"This survey clearly demonstrates that businesses of all sizes consider online video to be an integral part of their marketing mix," said Bud Rosenthal, CEO of TurnHere. "Online video is the number one priority among all online marketing tools for 2010, and that finding directly ties into the high satisfaction levels for video implementation and its return on investment (ROI)."

- Online video is the top marketing priority for 2010, edging out both email and search marketing

- Companies are experimenting across a wide range of video marketing: 57% have created branded video; 40% have used video for product or service demos, and 37% for customer or employee testimonials

- Branded content is the preferred online video type with the highest use among all video formats, the highest overall satisfaction levels and the highest likelihood of future use

- The top reasons for video include: branding (60%), exposure on sites like YouTube (54.7%), and viral content (48%)

- Professionally produced content was overwhelmingly favored over user generated

- 83.5% of respondents are already using online video in their marketing efforts in one form or another

- 90.7% of respondents are likely or highly likely to use online video in their marketing efforts in the next 12 months

The survey was conducted throughout the third quarter of 2009, and included respondents from Fortune 500 companies, as well as regional brands, PR and traditional agencies. Surveyed companies had annual marketing budgets ranging from $100,000 to $5 million.TurnHere’s report is available here.

The report can be highlighted by this finding alone: Fortune 500 companies spend $51 million per day in aggregate on 88,792 keywords–yet only 20.82% rank in the top 100 of natural search results.

The company did a similar study in November of 2008 but looked at a much smaller subset of keywords. The findings were broken out based on company sector using the NAICS (North American Industry Classification System). While the findings of the report spoke to the overall lack of real success for these biggest of the big firms there were some winners including MGM Mirage (accommodations & food services); Whirlpool (manufacturing); Viacom (information); Amazon (retail trade) and IBM (professional, scientific & technical services).

Seth Besmertnik, Conductor CEO said,

“It remains alarming that although we included branded keywords in the study for the Fortune 500, more than the lion’s share are not showing up anywhere in search results for their most important keywords, including their own names.”

Some other highlights (or low lights depending on your point of view)

• Only 1.41% of the domains surveyed show significant number of their terms in the top results

• 10.14% of Fortune 500 companies studied showed mid-to-strong presence for their most advertised keywords, and 41.69% of Fortune 500 companies have low to mid presence. Visibility decreased as search queries grew in length

• Fortune 500 companies did worse as keyword searches became more complex and longer.

So what’s the takeaway here? If you have ever worked on one of these campaigns from the agency side you are probably all too well aware that the pace of change and implementation for big companies is often slow or non-existent. In addition, there are so many people / departments that have some ownership stake in the company site that it can take a committee meeting to decide the next time the committee meets to set a committee meeting. These big companies are still not moving at Internet speed and getting hurt in the process.

Also, with a significant push toward developing in house teams at many companies, not just the Fortune 500’s, the question begs if this is working?  It’s not fair at all to make any blanket statements based on this study but it is interesting to consider the implications for those more nimble and flexible than the big boys. What better place than the search engines can a smaller player both look bigger and, in essence, clean the clock of the industry behemoths? Goliath meet David and look out for that slingshot!

Comments

Big Brands Clueless On Site Search

When you see something with “Seven Deadly Sins” in the title hit the inbox, and the old Bayesian filter doesn’t toss it out with extreme prejudice, it could be an entertaining read. That seems to be the vibe Vivisimo wanted to generate with its look at The Seven Deadly Sins of Site Search.

Our phone chat with Rebecca touched on how major brand name companies in the Fortune 500, presumably with the resources to do site search properly, have made a pig’s breakfast of it instead. “Site visitors have a search expectation when they reach a site,” she said.

What they are getting can vary well away from the expectations they have based on their experience with general search engines. Without search, a site like the one for Yum! Brands loses the opportunity for a conversion activity, Rebecca said.

Sites that don’t do e-commerce have been poor site search performers. Whether it’s the apathy of a ConocoPhillips, America’s number two oil refinery, delivering woeful search results, or the complexity of too many search options (hi Archer Daniels Midland), regular followers of the search industry would be aghast at what passes for search technology.

Imagine what the typical Internet user thinks when faced with Bank of America’s search, which requires the person to know exactly what question they want to ask. No simple keyword searching at BoA. The answer that comes back may be accurate, as in a response to ‘accounts for minors’, but not very useful if the answer concerns custodial accounts rather than a basic savings account.

Cadillac’s site search is a lesson in egoism, Rebecca noted, with a lengthy set of instructions about Boolean operators displayed. The visitor only gets to see that if he or she stumbles upon the search link on Cadillac.com (it’s on the bottom left of the page.)

The potential for brand confusion exists if a company, in this case United Technologies Corporation, uses a vendor to provide search results. At UTC, queries redirect to utc.mondosearch.com, a URL that doesn’t reflect the company’s true identity.

Some of these search no-nos could be the result of a controlling corporate mindset. A company may be too wedded to its idea of how people should navigate their sites without considering how those same people actually want to do so.

Rebecca said these companies have ten seconds to engage the visitor before they back out and hit a Google or a Yahoo to search for what they want to find. Schering-Plough’s Claritin displays all kinds of nice visual elements on its microsite. Those same elements vanish when one performs a search.

Fortune 500 companies shouldn’t let their visitors disappear like Claritin’s elements do. They can afford to enable enterprise search for their web presence, and ought to do so at the most optimal level they can build or license for it.

The full top six in that sector are:

• #1 – Amazon (272 overall)
• #2 – IAC/InterActiveCorp (Gary’s parent boss) (313)
• #3 – Google (323)
• #4 – Yahoo (412)
• #5 – eBay (458)
• #6 – Sabre Holdings (683)

Who the hell is Sabre?

Microsoft is #48 overall, and #1 in the computer software sector, while Time Warner is #40 and #1 in the Entertainment sector.

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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