This week the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) published the MMA Mobile Video Lexical Framework defining terminology associated with mobile, video communication advertising. The MMA identified three distinct mobile video advertising units:

• Pre/Mid/Post-Roll Linear Video Ad Unit – a mobile video ad that runs before, during or after video content.
• Interstitial Video Ad Unit – a mobile video ad that runs between non-video content and occupies a majority of the device screen.
• Value Exchange Video Ad Unit - a mobile video ad that runs on user intuition and is viewed to completion in exchange for a digital reward such as points, goods, coins, coupons, or pay wall-gated content that would otherwise be earned or purchased.

These definitions were created to help the advertising industry gain direction, uniformity, and better serve clients within the fast-growing mobile video marketplace.  The MMA’s new guidelines do not differentiate between smartphones and tablet devices.

In response to the rapid growth of mobile video communications and advertising, Forrester issued a new report into how users interact with mobile devices, how tablet ads should differ from mobile phone ads, how to capitalize on best practices to increase conversion rates and ROI of tablet and mobile ads, and building brand loyalty and reputation through engaging immersive video content and experience.

Mobile video with advertising integration is not new, but it is it getting very hot because the proliferation of tablets and mobile smart phones and customer demand for unique, cool, and fun experiences.

States Anne Schelle, CEO of Acta Wireless:

“Even in its infancy, mobile video offers such [sic] a valuable investment for marketers.  Mobile video is at a tipping point and now is the time for advertisers to make a strong commitment to follow their customers as they migrate from PC to mobile.”

Other useful factoids related to mobile video marketing and mobile devices include:

• Tablets are used primarily in the home and may be shared among multiple users.
• Almost one-third of US adults with a laptop, smartphone, and tablet multitask while watching television.
• American tablet users surf the Web, research products, and watch online videos.
• Smartphones are less likely to be shared.  Users access this mobile device on the go and in the home.

Forrester noted that the most effective video marketers take advantage of the mobile arena by creating “ immersive experiences” tailored to the “touchscreen interaction” and rely on robust analytics and reporting to decipher the most prevalent mobile devices being used.

The most effective mobile marketing campaigns are ones designed specifically for a mobile user experience.   This means simple designs that can be accessed quickly.  Here are five tips to keep in mind when developing mobile content:

1. Develop a direct navigation and limit the number of page links to 7 or fewer
2. Layouts should be simple and to the point
3. Create concise and succinct content
4. Features need to be “swipe” friendly
5. Minimize page loads

Any company, organization, or person wanting to reach and engage their audience in real time cannot ignore the prevalence of mobile device communication and demand by consumers for engaging, interactive, and immersive content.

Our team is excited by MMA’s findings and the new Forrester Report because the Flimp Media video communications platform provides the solutions to effective mobile video and advertising engagement, tracking, and follow up prescribed above.    Give us a call and see how we can assist!

Sales lead generation is a cornerstone of marketing.  The Twitter social media network is testing “lead generation” ad units because generating leads drives purchases and revenues is what advertisers want.

In a perfect world, marketing works to generate leads that are handed off to the sales team.  The sales team, in turn, qualifies the leads and converts prospects to customers. A sales team’s arsenal uses an array of tactics including: cold calls, webinars, trade shows, and social media outreach to funnel leads through into the sales cycle.  The new darling of lead generation marketing is social media.

According to Jim Keenan, 78.6 percent of sales professionals use social media.  Social media marketers and sellers are 23 percent more successful than peers relying on traditional methods.  From a time management standpoint, sales professionals spend between 5 to 25 percent of their time using social media to generate leads and sales.  Today in the new media environment, sellers leverage social media for numerous tasks to save time and money, reach a wider, targeted audience, scale marketing efforts quickly, and obtain tangible leads.  These tasks include:

• Networking
• Prospecting
• Research
• Referral Building
• Closing

Among sales professionals, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are the most popular social media networks, and YouTube is fast on their heels.

Social media simplifies the art of connecting with people efficiently and cost effectively.  However, engaging in social media is not a one-way street of just taking and not giving.   In fact, customers are very savvy discerning what is a simple sales pitch and being offered something of tangible value along with a sales pitch. The goal of successful marketers and sales teams is to share value-added content that educates the customer and helps them understand the value proposition of your product or service.  Flimp refers to this as ‘value-added customer engagement’, and it often more important than just “getting a lead” or an “introduction.

A proven method to provide value-added engagement with customers is to use video communications as part of your sales process.  Video marketing, or as some like to call it video communications, being included as part of your sales marketing strategy results in increased customer engagement and social media relevancy as a trusted resource.  In fact, sales video generates the best ROI and is a top sales optimizer, according to many reports.

An example of how to easily execute an effective social media video communications campaign is the use of video postcards.

The portable nature of video postcards naturally aligns with social media.  Here is an example of a video postcard that was shared across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter:

And, video postcards without analytics and tracking to see how the performed are worthless. FLIMP video marketing software and its easy-to-use platform provide any sales team with the essential element of real time lead generation tracking and updating.  One feature of the Flimp video communication platform is that as viewers interact with the video postcard, real-time prompts are sent to sales person empowering them to contact prospects immediately, and maybe even close the sale.

Email is a mainstay of B2B marketing campaigns.  B to B Magazine recently published Email Marketing:  An Established Channel Evolves, which is a snapshot into how B2B marketers create and deploy email marketing campaigns.  In the B2B segment, the top purposes of email campaigns are as follows:

1. Sales Lead Generation or Customer Acquisition (29 percent)
2. Brand Awareness (18 percent)
3. Customer Retention (15 percent)

Forty percent cited the desire to improve the content quality of email messaging as a top goal for 2013.  And to measure the success of their improved messaging, delivery, and content quality marketers rely on standard email metrics to ascertain a campaign’s effectiveness including opens and clicks. The click through rate is an especially pertinent element to gauge the success of all types of email marketing campaigns.

FLIMP Media Video Solutions works with many clients who find that their email metrics of opens, clicks, and click through rate dramatically increases when using video to improve the content quality of their email messaging.   Video communications can generate up to a 90 percent conversion lift for B2B organizations.  In fact, compared to static or HTML emails, video email marketing nets a 4 to 7 times higher viewer response rate and click through rate.

For many B2B organizations, video postcards offer a simple and effective way to facilitate email marketing and email communications.  Video postcards provide clear and engaging calls to action that contribute to higher response and conversion rates.

Finally, one of the most commonly asked questions in regard to email marketing is “what day is the best day to send my email”? The below chart is based on Who’s Mailing What’s monitored email activity by day and industry vertical for April 2013:

CopyPress published a study where 51.9 percent of marketers ranked corporate video communications as a top return on investment (ROI) for content marketing.  This isn’t such a surprise, considering audio/visual media has become the most engaging content delivery method in the digital environment.

In fact, video is increasingly becoming a cornerstone to content marketing.  Uberflip’s The State of Digital Content found that video communications has grown 3.7 times in the past three years.  In February 2010, a paltry 6 percent were actively using website video marketing.  In 2013, 22 percent are engaged with internet video marketing.

So why aren’t more marketers utilizing video content in their campaigns?

It’s simple, really…

While marketers raved about the value of working with video, they also cited this content form as the most difficult to create.

Compared to other content formats, corporate video production is said to require more upfront planning. There is script development, location scouting, talent selection, shooting the video, and post-production editing. This can be a daunting undertaking for the already stretched-too-thin marketer…but it doesn’t have to be.

FlimpAgency specializes in making it easy for marketing and sales professionals to create affordable, engaging and informative video content that drives demand and lead generation.

Our friendly production managers walk you through the entire process, making it an enjoyable and rewarding experience from script development to the final approval. You won’t believe how easy it is to create compelling business video content for your company!

Take a look at some of our past work by clicking on the links below and feel free to reach out if you have any upcoming projects that could benefit from a compelling and persuasive video message.

• Animated Motion Graphics Videos
• On-Location Live Action Videos
• Spokesperson Videos
• Presentation / Moving Image Videos

FlimpAgency excels at creating robust web video marketing content.

The word mobile connotes “on the go.”  It is hard to go anywhere today and not see someone holding a mobile device, interacting with it in public.

As people access content everywhere and anywhere, some content is primarily consumed in the home.  According to the 7^th annual “Emerging Video Services” survey published by Leichtman Research Group, 63 percent of adults said they watch video on their mobile phone.  Tablet users are even more apt to view video at home – 89 percent watch on their iPad, tablet or eReader.

Mobile devices are ubiquitous and a second-screen experience.  Over the past 18 months, marketing industry publications increasingly referenced how viewers interact with video content, especially during primetime television and major events (such as the Super Bowl or the Oscars/Academy Awards).  At the end of 2012, mobile video reached 41 million people and 41 percent of viewers watched mobile video in January 2013.  According to Gfk, Millennials (born between 1977-1994) spend 23 percent of their video viewing time watching content on tablets, while Gen Xers (born between 1965-1976) spend 16 percent.  In total, viewers watch 3.5 percent of all video content on a tablet, with 4.5 percent of total video content viewed on a smartphone.

Consumers watch mobile video content more at home because they use Wi-Fi to connect to the web, which does not affect their smart phone data plan consumption and ultimately saves them money.  Frequent access to data heavy video content on Hulu, YouTube, and ESPN, for example, is a data drain and often causes mobile users to exceed their smart device carrier’s monthly, data caps.  High-traffic multi media sites are concerned that data caps may impede the consumption of on-the-go content.  And as multi-media companies continue to integrate video content as a way to engage viewers and increase online video advertising dollars, their concerns are well founded.  The Wall Street Journal reported that ESPN is exploring data-cost sharing partnership with wireless carriers as a way to minimize customers exceeding data caps and to encourage them to continue to access content without the fear of exceeding their monthly data plan.  The benefit to ESPN would be increased viewer access and potentially higher advertising revenues associated with this increased viewership.  The financial benefits to all parties and the FCC regulatory hurdles have yet to be fully analyzed and vetted, but the concept is engaging all sides of the issue.

The importance of the above is that web video marketers and video marketing companies must be cognizant of viewer habits and tailor their video marketing solutions accordingly.  Consumers will still interact with short-form video communication and content outside the home, but they may not if video email, video postcards, and general video communications is not succinct and to the points, i.e. the video is not too much of drain on the client’s wireless data plan.

Regardless of the above, people are using mobile devices like never before to view content and video. According to Forrester’s “2013 Mobile Trends for Marketers” the mobile marketplace in 2013 already includes

• 1 million apps
• 150 million tablets
• 1 billion smartphones

With mobile’s scale and reach established, Forrester notes that immediacy and ubiquity are the two forces that drive the mobile arena.  This means that marketers must make mobile a strategic priority as part of their outreach and communication marketing, and using video communications is an essential part of that strategy.

The Center for Industry Research said the sale of smartphones and tablets will exceed the number of desktop computers sold.  Additionally, Kleiner Perkins Caulield & Byers predicts that there will be more than 2 billion smartphones and 3 billion tablets in use by 2015.

For 2013, video communications and video emails that cannot be watched effectively on smartphones or tablets represent a missed opportunity.  And, FLIMP Media ensures that video content is device agnostic so all video communications are watched on any mobile device or desktop environment.

Recognizing the important role of mobile devices in marketing communications, the Flimp media team is finalizing our next generation platform to accommodate all forms of video communication dissemination via video email, video postcards, video landing pages, social media, and across all mobile devices.  In the weeks ahead we’ll be sharing the features of our next generation video platform.

Stay tuned!

Flimp Media, along with along with ReelSEO and the Web Video Marketing Council have partnered to field an in-depth trends report study to better understand how and to what extent marketing professionals are using video for outbound and inbound marketing and communications. Survey Participants will receive a free advance copy of the 2013 survey and video marketing trends report.  The 2013 Video Marketing Survey wants to know how marketers communicate with digital video.  To take the survey, please click the link below:

Take the 2013 Online Video Marketing Survey

Marketers understand the value of using video as an effective tool to engage audiences, brand products and services, and create calls to action for clients.  In the 2012 Online Video Marketing Survey Report, 81 percent of marketers indicated they used digital video in their marketing programs.

The 2013 Video Marketing Survey examines topics such as:

• The types of video marketing content organizations are producing
• What video platforms and hosting services are being used
• The proliferation of videos shared across social media networks
• Specific video optimization and SEO strategies marketers rely on
• Best practices for deploying digital video

The 2013 Online Video Marketing Survey only takes a few minutes to complete!  Participants will receive an advanced copy of the survey report being published Flimp Media, ReelSEO and the Web Video Marketing later this summer.

The “Engaging Employees with Video” 2013 free report, coauthored by Ragan Communications and Ignite Technologies, found that 72 percent of communicators plan to increase the use of video to communicate with employees.  Ninety percent of employee communications professionals said that video played an “important” or “somewhat important” role in their organization.  Additionally, the study noted that audiovisual content is one of the most meaningful ways to communicate with remote employees.

Forty-two percent of videos created for internal communications are produced on an “as needed” basis. This is especially common in smaller organizations.  However, 50 percent of organizations are creating and distributing video content on a quarterly basis and 49 percent of large organizations produce video content on a monthly basis.

Seventy-three percent of communicators have in-house video production teams.  Many organizations will create “do it yourself” (DIY) videos for short-form content, and rely on outside professional video producers for longer-form videos.  The study also found that fewer than 6 percent of organizations enable employees outside of marketing-communications teams the tools to create content for internal communications.

The average production budget for employee videos ranges from $5,000 to $10,000.  Roughly 80 percent of organizations earmark $50,000 or less towards their annual video production budget.  Organizations using video on a frequent basis have annual video budgets of $100,000 or greater.

Internal video content ranges from webcasts to live-streamed events.  Webcasts can include a mixture of video content and slides or just slideshows with an audio track.  Examples of employee video communications include: CEO messages; employee introductions; training; featured departments; product announcements; and marketing messages.

Fifty-one percent of communicators measure the effectiveness of their video communications using video tracking software and 76 percent noted that audiovisual content improved employee communications.  Fifty percent of large organizations said that video was “very important to their employee communications”  and nine of ten respondents said that video engages employees.  Some key video metrics used by employee communicators included video views, time spent watching video, the number of times the video was shared across the organization, and employee comments.  Thirty-one percent of communicators said they do not measure the effectiveness of employee video campaigns due to not liking the analytics tools available or not having access to video analytics.

Technical issues plague internal communicators.  Three in ten encounter slow video download times and 51 percent have dealt with video buffering issues due to not setting up their video communications systems with a reliable vendor or internal programming issues.

Communicators listed the following three factors as keys to successful employee video communication campaigns:

1. Gaining positive employee feedback
2. Having a good video experience without technical difficulties
3. Making sure all employees can view the video

Most video content created for employee communications is viewed on personal computers.  Mobile video optimization is more prevalent in larger organizations with more than 5,000 employees. However, tablet and smartphone viewing is very limited at only 42 percent and 35 percent respectively.

FLIMP Media Video Solutions offers the industry leading, end-to-end video communications platform and service for companies and organizations to communicate and analyze engagement with employees effectively.

White Paper: “Engaging Employees with Video” by Ignite Technoligies and Ragan is available by clicking HERE or this URL:

http://www.ragan.com/Main/EngagingEmployeeswithVideoWhitePaperDownload.aspx

Silverpop, an email service provider (ESP), recently published the 2013 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study.  The study analyzed email content distributed between Q1 – Q4 2012.  The average email open rate in 2012 was 19.7 percent, while click-throughs averaged 3.6 percent.  Silverpop calculated both the open rate and the click-through rate by dividing the number of unique opens by the total number of delivered emails and then multiplied by 100 to display a percentage.

Flimp Media finds that engagement from video emails is typically 4 to 7 times higher than static email content.  Following Silverpop’s methodology, our team analyzed Flimp video emails distributed during the same Q1 – Q4 2012 period.  The Flimp video email open rate was 22.84 percent while the click-through rate was 6.8 percent.   Flimp video emails generated an open rate 1.15 times higher and a click-through rate 2 times higher than email averages detailed in the Silverpop report.  Thus, the data confirmed that video emails performed much better than static email without video content.

Beyond audience engagement, Silverpop also looked at the average email message size.  Message size is determined by the amount of HTML code and images incorporated into an email message.  As a best practice, email marketing messages should be at or under 50KB to load quickly for the recipient.  Silverpop found the average 2012 email was 18.3KB.  Flimp video emails average between 12KB to 14KB – significantly under both the industry average and industry recommended file size.  This is another category where Flimp video emails outperform static emails.

Silverpop is one of the 35+ ESPs the Flimp Platform supports and clients can select to distribute their video email messages seamlessly.

Digital video is an essential part of of marketing communications strategies and campaigns for B2B sales lead generation across all online marketing, social media and other online channels.  According to The Adobe 2013 video conversion playbook, engagement with the presentation of companies’ products and services can generate up to 90 percent conversion uplift when video content is used than when it is not used.  And in the Adobe 2012 Digital Marketing Survey, 61 percent of marketers cited online video as the top optimizer to convert sales.

For marketers who have not used video in direct sales or direct communications, the process may be daunting.  The Content Marketing Institute identified eight key steps for creating and deploying B2B video content to assist.  These steps make the process manageable, straightforward and cover the following:

1. Execution – producing video content
2. Distribution – selecting what channels to use for distributing videos
3. Encouragement – using SEO and other tools to tell an audience to watch your video
4. Viral – creating content that people not only want to share, but make it easy for viewers to pass the video along
5. Optimization – incorporating simple calls to action to convert viewers into customers
6. Maximization – making video content a key component of the marketing mix
7. Analyzing – using data to determine a video’s ROI, especially in relation to sales lead generation
8. Do it again – web video marketing should not be a “one and done” exercise

In a nutshell, the Content Marketing Institute summarized how organizations could accomplish all of the above using the Flimp Platform for video communications and how they work with FlimpAgency to create engaging, professional and cost effective video content.  Flimp Media especially agreed with point number 2 above – determining how and where to distribute content.  It is imperative that B2B organizations consider how their audiences may be viewing video content (personal computers, mobile phones, tablets) and where their audiences will receive their video marketing campaigns (the office, at home, on the road).

Clients often ask Flimp Media why they can’t just post their video assets on the free-to-use YouTube video sharing site, assuming YouTube will be the engine that will enable sales leads and revenue to pour into their company.  To paraphrase what the Content Marketing Institute said:

YouTube is a great free option to put your video content in front of potentially hundreds of millions of viewers; it seems like a no-brainer, but there are limitations. First, many businesses do not permit their employees to access the YouTube video sharing site on a corporate network and thus they may never see it.  Second, we find it essential that to increase ROI you must own and manage your conversion funnel, and tailoring methods to capture, track and follow up on leads are critical video marketing campaign success, particularly if you’re trying to drive sales and define a high-quality pipeline of prospects. Unfortunately, YouTube does not provide the essential tracking and analytic tools to execute comprehensive marketing and B2B online video marketing strategies.

Considering Adobe’s and the Content Marketing  Institute’s great advice that both, B2B marketers need to focus on business-centric distribution tools (such as Flimp)  to host and distribute video content.  Our Flimp UK team put together the below video case study that we think you will find beneficial because it summarizes a standard B2B video marketing campaign.

Marketers understand the key role that social media networks play as a venue for content sharing.  Video is one of the most popular content formats distributed to social media sites.

For video content, most marketers will post the video first to the YouTube video sharing site and then create links to share on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  This approach enables organizations to gain video SEO benefits from the YouTube/Google search engines.  Additionally, since a YouTube web link is easy to create, it simplifies the distribution process.  One link can be posted across multiple social media sites.

However, posting video content directly to YouTube instead of uploading to Facebook and LinkedIn may mitigate both organic and viral reach.  According to research published by Socialbakers, videos uploaded directly to Facebook have an organic reach of 10.3 percent compared to videos shared via a YouTube web link, which only net an organic reach of 8.9 percent.”

Viral video engagement is even higher when the video has been posted directly to Facebook:  2.2 percent compared to a measly 0.2 percent share of YouTube video links.

As MarketingCharts noted, fans interact with video content in a similar capacity regardless of how the content has been shared.  Approximately three-quarters of an organization’s Facebook fans will “like” video content whether the video is uploaded directly to the social media site or shared through a pasted web link.

From a best practice standpoint, it behooves an organization to take video content and directly post to Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Vimeo, etc..  Keep in mind that Facebook and LinkedIn are authenticated web sites.  This means that users need to be signed in to see and access content (and it is one reason why videos should be cross-uploaded to video sharing sites).

One final benefit of uploading video content directly to each social media site:  the visual appearance of the videos is much sharper than just sharing a YouTube link.