Marketingeasy

I work as online marketeer for GAPBuster WorldWide, the World’s Leading Customer Experience Management Agency.

The company is present in more than 32 countries and work for over 100 retail clients. Web presence is the most important isolated fact on our marketing efforts.

It’s a competitive area where companies as GAPbuster crosses path with free stuff, coupons and surveys companies, so ranking as number one is a really hard task.

But as Jack Trout and Al Ries wrote, ‘if you cannot be the first one in a category, set up a new category you can be first one’, and that is exactly what we did.

In addition to classic search engine optimization, we worked on video optimization with the “Mystery Shopping” tag driving all our efforts.

We focused on becoming the number one ranking amongst the result in the video search. What’s a big deal if you analyse the numbers.

Nearly 75% of US Internet users watched on average, 158 minutes of online video in May/2007. Google sites topped the monthly rankings with both the most unique video streamers and the most videos streamed, according to the comScore Video Metrix report for May 2007.

• ONE in five online Americans views videos over the Internet on any given day,
• Young adults watch in greater numbers and often turn to humorous clips
• On a typical day, 19 per cent of US Internet adults watch some form of video.

2008 is forecast to be a mass-market benchmark, with more than half (53.3%) of the US population - 155.2 million people - watching video online, according to eMarketer. This year, that proportion is expected to reach 47.0%.

And as a matter of fact the competition is much smaller, let’s take again the comparison searching at Google using the tag - “Mystery Shopping”:

Google
- 27,000,000
Image Search
- 478,000
Video
- 986

It’s not just drag and drop a video, you still need to optimize it, the video still needs to be creative/content driven, but your chances are highly increased to be first one result in a busy category.

The opportunities are unlimited, you can use to advertise your small business, you can use to post a video resume for a new job or you can use to improve your online reputation, etc.,

I’ll give some more tips about optimizing videos, but below you can find the basics:

• Add a descriptive title to your video.

When users search for a topic on Google Video, they will find your content easier if you include the subject of your video in your title. For example, a video title such as “SS-59 submarine” may work better for a video than simply including “submarine.”

• Provide a clear description of your video.

Your “metadata” field clearly describes the content of your video, while also highlighting any characteristics that distinguish your content from your competition. The metadata you enter will appear above your video when users play it on Google Video. If your metadata attracts users’ attention they will more likely watch the entire video, and visit your website.
Here’s an example of good metadata:
“This is a four minute news feature on the nuclear threat and the significance of the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior by French agents in 1985. It features interviews with former New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange, Guardian journalist Paul Brown, and Greenpeace Executive Director Gerd Leipold.”

• Choose the most appropriate genre for your video.

• Provide a URL for your website

It seems logical, but I still see corporate videos without any (written/spoken) call to action or url, it’s just simple, write down your contact (email, url, telephone) if you want to be found.

By the way, that’s the link to the Google Search with GAPBuster Mystery Shopping ranking nr.1.

Cheers
Lucio Dias Ribeiro