This week on the Blogosphere we’ll review four blog posts that focus on how more and more marketers are prioritizing online video marketing, both on their company websites and in the realm of social media. We’ll also take a look at the conversation surrounding the future of social media, particularly in its relationship to search marketing.
- With social media campaigns like Old Spice’s viral YouTube campaign this past week and marketers prioritizing video in their budgets over search optimization and mobile, it appears that video will continually grow in prominence.
- One expert predicts a shift in which search becomes more social and where social becomes more search-oriented.
- While skeptics predicted Facebook would fall from grace, the social network has only grown by the millions, reaching 500 million users this week, despite being ranked worst in customer satisfaction among businesses.
Old Spice Campaign Generated 35 Million Video Views in Seven Days
ClickZ | Jack Marshall | 7-19-10
In just a week, Old Spice’s video campaign on YouTube amassed 35.7 million individual views. The campaign consisted of 183 videos uploaded to Old Spice’s YouTube channel, in which their mascot (a guy, donning just a towel) responded to questions from user submissions via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Led by agency Widen + Kennedy, the campaign lasted only three days, with a 35-person team working 12 hours a day. PRWeek issued an article this week announcing that Old Spice has seen a direct correlation between their social media campaign and sales, with a 107% increase in Old Spice Body Wash sales so far.
Just one week since the campaign’s launch, Old Spice has seen exponential results across the Web’s most popular social networks:
YouTube:
- The Old Spice YouTube channel jumped in the lead last week as the most viewed channel on the network and became the third-ranked channel for highest number of subscriptions (ever) under YouTube’s “Sponsor” category.
- Their channel currently has more than 92 million total upload views.
- Just the final video response accumulated nearly 2.5 million views and more than 5,800 comments.
Twitter:
- Old Spice’s Twitter account increased its followers by more than double, from 32,000 to 94,000, in about five days.
- The company’s Twitter account was included in more than 2,300 Twitter lists.
Facebook:
- Old Spice also uploaded their video replies to their official Facebook Page, some of which have already received approximately 2,000 “likes.”
- Their Facebook Page has grown to more than 630,000 “likes.”
Companies Throw Their Weight Behind Online Video
eMarketer | Paul Verna | 7-20-10
Several recent studies demonstrate the rapid adoption of online video marketing by U.S. marketers either currently or as part of their upcoming agendas, as well as in their budget priorities. In a survey by Multichannel Merchant, 46% of U.S. multichannel retailers reported using video when asked to specify rich media features they’re currently using, making it the top-ranked media feature in the survey. Forty-two percent stated that they plan to incorporate video into their marketing efforts within the next year. Forrester Research’s study found that out of the top 50 U.S. online retailers, 68% provided video on their websites in 2009, as compared to just 18% in 2008. Among the Fortune 500 companies that maintain public blogs, 31% used video blogging in 2009, compared to 21% in 2008, according to the Society for New Communications Research. When asked by Ado-ology where social and traditional media ranked in their 2010 marketing budgets, almost 27% of U.S. marketing executives said they plan to increase their online video budgets for podcasts and viral clips, 41% said their budgets will remain the same, 5.5% said they planned to decrease their budgets and 27% said that they don’t use video at all. The post’s author points out that this survey highlights video as a higher ranking budget priority among U.S. marketing executives in 2010 than search optimization and mobile.
- With the growing accessibility to video anytime and anywhere (i.e. laptops, mobile phones and tablets), consumer expectations for online video content will surely continue to increase. Many businesses have already caught onto this trend and are positioning themselves to meet these growing demands.
- Survey results show video to be a higher 2010 budget priority among U.S. marketing executives than search optimization and mobile.
Search, social marketing begin to converge
BtoB Magazine | Christopher Hosford | 7-14-10
In a Q&A session, “Hands On: Search” spoke with Steve Rubel of Edelman Digital about the merging of social media and search marketing. Rubel said that he expects search to become much more social, as well as for social to become more search-oriented. He points out that Google’s already demonstrating this shift, in that search queries now render real time Web results. We’re already seeing a major overlap between social media and search, Rubel explains, with features like Facebook enabling users to search their friends’ content and Google offering users with accounts the option of filtering their searches by social results, by way of the Google address book. He also anticipates an upcoming partnership between Facebook and Microsoft or Yahoo to further their reach into search, and for Google to capitalize on social as a way to increase their search volume and ads. Rubel explains that the challenge this poses for the B2B marketer is in finding a balance between personal and professional, claiming that over time, we’ll see a shift from business decisions made from a personal standpoint to decisions heavily impacted by a company’s social networking sites.
- Rubel suggests that over time, we’ll begin to see search becoming increasingly social and social moving to become more search-focused.
- He predicts that we’ll see an eventual shift in business decisions from being based in personal opinion to being more focused on the collective customer voice on a company’s social networks.
Facebook Among Web’s Worst in Customer Satisfaction [SURVEY]
Mashable | Samuel Axon | 7-21-10
Source: money.cnn.com
Facebook might have reached 500 million users this week, yet according to the 2010 American Customer Survey Index (led by ForeSeeResults), the social media giant is considered one of the worst in customer satisfaction among other businesses in its category, earning just 64 out of 100 points in a survey assessing customer satisfaction. Among other major social networks, only MySpace ranked lower–by one point. Facebook also earned a lower score than all major news websites included in the survey. Google, one of the other key players in the survey, earned 80 points, followed by Wikipedia and Bing with a score of 77, Yahoo with 76 points and YouTube at 73 points. Despite its prominence in the social media space, Twitter was left off the list of businesses since many of the network’s users frequent Twitter through third party applications, rendering customer opinion (of Twitter specifically) extremely difficult to measure. Larry Freed, CEO of ForeSee Results, attributes constant website changes, increasing use of advertising and privacy issues to Facebook’s low score. Regardless of user complaints and low ratings, Facebook hasn’t experienced a major user-base fallout by any means.
- In a recent customer satisfaction survey, Facebook ranked lowest in customer satisfaction among all other businesses in its category, with a score of 68 out of 100 possible points.
- Despite user dissatisfaction, Facebook hasn’t suffered a hit to their user base, which passed the 500 million mark this week.
What Kind of Impact Can Online Video Marketing Have for the B2B Marketer?
We hope that you’ve enjoyed reading our weekly summary and that you’ll share any feedback and questions you might have with us. To get the weekly summary, or any other Optify updates, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or subscribe to our RSS feed. We’ve listed a few questions below that we’d like to hear your thoughts on:
- It’s a commonly held belief that it’s nearly impossible to directly increase sales through social media marketing efforts. While the Old Spice YouTube campaign is an extreme (and B2C) counterexample to this opinion, the brand did see a visible, immediate increase in sales from their social media campaign. What are some lessons we can take away from their campaign, specifically from a B2B marketing standpoint?
- Can video marketing have the same kind of prominence among B2B marketers as it does for B2C?
