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Jul. 24, 2008 at 6:15pm Eastern by Grant Crowell
Video As A Search Marketing Tool For SMBs
Video is becoming an important part of local search marketing campaigns, and this week's SMX Local Mobile conference features talking about how small and medium businesses can use video to be more effective with their online marketing. Video solutions providers to these panels are Jared Simon, VP of Business Development of TurnHere, and Anupam Gupta, President and CEO of Mixpo. I caught up with Gupta earlier this week and asked for a preview of what he'll be presenting at the conference.
To summarize, Mixpo is a turnkey video marketing solution geared specifically for SMBs (small-to-medium businesses), which combines a self-service platform including hosting, an interactive video player, and online editing that allows clients to simply and quickly repurpose their video.
One of the notable SEO benefits: Multiple videos can be developed from a single original client video, allowing for an easier assembly of video content applied for both search optimization and video advertising.
"This is an exciting time for online video advertising. More advertising dollars and marketing budgets are moving towards video. Big brands and big advertisers jumped into video first. Now there are millions of small brands and advertisers that are just starting to get exposed to online video," says Anupam.
He explains that SMBs are in an ideal position to take advantage of video marketing and video SEO. "Video is a powerful mechanism for communicating what your business is all about," says Anupam. "Video drives more qualified leads and conversions, all in a way that is measurable and where we can show accountability. Measurability and accountability is what made search marketing successful, and that's what SMBs and SMB advertisers need to be all about to succeed."
Adding to the benefits of video are interactivity technologies for direct customer engagement. In the top-right hand corner of each Mixpo video is an icon, which allows the viewer to choose from a series of calls-to-action any time during video play.
"We're already seeing a lot of interest from the SMB industry. Video is in the early stages where we're going to see a lot of ramp in even just the next number of months to come," says Anupam.
He explains that Mixpo has two constituents: The actual advertiser (client) who wants to be more effective in their online marketing, and the aggregator, who already has a relationship with these customers. Mixpo refers to "aggregators" as interactive agencies, directories, publishers, etc.
"What we hear from agencies - including firms involved in search marketing and SEO - is that they need more effective tools and capabilities to serve their clients in a better way, and show them how they can drive measurable results," says Anupam. "What we hear from advertisers, is what they've been traditionally doing online hasn't necessarily worked, or they can't really measure the effectiveness of all of their marketing programs."
Both of these constituents do understand search as a measurement tool, "and really love the ability where they can measure things on their own" says Anupam. "Everything Mixpo provides is backed by a very solid measurement platform," which allows for optimization of both performance and visibility online.
As for Mixpo's business model, it's rather simple: cost-effective opportunities for SMB advertisers, and sharing advertising revenue with their aggregator partners, whatever their sharing model may be. "Their success is our success," says Anupam.
As for a sneak preview into his presentation, Anupam shared with me that people attending his session can expect to learn about Mixpo's recent partnership activities and how they will benefit search marketers involved, or looking to get involved, in the local video space. He also mentioned that their own solution is a good complement to fellow video speaker TurnHere, which concentrates more on the creative agency side of video production compared to Mixpo's focus on their self-service platform. Mixpo does offer their own creative agency services, but Anupam looks at TurnHere as a technology and marketing ally for the emerging local video space, and not really a competitor.
Grant Crowell is the CEO of Grantastic Designs, a web design and search solutions provider specializing in new media strategies for B2B and B2C companies.
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By Grant Crowell
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