Mixpo is next up. They are not about production, they are more of a video online marketing platform. So they don't compete with the others on the panel. Videos are all about conversions. While they do some production, it is more about analytics for them. 57% of consumers moved closer to a transaction after watching video. He then shows a video of how 'wow' it works on the site. He then shows a demo of a video ad spot on a news site and a video used on a site for a doctor to describe what they do. He then shows an example of Go Financial Solutions, how they use video for people on hold on the phone to go through some FAQs for those who wait while they get a loan. More demos... For every video they host, they create video enabled landing pages with text, so they are SEO friendly and they also push them out to the search engines. He then shows some stats in a real demo of the backend system. It is an impressive dashboard, shows you some really cool data from impressions, conversions, ad percent views, we see also a conversion based on what point of the video the user is at. He then shows a real time demo on how to make a video...
Steve Espinosa, Director of Product Development and Management, eLocal Listing, LLC. You got your video, but now get them plugged in to universal search.
He shows an example of universal search on Google, Yahoo, etc. He adds, the videos will be found in the local results, so do it now. You are 2.2x more likely to get a click from a SERP if you have a a sponsored result and local listing, but if you have a video plus local your 3.2x more likely.
Google TV Ads is in beta now. They are betaing it and love it. Big exposure for small business, because you pay for people who see your ad not the video spot. Google AdWords featuring video there (Bourne Ultimatum).
Creating your video: - Video length differs for search industry, so pay attention to what people want in your industry. - Calls not clicks, so display your phone number - Ready for big leagues, make sure it is ready for TV - Put a twist on your videos, make it viral not commercial
Optimizing Your Video: - File type, do it in SWFs - Do not use Active X Controls inside movies - Video Sitemaps (use Google's video sitemaps) - Host your own video files - Drive traffic to your site and not theirs - Branding Branding Branding - Build a page for each video you produce
Reporting & Testing - Google Website Optimizer is a good tool - Google Analytics helps - Video Too Long? - Video Placement
