Three Tips for Better Retail Video Syndication
CHICAGO, IL—June 14, 2011
This is a re-post of an article originally published in Retail Merchandiser. You can find the original article here.
I've spent much time in recent years advocating that retailers more rapidly adopt online video merchandising practices in much the same way other business verticals such as automotive and real estate have. The stats to support incorporating online video are endless, but one such example is, "retail site visitors who view video stay two minutes longer on average and are 64% more likely to purchase than other site visitors. (Comscore, August 2010)."
It's great to see that the ship might finally be sailing. The e-tailing group's "10th Annual Merchant Survey" found that 75% of retailers rated video as a valuable merchandising feature in Q1 2011, which is up from 68% in Q1 2010 and 58% in Q1 2009.
However, in a recent April eMarketer report, Paul Verma points out that, "video (still) remains an underutilized asset among retailers," pointing to shortcomings in vSEO and syndication in general. So it seems, while many retailers are now making progress integrating video into their site, they're not making as much progress beyond their own site. Here are some initial steps you can take to improve the utilization and distribution of product videos beyond your own borders:
1. Look into real-time video solutions. One problem retailers face is how often their product selections and specifications (such as price) change. If you've syndicated thousands of product videos in the form of .flv files (hard-coded files), you know that taking them down or changing and re-deploying them can be a labor-intensive pain in the neck. This could help explain why so many top retailers have no video coming up at all in searches.
The bad news is that you're stuck with this hard file format for vSEO so far as YouTube/Google and some other video destination sites go. (Therefore, you may want to stick to optimizing your more static products.) The good news is you can use "real-time video" solutions most other places. Data-driven real-time video means when you change the information on a product in your database, that change is reflected immediately in your video (wherever the video resides/plays) because this type of video is instantly created "on the fly" when it's called. So, when you syndicate this type of product video, you know it's always accurate.
2. Push your product video inventory through your display ads. Another step can be exporting your video merchandising strategy into your media strategy. Promoting your store imagery with the millions of online impressions you buy is good, but so is using those impressions to move product. Many rich media video ad display units now allow you to embed hundreds of product videos in a single ad unit, allowing consumers to browse and shop your merchandise in the form of video without leaving the site they're on. They can browse merchandise within the banner by product type, price…anything you designate. It's like having a virtual store within a banner.
3. Deploy your product videos on Facebook en-masse. You most likely already know how to manually upload product video into your Facebook pages. The problem word here is "manual." There are many services that can inexpensively create an "inventory tab" for you, then populate it with all your product listings and video and keep it updated for you. Real time video is preferable here as well to keep product-updating costs down, but this can be done with hard file videos as well.
When you do this, make sure you're also leveraging the benefits of what a social network provides. As an example, give customers "polling" capabilities…allow them to post multiple product videos and have their friends vote on what they should buy. You obviously want to maximize involvement with your product videos, and this is nice step toward that end.
It's great to see that the ship might finally be sailing. The e-tailing group's "10th Annual Merchant Survey" found that 75% of retailers rated video as a valuable merchandising feature in Q1 2011, which is up from 68% in Q1 2010 and 58% in Q1 2009.
However, in a recent April eMarketer report, Paul Verma points out that, "video (still) remains an underutilized asset among retailers," pointing to shortcomings in vSEO and syndication in general. So it seems, while many retailers are now making progress integrating video into their site, they're not making as much progress beyond their own site. Here are some initial steps you can take to improve the utilization and distribution of product videos beyond your own borders:
1. Look into real-time video solutions. One problem retailers face is how often their product selections and specifications (such as price) change. If you've syndicated thousands of product videos in the form of .flv files (hard-coded files), you know that taking them down or changing and re-deploying them can be a labor-intensive pain in the neck. This could help explain why so many top retailers have no video coming up at all in searches.
The bad news is that you're stuck with this hard file format for vSEO so far as YouTube/Google and some other video destination sites go. (Therefore, you may want to stick to optimizing your more static products.) The good news is you can use "real-time video" solutions most other places. Data-driven real-time video means when you change the information on a product in your database, that change is reflected immediately in your video (wherever the video resides/plays) because this type of video is instantly created "on the fly" when it's called. So, when you syndicate this type of product video, you know it's always accurate.
2. Push your product video inventory through your display ads. Another step can be exporting your video merchandising strategy into your media strategy. Promoting your store imagery with the millions of online impressions you buy is good, but so is using those impressions to move product. Many rich media video ad display units now allow you to embed hundreds of product videos in a single ad unit, allowing consumers to browse and shop your merchandise in the form of video without leaving the site they're on. They can browse merchandise within the banner by product type, price…anything you designate. It's like having a virtual store within a banner.
3. Deploy your product videos on Facebook en-masse. You most likely already know how to manually upload product video into your Facebook pages. The problem word here is "manual." There are many services that can inexpensively create an "inventory tab" for you, then populate it with all your product listings and video and keep it updated for you. Real time video is preferable here as well to keep product-updating costs down, but this can be done with hard file videos as well.
When you do this, make sure you're also leveraging the benefits of what a social network provides. As an example, give customers "polling" capabilities…allow them to post multiple product videos and have their friends vote on what they should buy. You obviously want to maximize involvement with your product videos, and this is nice step toward that end.
Contact
Contact: Kirk Davis
Phone Number: (312) 589-6102
Email: pressinquiries@liquidusmedia.com
