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#secret shopper Ireland
haaswinther30 · 1 year
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On-line Mystery Shopper At Appen
In Northern Ireland, the mystery shopping strategy has been used by the Housing Rights Service to enable private tenants to collect information about the highly variable ranges and forms of charges charged by property brokers. The resulting report was shared broadly with policy makers and one end result has been an investigation into the problem by Trading Standards. In 2011, the UK Cabinet Office extended its Supplier Feedback Service to include a ‘mystery shopper’ service. secret shopper Members of the general public and suppliers can use the service to boost points or considerations regarding public procurement. Once a ticket has been dealt with, the employees member closes the ticket so you understand the difficulty has been completed. Mystery Shopper has available for instant project an inspection of the customer support of any Wal-Mart, CVS Pharmacy, Walgreen, Target or Local Grocery Chains in your space. WHEN you concentrate on going undercover, turning into a spy or a cop may spring to mind - but if you want all the thrill however none of the hazard, possibly becoming a mystery shopper is the job for you. Our mystery shopping staff can let you know if they are as a lot as scratch. Pat Keogh formulated the mystery shopping project and schedule of works in conjunction with our shopper. Staff coaching is one other reasonably priced method of constructing your operations slicker and extra customer-focused. With reputations on the line, all bosses should take steps to make sure they have a realistic picture of how their company actually runs. There’s no mystery to why successful businesses are going undercover. According to the commerce organisation for mystery shopping companies , there are approximately 50,000 mystery shopping trips carried out every month in the UK. When I actually have had a query, the staff members have been fast to reply. I like the number of duties and the payments are related quantities to other mystery shopping corporations. Nothing matters greater than the standard of your buyer expertise. Mystery shopping includes using trained consumers to undertake duties and situations and measure the performance of employees in assembly these wants. This might vary from a name to a contact centre to enquire about issues with service, or a visit to retailer to investigate a few new product or service. Give your opinion quickly on every second you share with us, from reserving to arrival, together with your boarding, the services in our VIP lounges and the trip itself. Mystery shopping is known by a number of phrases similar to secret shopper, take a look at purchaser, or area agent. How we determine threat and take actions to ensure monetary stability. Moroney offered his earlier enterprise, software program firm Similarity Systems, to US-based Informatica in a money deal value almost $55 million in 2006. The majority are employed in its Dublin headquarters, the place the company handles its primary software growth and information evaluation. More than 5,000 readers have already pitched in to maintain free entry to The Journal. Neighbourhood retailer MACE Rathvilly has been awarded one of many brand’s most prestigious accolades after being named recipient of the 2013 MACE Customer Service Award. MaxDiff is used to identify the relative significance of various elements, or the relative appeal of different product features that can assist companies make higher knowledgeable selections. Hybrid mystery shopping is a fantastic method to assess the complete customer journey throughout all spheres of your corporation to higher understand the customer’s total expertise from begin to end. A sturdy on-line presence is essential to the success of your corporation in the digital age. Most folks carry their phones all over the place, search for companies nearby, and have a glance at online critiques that can either make or break your business image. That means looking at first contact with your business out of your potential customer’s perspective. Are phone calls dealt with immediately in a professional means, even in case you are with a client? Don’t overlook too, that aftersales care is so necessary for encouraging repeat enterprise.
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xasha777 · 14 days
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In the year 2424, the aisles of ordinary grocery stores had become the runways for the latest fashions in bioluminescent wearables. It was at the pinnacle of this trend that a young student from the Royal College of Science for Ireland (RCSI) made an astonishing breakthrough.
Luminara, as she was fittingly named, was a brilliant biotech engineer specializing in genetic modifications for aesthetics. She had discovered a way to splice genes from bioluminescent marine organisms into the DNA of fruit, creating edibles that glowed with a soft light. Her innovation was not only stunning but also sustainable, providing a source of ambient light with zero energy cost.
One evening, while the orange glow of Dublin's sunset bathed the city, Luminara ventured into the neighborhood market wearing her latest creation—a delicate, lace-draped dress interwoven with living fibers that pulsed with a warm, ethereal light. It was her final project, a synthesis of nature and technology, set to be presented at the annual RCSI Symposium.
In her hands, she cradled a papaya, her personal favorite from the "Illumifruit" collection. It was split open, revealing a soft inner glow that cast an enchanting light onto her face, highlighting her features with a golden hue. The sight was surreal; amidst the mundane setting of produce aisles, Luminara appeared as if part of a sci-fi tableau, a vision from a future where fashion, food, and science converged in harmony.
But this was no ordinary papaya. Inside its glowing flesh was a repository of nanobots designed to nourish and protect the body from environmental harm. This was Luminara's secret project, one she had not even disclosed to her mentors at the RCSI. The bots were activated by a special signal—a melody that Luminara could hum, encoded into the very DNA of the fruit.
As she walked through the aisles, her presence drew the gazes of other shoppers, their eyes reflecting the soft light emanating from her dress and the fruit in her hands. She hummed the activation melody quietly, and the nanobots stirred within the papaya, their microscopic circuits coming to life.
It was at this moment that a sudden power outage plunged the store into darkness. Shouts and gasps filled the air, but Luminara remained calm. The papaya in her hand glowed brighter, and the nanobots, now fully activated, began to emanate from the fruit, swirling around her in a luminescent dance. They spread out into the store, attaching to the grid and, with their collective energy, restored light to the building. It was a temporary fix, but enough to awe and calm the once-panicking crowd.
News of the incident spread quickly, and by the time of the Symposium, Luminara was the talk of the town. The RCSI was abuzz with excitement as she presented her "Illumifruit" and demonstrated the potential of her nanobots. Her work promised a future where blackouts were mere inconveniences, and the beauty of science was visible to the naked eye.
Luminara's innovation marked a turning point in how people viewed the integration of technology and biology. It wasn't just about utility; it was about creating something magical, something that could inspire awe and wonder in the daily lives of people.
The Royal College of Science for Ireland had always been a cradle of innovation, but with Luminara's breakthrough, it became a beacon of a new era—an era where the boundaries between organic and synthetic, darkness and light, were blurred in the most beautiful of ways.
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w35h5trdg · 3 years
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Except they are not entirely alone for they share the house
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Caribbean Citizenship Goals: The Reason Why Dominica Passport is the Best?
In case one review the greatest ranking citizenship programs in regards to several key standards like very easy application process, affordability, strict due persistance checks, no individual job interview, no taking a trip or residency needs, and so on. Dominica ensures to succeed in all one-fourths.
Dominica the Gold Mine, for Citizenship Shoppers!
What are the Qualifications Standards? · Applicant must be actually of 18 years as well as over. · Well-maintained criminal record. · Unstained service credibility and reputation. · Affirmation of livelihoods. · Favorable credit rating. · Exceptional health and perfect medical record. The applicant is actually no longer demanded to provide personal recommendations or even audited monetary document. Though its own nothing at all astonishing, yet it performs create documents effortless!
Along with Dominica passport, you come to-.
· Travel to as many as 110 countries (variable, according to the authorities plans). One can even stay in UK for 6 months yearly and 90 days every 6 months in Schengen States. Dominican Republic passport promotes visa on arrival to Malaysia, Ireland, Singapore, Hong Kong as well as Turkey.
· Best means to acquire visa to U.S.A. as well as Canada, a lot of passports are refuted the accessibility to these nations!
· One may purchase Dominican Republic passport starting from USD 100,000 which is actually the lowest expense any plan offers, theoretically that is actually the price of lavish sports car! Though numerous hurricane-ravaged nations offered lesser expenses consisting of St Kitts as well as Nevis, but their plans more than as well as Dominica remains still very most very competitive and also budget-friendly! 
· Enjoy Dominica's Tax obligation unit that excuses its people develop paying tax on overseas income, wide range, presents, inheritance and so on · Total discretion. Candidates information is actually not disclosed to any sort of 3rd party, in fact it's prohibited. This is actually a crucial factor to consider for the nationals whose residence countries perform certainly not permit twin citizenship.
· The funds produced by means of the Dominica CBI are actually used for the social and also financial developmental and also corrective jobs.
What are actually the Possibilities of getting a Function Refused? According to the rule, Authorities of Dominica has the authorization to decline an app without illustration, but opportunities of the occurring are actually minimal. Apart from that inaccurate info can easily get your request rejected. The application stands up invalidated if the candidate or even any of the family members featured is actually contaminated along with any sort of infectious ailment that may cause wellness threats for the general public, or even if the applicant or family is actually associated with a recurring criminal examination or imprisonment surpassing 6 months.
Those who might imperil the image of Dominica, or even whose previous requests have actually been actually rejected by the countries which have authorized the visa free contract with Dominica can not secure the nationality. Those candidates requesting the nationality of Dominica by means of representatives who are certainly not accredited and also licensed are certainly not simply placing their relevant information at risk however likewise receiving scammed! Realize that certified representatives do certainly not seek their charge beforehand.
Secret Variables for Long Term Investors to Know Before Using! · A candidate is actually certainly not called for to renounce his/her previous nationality either throughout the method or even after. Dominica makes it possible for double citizenship as well as maintains your identification personal, even to your house country.
· Husband or wife and monetarily reliant kids (as much as 28 years) as well as moms and dads (growing old 55 years and also above) can be consisted of in the treatment.
· A candidate can make a shared financial investment in a singular property building with a minimal private addition of USD 200,000.
· The applicant is certainly not called for to go to or reside in Dominican Republic just before, during or even after the use processing. Though you are actually enabled to see or even live in the nation, however it's absolutely not a commitment unlike the majority of countries.
· English is the official language of the country and therefore all paperwork is actually performed in English. Browse this site for  Dominica Citizenship  Investment https://www.dominicacitizenship.com/.
· Merely authorities approved allowed representatives as well as marketers are actually permitted to provide the function and also help in information.
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Together with a number of various other nations in the Caribbean, Dominica has actually been a second residence to as many as 2000 capitalists coming from all over the planet, and the amount is actually merely however boosting. The Dominica Nationality by Investment Plan is actually extremely prominent and also among the best prosperous programs in the world.
Exactly how to Obtain Dominica Citizenship by Financial Investment? There are two lawful means to get the nationality of Dominica. 1. Donation/ Payment to the Government Fund, the repayment starts from DOLLAR 100,000. 2. Purchase real property approved by the Authorities, the investment begins with DOLLAR 200,000.
Additional charges include administration and procedural costs and as a result of persistance expenses for the applicant and also each dependent in both options. If you go with property, the ailment is actually to keep the property building for at the very least 3 years though, you may resell it after 5 years.
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sheepmonkey3 · 2 years
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London Seo Agency
However, if there is not an URL or landing page optimised for a certain keyword there is subsequent to no opportunity that this will generate any targeted traffic organically. Search Engine Optimisation has gone by means of a radical alter over the last ten years. Techniques and techniques that would have been employed to raise Organic Search visibility even a few years ago no-longer drive Search engine marketing benefits. In reality, “grey” or “black hat” practices can lead to penalisation from Google, really decreasing how visible a domain is by means of Google. As such, Organic Search is no longer a stand-alone discipline, but with the right balance, you can drastically impact your website’s rankings in reasonable timeframes. We solve these issues though operating with you to make an outstanding tactic that brings additional leads, customers, and sales. It really is a specialist ability, separate from national or international Search engine marketing. There are no shortages of regional Search engine marketing rewards, particularly if you are a business enterprise that delivers goods and solutions to the surrounding location. The primary benefit is that a good nearby Search engine optimization tactic will strengthen your on line visibility. Making it less complicated for paying shoppers to come across far more about who you are and how you can service them. Cube Digital has been supplying the full variety of digital services – Search, PPC, Neighborhood, and approach due to the fact 2007 to shoppers across the UK and Ireland.
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You don't have to be primarily based in an certain town to be capable to successfully do nearby Search engine marketing for that region. Enterprises who invest over the lengthy term in local Search engine marketing will save cash, get extra company and grow into far more stable and sustainable companies. It's a specialist area of Seo that requires extremely a distinctive approach to national or international Search engine marketing. Nearby Seo can be the distinction among a tsunami of nearby shoppers and a telephone that in no way rings.
A Local Search Engine Optimisation Company Exactly Where Every Single Client Starts Ranking Within30
We can professionally optimise and manage your Google Advertisements as properly as delivering Organic Seo services London and Surrey wide, for maximum final results across each paid and natural search. This requires functioning on a host of on-web page points that matter to Google, like how immediately your internet pages download, how effectively optimised your content material is and the format of your code. The other region is trust, which is connected with off-web page items that get you noticed. Almost everything we do complies with Google greatest practice for the finest attainable rankings and least likelihood of penalties.
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And as a bonus, because you will currently be hugely visible with a superior Seo tactic, you will not have to devote as significantly on paid advertising. Citations are essential because they collectively enable to legitimize data about your enterprise by giving consistent NAP signals . For this explanation, citations can aid your enterprise rank and can also assistance you seem a lot more prominently on search engines when people today search for solutions that you present. First items very first, we’ll function with you to get to know your small business as close as possible, inside and out. Who is your target audience, how do you want to expand your enterprise operations, and how would you define your service? And we’ll use this info to start building your regional Search engine marketing approach.
The Secret To Development? Add People Today
Thus, it is fundamental to have a noticeable presence on social media. The point of that assessment is to determine why your web page is languishing in the backwaters of cyberspace. And what will have to have to be done to provide it to the promised land of web page 1. Items we look for incorporate the loading speed of your pages, the good quality of the backend coding, keyword rank, social media integration and additional. We then use that info to type the basis of our Search engine optimization program for you..
You will be in a position to see what is helping you rank and what is not, and you’ll find out considerably additional about your prospects.
If you have a bricks-and-mortar store, neighborhood Search engine optimisation is for you, and expertise from neighborhood Seo consultant services can be invaluable.
These screenshots show just how effective the suitable type of Search Engine Optimisation can be in achieving a project’s objectives.
Search engine optimization brings in a wonderful ROI, specially in comparison to several other marketing and advertising procedures. seo consulting fees
As a major London Search engine marketing corporation, we provide the digital advertising and marketing & Search engine optimization services London enterprises want to get much more shoppers online.
As a major Digital Advertising firm and Search engine optimization enterprise, our approaches strengthen organic rankings and site visitors from the search final results. Taking care of nearby enterprises livelihoods by optimising their sites to show specifically when their prospective buyers search for their solutions. Just about every regional small business owner can be identified by their prospective customers in search engines, so they have a higher return on promotion investment for years’ to come.
Search Engine Optimisation Agency London: Develop Your Business With Seo Solutions From Push
At Fast Seo London we use the primary Search Engine Marketing method of focussing on keyword evaluation which is then applied to your site working with search engine optimisation . We also give modest on-website amendments, links removal and higher DA hyperlink constructing, plus each day monitoring of positions in the search benefits. And if you have to have the additional boost, we also present Google Adwords management.
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opticien2-0 · 3 years
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Dixons Carphone sees continued growth thanks to taking in-store experience online
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Dixons Carphone: successfully leveraging omni-channel
The pandemic boom in consumer electronics continues for Dixons Carphone, which saw revenues for the year grow to £4.9bn, with profits swinging up to £33m from a record lost of £140m the previous year. The growth is squarely attributable to the retailer bringing the in-store experience online, say analysts.
  Online sales for electricals surged 103%, topping £4.7bn internationally, driven by consumers investing heavily in tech to help home working and fill lockdown leisure time.
  Dixons’ total revenue lifted 2% in like-for-like growth, offset by the impact of high street store closures and the mothballing of its mobile phone business, the group said. The retailer’s electrical division grew 14%, despite key markets like the UK, Ireland, Norway, Denmark and Greece being hit by store closures throughout Covid-19 lockdowns.
  “A bunch of these trends are here to stay,” CEO Alex Baldock said in a conference call this morning, citing how hybrid working will have changed the market more permanently. A standout in the electricals market was the “explosion of gaming”, Baldock added, which pushed computing tech sales to grow 25% year-on-year.
  According to Baldock, the gaming market is now bigger than both music and movies combined.
  Part of the retailer’s success has also laid in it embracing tech to help bring the in-store experience out to the raft of online shoppers seeking to purchase electricals and tech.
  James Andrews, Personal Finance Expert at money.co.uk, explains: “The secret to its success has been its ability to successfully market products online to rival that of in-store shopping. The online push - which includes the ShopLive service connecting potential customers with real-life store staff for demonstrations and more - started before the virus hit, seeing the high street chain already one step ahead of many rivals.”
  Andrews continues: “Thanks to Dixons Carphone’s strong online offering, the retailer has managed to keep profitable despite the closure of its stores around the UK. Over the past year, digital sales have grown by triple digit figures, backing up the sentiment that a smooth online buying process is imperative to its 2021 success.”
  The future also looks bright for the retailer. This week it also secured an exclusive deal with Vodafone to its mobile phone plans across its 300 stores. This is a strong signal to customers and investors, following EE and O2’s decision to sever its contracts after being hit by financial penalties for not reaching sales targets.
  Andrews says: “To maintain their strong position in the tech space, Dixons Carphone will need to prove its sales acumen to Vodafone to regain its lost reputation.”
  But he warns: “The only factor threatening Dixons Carphone’s bounceback once stores can open to full capacity and pre-pandemic levels will depend on customer interest. After a year of consumers spending on tech - particularly home devices during lockdown, it is questionable whether consumers will still invest so highly in tech once the world returns to some sense of normality.”
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michaelandy101-blog · 3 years
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Are You Able to Promote Like QVC?
New Post has been published on https://tiptopreview.com/are-you-ready-to-sell-like-qvc/
Are You Able to Promote Like QVC?
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The creator’s views are fully his or her personal (excluding the unlikely occasion of hypnosis) and will not all the time replicate the views of Moz.
A photograph. Some textual content. A procuring cart button.
It’s the setup you’ve been used to because you had been Web-years-old.
Digital commerce has existed since the 1970s, passing by way of a prescient experimental part of telephone-based TV shopping within the 1980s, and setting the tone for the long run with Stephan Schambach’s 1990s invention of the first standardized online shopping software. US shoppers spent $861.12 billion with online retailers in 2020. By making the “add to cart” ritual so acquainted, it could look like we’ve seen all of it relating to digital commerce.
However maintain onto your hats, as a result of indicators are rising that we’re on the verge of the subsequent online gross sales part, akin to the 19th century leap from nonetheless images to transferring photos.
If I’m proper, with its normal product photographs, standard e-commerce will quickly begin to appear uninteresting and dated in lots of classes in comparison with merchandise bought by way of interactive video and additional supported with post-purchase video.
Now could be the time to prep for a filmed future, and luckily, the path has already been blazed for us by house procuring chief QVC, which took over tv after which digitally remastered itself for the net, perfecting the artwork of video-based gross sales. In the present day, we’re going to deconstruct what’s occurring on QVC, and the way and why chances are you’ll have to study to use it as an search engine marketing, native search engine marketing, or enterprise proprietor — prior to you suppose.
Why video gross sales?
A sequence of developments and disruptions level to a future wherein many product gross sales can be facilitated by way of video. Let’s take a look at them:
First, everyone knows that people love video content material a lot, they’ve induced YouTube to be the #2 search engine.
Google has documented the expansion of video searches for “which (product) should I buy”.
Once we look past the US, we encounter the phenomenon that livestreaming e-commerce video has turn out to be in China, highly-monopolized by Alibaba’s Taobao and creating celebrities out of its hosts.
In the meantime, throughout the US, the pandemic induced a 44% increase in digital shopping spend between 2019-2020. We moved online final 12 months for each our fundamental wants and nonessentials like by no means earlier than.
The pandemic has additionally induced bodily native manufacturers to implement digital procuring, blurring former online-to-offline (O2O) boundaries to such a level that Web transactions are not the particular property of digital e-commerce firms. This weirdly-dubbed “phygital” phenomenon — which is making Google the nexus of Maps-based native product gross sales — might be seen as a boon to native manufacturers that reap the benefits of the search engine’s famed user-to-business proximity bias to rank their stock for close by clients.
At the very least, Google hopes to be the nexus of all this. The reality is, Google is reacting strongly proper now to consumers starting half of their product searches on Amazon as an alternative of on Google. Are you seeing adverts all over the place as of late informing you that Google is the perfect place to buy? So am I. With that large, profitable native enterprise index of their again pocket and with GMB listings lengthy supporting video uploads, Google has not too long ago:
Acquired Pointy to combine with retail POS techniques
Made product listings free
Amped up their nearby procuring filter
Tried to insert themselves immediately into shoppers’ curbside pickup routines whereas integrating deeply into information partnerships with main grocery manufacturers
Skilled large development in native enterprise opinions, and simply launched an algorithmic replace particular to product review content (look out, Amazon!)
Experimented with detecting products in YouTube videos amid rumors flying about product outcomes showing in YouTube
Been noticed experimenting past influencer cameo movies to product cameos in data panels
In the meantime, huge manufacturers all over the place are entering into video gross sales. Walmart leapt forward within the shoppable video contest with their debut of Cookshop, wherein celeb cooks cook dinner whereas shoppers click on on the interactive video cues so as to add components to their procuring carts.
Crate & Barrel is tiptoeing into the pool with fast product romance movies that resemble fragrance adverts, wherein models lounge about on lovely accent chairs, creating the aura of a life-style to be lived. Nordstrom is filming bite-sized home shopping channel-style product videos for his or her web site and YouTube channel, full with hosts.
And, smaller manufacturers are experimenting with video-supported gross sales content material, too. Try Inexperienced Constructing Provide’s product videos for his or her eco-friendly house enchancment stock (with personable hosts). Absolute Domestics exhibits how SABs can use video to help gross sales of companies somewhat than items, as on this easy however nicely-produced video on what to expect from their cleaning service. In the meantime, post-sales support videos are a persuasive worth add from Purl Soho that can assist you grasp knitting strategies wanted whenever you purchase a sample from them.
To sum up, on the deep finish of the pool, live-streamed e-commerce and shoppable video are already in use by huge manufacturers, however smaller manufacturers can wade in with fundamental static goods-and-services movies on their web sites and social channels to help gross sales.
Now could be the time to search for inspiration about what video gross sales may do for manufacturers you market, and no one — no one — has extra expertise with all of this than QVC.
Why QVC?
“I didn’t even know QVC still existed,” multiple of my marketing colleagues has responded once I’ve pointed to the 35-year-old house procuring empire as the best way of the long run.
The reality is, I’d most likely be sleeping on QVC, too, if it weren’t for my Irish ancestry having drawn me to their annual St. Patrick’s Day sales event for the previous 30+ years to take pleasure in their made-in-Eire product lineup.
About seven occasions extra people with Irish roots dwell in the USA than on the precise island of Eire, but the procuring channel’s vacation broadcast is among the few televised occasions tailor-made to our well-known nostalgia for our outdated nation house. My household tunes in each March for the craic of inspecting Aran Crafts sweaters, Nicholas Mosse pottery, Belleek china, and Solvar jewellery, whereas munching on cake produced from my great-grandmother Cotter’s recipe. Typically we get so excited, we purchase issues, however for the previous few years, I’ve primarily been actively finding out how QVC sells these things with such gorgeous success.
“Stunning” is the phrase and the wakeup name
QVC, which is a subsidiary of Quarate Retail Worldwide, generated $11.47 billion in 2020 and as early as 2015, practically half of these gross sales had been happening online — constantly putting the model within the top 10 for e-commerce gross sales, together with cellular gross sales. The corporate has 16.5 million consolidated customers worldwide, and entrepreneurs’ mouths will certainly water to study that 90% of QVC’s income comes from loyal repeat buyers. The typical QVC shopper makes between 22-25 purchases per 12 months!
Figures like these, paired with QVC’s sleek pas de deux incorporating each TV remotes and cellular units ought to command our consideration lengthy sufficient to check what they’ve achieved and the way they’ve achieved it.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC!”
Whereas provides final, I wish to invite you to spend the subsequent 10 minutes watching this Internet rebroadcast of a televised segment selling an Aran Crafts sweater, together with your marketer’s eye on the magic occurring in it. Watch this whereas imagining the way it would possibly translate as a static services or products video for a model you’re marketing.
TL;DW? Right here’s the breakdown of how QVC sells:
Essential host
QVC hosts are personalities, many of whom have devoted fan bases. They’re skilled within the merchandise they promote, typically visiting manufacturing crops to highschool themselves. When on air, the host juggles selling a product and interacting with fashions, visitor hosts, callers, and off-screen analysts. The host bodily interacts with the product, highlights its options in considerable element, and makes their gross sales pitch.
For our functions, digital entrepreneurs are absolutely conscious of the phenomenon of social influencers taking up celeb standing and being wanted as gross sales reps. At a extra modest scale, small e-commerce firms (or any native enterprise) that’s adopted digital gross sales fashions ought to establish a number of employees members with the required skills to turn out to be a video host for the model.
You’ll want a spot of luck to safe relatable hosts. Simply remember that QVC’s secret formulation is to get the viewer to ask, “Is this me?”, and that ought to make it easier to match a bunch to your viewers. This instance of a nicely-done, low-key, densely-detailed presentation of a camping chair by a plainspoken host exhibits how easy and efficient a brief product video might be.
Visitor hosts
Many QVC segments function a consultant from the model related to the product being bought. In our instance, the visitor host from Aran Crafts is a member of her household’s enterprise, signing in remotely (because of the pandemic) to share the corporate’s story and construct romance across the product.
Relying on the mannequin you’re marketing, having a rep from any model you resell can be an additional belief sign to convey by way of video gross sales. Consider the back-and-forth chat in a podcast and also you’re virtually there. Small retailers simply reselling huge manufacturers could face a problem right here, however in case you have portion of stock from smaller firms and specialty or native producers, positively invite them to step in entrance of the digicam together with your host, as larger gross sales will profit you each.
Fashions
Regularly, gross sales displays embrace a number of fashions additional interacting with the product. In our instance, fashions are carrying these Irish sweaters whereas strolling round Ashford Citadel. Extra romance.
Different segments function fashions as topics of varied beauty remedies or as demonstrators of how merchandise is for use. Fashions and demonstrators was once normal in main American shops. QVC brilliantly televised this unimaginable type of persuasion at about the identical time it disappeared from real-world procuring within the US. Their gross sales figures show simply how enormous the need nonetheless is to see merchandise worn and used earlier than shopping for.
For our state of affairs of making online gross sales movies, such fashions could possibly be a convincing additional in promoting sure kinds of merchandise, and plenty of merchandise needs to be demonstrated by the host or visitor host. One factor I’ve not seen QVC do this I believe e-commerce and O2O native manufacturers positively may do is a UGC method of creating your buyer your mannequin, demoing how they use your merchandise of their real-world lives. Nearly everyone can movie themselves as of late.
Callers
There are not any dwell callers in our instance, however QVC historically will increase interactivity with the general public with on-air telephone calls.
In case your gross sales movies are static, you’re not fairly to the purpose of getting to study the artwork of dealing with dwell calls, however your product help telephone and SMS numbers and hyperlinks needs to be featured in each video.
Technique
“If you go up there with the intent to sell, it’s all going to come crashing down around you…The real goal of QVC…. was to feel like a conversation between the host, the product specialist (us), and ‘Her’ – the woman age 35 to 65 who is sitting at home watching television.” – I went on air at QVC and sold something to America
There’s a component of magic to how QVC vends such an enormous quantity of merchandise, however it’s all data-based. They’ve invested so closely in understanding buyer demographics that they’ve mastered precisely the way to promote to them. Your shopper base could also be completely completely different, however the bottom line is to know your buyer so effectively that you just perceive the precise method to take when providing them your stock of products and companies.
One other excerpt from the article cited above actually will get this level throughout when speaking about visitor hosts:
“Our experienced guests tend to focus on the product. But our best guests are focused on the viewer. Is this for the viewer? Everything goes through that filter. And if you do that, everything comes out more naturally.”
Right here at Moz, there could also be Whiteboard Friday hosts you particularly take pleasure in studying from. As a enterprise proprietor or marketer, your job can be to establish proficient individuals who can mix your model tradition with shopper analysis and translate that right into a type of merchandising infotainment that succeeds together with your explicit buyers. Profitable QVC hosts make upwards of $500,000 a year for being so good at what they do.
Being good, within the sweater pattern, means pairing QVC’s customer-centric, conversational promoting methodology with USPs and an aura of shortage. I’ll paraphrase the cues I heard:
“These sweaters are made exclusively for QVC” — a USP relating to rarity.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC” — it is a robust USP primarily based on having higher costs than a traveler would discover if shopping for direct from the producer.
“Reviews read like a love letter to this sweater” — incorporating persuasive UGC into the pitch.
“Half of our supply is already gone; don’t wait to order if you want one of these” —- this creates a way of urgency to immediate clients to purchase immediately.
Analytics
The instance presentation most likely appeared fairly seamless and easy to you. However what’s really happening “behind the scenes” of a QVC gross sales phase is that the host is receiving earpiece cues on precisely the way to form the pitch.
QVC’s analytics observe what’s known as a “feverline” of response to every phrase the host says and every motion they make. Producers can inform in actual time which verbal alerts and gestures are inflicting gross sales spikes, and talk to the host to repeat them. One host, for instance, dances repeatedly whereas demoing meals merchandise as a result of extra clients purchase when he does so.
For a lot of the manufacturers you market, you’re not prone to be known as upon to ship analytical information on par with QVC’s mission control-style setup, however you’ll want to find out about video analytics and do A/B testing to measure efficiency of product pages with video vs. these with static photographs. As you progress, analytics ought to be capable of inform you which hosts, company, and merchandise are yielding the perfect ROI.
Three O2O benefits
In a big 2020 survey of native enterprise homeowners and entrepreneurs, Moz discovered that greater than half of respondents intend to keep up pandemic-era companies of comfort past the hoped-for finish of COVID-19. I’d count on this quantity to be even larger if we reran the survey in mid-2021. On-line-to-offline procuring falls on this class and readers of my column know I’m all the time in search of benefits particular to native companies.
I see 3 ways native manufacturers have a leg up on their digital e-commerce cousins, together with behemoths like Amazon and even QVC:
1. Restricted native competitors = higher SERP visibility
Digital e-commerce manufacturers need to compete in opposition to a complete nation or the world for SERP visibility. Google Procuring’s “available nearby” filter cuts your market all the way down to native map-size, making it simpler to seize the eye of consumers nearest your small business. If you happen to’re one of many solely native manufacturers supporting gross sales of your items and companies by way of movies in your web site, you’re actually going to face out within the cities you serve.
2. Restricted native stock = extra convincing authenticity
QVC is definitely a powerful enterprise, however one downside of their methodology, no less than in my eyes, is that their hosts need to be endlessly enthusiastic about hundreds of thousands of merchandise. The identical host who’s exuding enthusiasm one minute over an electrical toothbrush is breathless with admiration over a flameless candle the subsequent. Whereas QVC’s amazingly loyal clients are clearly not postpone by the bottomless provide of power over each single product bought, I discover I don’t fairly consider that the enjoyment is repeatedly real. In my recognition of the gross sales pitch techniques, the corporate feels huge and distant to me.
70% of Americans say they want to shop small. Your benefit in marketing a neighborhood enterprise is that it’ll have restricted stock and an proprietor and employees who can realistically convey authenticity to the video viewer about merchandise the enterprise has hand-selected to promote. An enormous chain grocery store needs me to consider all of its apples are crisp, however my native farmer telling me in a product video that this 12 months’s crop is crisper than final 12 months’s makes a world of plausible distinction.
three. Even a small enhance in conversions = an enormous distinction for native manufacturers
Backlinko recently compiled this list of exciting video marketing statistics that I hope you’ll learn in full. I wish to excerpt just a few that basically caught my eye:
84% of shoppers cite video because the convincing think about purchases
Product movies may also help e-commerce shops enhance gross sales by as much as 144%
96% of individuals have watched an explainer video to higher perceive a product they’re evaluating
The Native Search Affiliation discovered that 53% of individuals contact a enterprise after watching certainly one of their movies and 71% of people that made a purchase order had watched an online video from that model
Together with filmed content material on an e-commerce web page can enhance the typical order worth by 50+%
Video on a touchdown web page can develop its conversion price by as much as 80%
If the corporate you’re selling is among the solely ones in your native market to grab the alternatives hinted at by these statistics, consider what a distinction it could make to see conversions (together with leads and gross sales) rise by even a fraction of those numbers. Furthermore, if the standout UX and helpfulness of the “v-commerce” atmosphere you create makes you memorable to clients, you may develop native loyalty to new ranges as the perfect useful resource in a neighborhood, producing a recipe for retention that, if not fairly as astonishing as QVC’s, is fairly superb in your area.
Go n-éirí leat — good luck!
Such as you, I’m eager for the time when all clients can safely return to procuring domestically in-person, however I do agree with fellow analysts predicting that the style we’ve gotten for the comfort of transport and native house supply, curbside pickup, and tele-meetings is one that customers gained’t merely abandon.
Gross sales movies sort out certainly one of digital marketing’s largest challenges by letting clients see individuals interacting with merchandise after they can’t do it themselves, and 2021 is an efficient 12 months to start your investigation of this promising medium. My prime tip is to spend a while this week watching QVC on TV and inspecting how they’ve parlayed dwell broadcasts into static product movies that promote stock like hotcakes on their website. I’m wishing you the luck and intrepidity of the Irish in your video ventures!
Able to study extra about video marketing? Attempt these assets:
Have to study extra about native search marketing earlier than you begin filming your self and your merchandise? Learn The Important Native search engine marketing Technique Information.
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drummcarpentry · 3 years
Text
Are You Ready to Sell Like QVC?
A photo. Some text. A shopping cart button.
It’s the setup you’ve been used to since you were Internet-years-old.
Electronic commerce has existed since the 1970s, passing through a prescient experimental phase of telephone-based TV shopping in the 1980s, and setting the tone for the future with Stephan Schambach’s 1990s invention of the first standardized online shopping software. US consumers spent $861.12 billion with online merchants in 2020. By making the “add to cart” ritual so familiar, it may seem like we’ve seen it all when it comes to digital commerce.
But hold onto your hats, because signs are emerging that we’re on the verge of the next online sales phase, akin to the 19th century leap from still photos to moving pictures.
If I’m right, with its standard product shots, conventional e-commerce will soon start to seem dull and dated in many categories compared to products sold via interactive video and further supported with post-purchase video.
Now is the time to prep for a filmed future, and fortunately, the trail has already been blazed for us by home shopping leader QVC, which took over television and then digitally remastered itself for the web, perfecting the art of video-based sales. Today, we’re going to deconstruct what’s happening on QVC, and how and why you may need to learn to apply it as an SEO, local SEO, or business owner — sooner than you think.
Why video sales?
A series of developments and disruptions point to a future in which many product sales will be facilitated via video. Let’s have a look at them:
First, we all know that humans love video content so much, they’ve caused YouTube to be the #2 search engine.
Google has documented the growth of video searches for “which (product) should I buy”.
When we look beyond the US, we encounter the phenomenon that livestreaming e-commerce video has become in China, highly-monopolized by Alibaba’s Taobao and creating celebrities out of its hosts.
Meanwhile, within the US, the pandemic caused a 44% increase in digital shopping spend between 2019-2020. We moved online last year for both our basic needs and nonessentials like never before.
The pandemic has also caused physical local brands to implement digital shopping, blurring former online-to-offline (O2O) barriers to such a degree that Internet transactions are no longer the special property of virtual e-commerce companies. This weirdly-dubbed “phygital” phenomenon — which is making Google the nexus of Maps-based local product sales — can be seen as a boon to local brands that take advantage of the search engine’s famed user-to-business proximity bias to rank their inventory for nearby customers.
At least, Google hopes to be the nexus of all this. The truth is, Google is reacting strongly right now to consumers starting half of their product searches on Amazon instead of on Google. Are you seeing ads everywhere these days informing you that Google is the best place to shop? So am I. With that massive, lucrative local business index in their back pocket and with GMB listings long supporting video uploads, Google has recently:
Acquired Pointy to integrate with retail POS systems
Made product listings free
Amped up their nearby shopping filter
Attempted to insert themselves directly into consumers’ curbside pickup routines while integrating deeply into data partnerships with major grocery brands
Experienced massive growth in local business reviews, and just released an algorithmic update specific to product review content (look out, Amazon!)
Experimented with detecting products in YouTube videos amid rumors flying about product results appearing in YouTube
Been spotted experimenting beyond influencer cameo videos to product cameos in knowledge panels
Meanwhile, big brands everywhere are getting into video sales. Walmart leapt ahead in the shoppable video contest with their debut of Cookshop, in which celebrity chefs cook while consumers click on the interactive video cues to add ingredients to their shopping carts.
Crate & Barrel is tiptoeing into the pool with quick product romance videos that resemble perfume ads, in which models lounge about on lovely accent chairs, creating the aura of a lifestyle to be lived. Nordstrom is filming bite-sized home shopping channel-style product videos for their website and YouTube channel, complete with hosts.
And, smaller brands are experimenting with video-supported sales content, too. Check out Green Building Supply’s product videos for their eco-friendly home improvement inventory (with personable hosts). Absolute Domestics shows how SABs can use video to support sales of services rather than goods, as in this simple but nicely-produced video on what to expect from their cleaning service. Meanwhile, post-sales support videos are a persuasive value add from Purl Soho to help you master knitting techniques needed when you buy a pattern from them.
To sum up, at the deep end of the pool, live-streamed e-commerce and shoppable video are already in use by big brands, but smaller brands can wade in with basic static goods-and-services videos on their websites and social channels to support sales.
Now is the time to look for inspiration about what video sales could do for brands you market, and nobody — nobody — has more experience with all of this than QVC.
Why QVC?
“I didn’t even know QVC still existed,” more than one of my marketing colleagues has responded when I’ve pointed to the 35-year-old home shopping empire as the way of the future.
The truth is, I’d probably be sleeping on QVC, too, if it weren’t for my Irish ancestry having drawn me to their annual St. Patrick’s Day sales event for the past 30+ years to enjoy their made-in-Ireland product lineup.
About seven times more people with Irish roots live in the United States than on the actual island of Ireland, yet the shopping channel’s holiday broadcast is one of the few televised events tailored to our famous nostalgia for our old country home. My family tunes in every March for the craic of examining Aran Crafts sweaters, Nicholas Mosse pottery, Belleek china, and Solvar jewelry, while munching on cake made from my great-grandmother Cotter’s recipe. Sometimes we get so excited, we buy things, but for the past few years, I’ve mainly been actively studying how QVC sells these items with such stunning success.
“Stunning” is the word and the wakeup call
QVC, which is a subsidiary of Quarate Retail International, generated $11.47 billion in 2020 and as early as 2015, nearly half of those sales were taking place online — consistently placing the brand in the top 10 for e-commerce sales, including mobile sales. The company has 16.5 million consolidated customers worldwide, and marketers’ mouths will surely water to learn that 90% of QVC’s revenue comes from loyal repeat shoppers. The average QVC shopper makes between 22-25 purchases per year!
Figures like these, paired with QVC’s graceful pas de deux incorporating both TV remotes and mobile devices should command our attention long enough to study what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC!”
While supplies last, I want to invite you to spend the next 10 minutes watching this Internet rebroadcast of a televised segment selling an Aran Crafts sweater, with your marketer’s eye on the magic happening in it. Watch this while imagining how it might translate as a static product or service video for a brand you’re marketing.
TL;DW? Here’s the breakdown of how QVC sells:
Main host
QVC hosts are personalities, many of whom have devoted fan bases. They’re trained in the products they sell, often visiting manufacturing plants to school themselves. When on air, the host juggles promoting a product and interacting with models, guest hosts, callers, and off-screen analysts. The host physically interacts with the product, highlights its features in abundant detail, and makes their sales pitch.
For our purposes, digital marketers are fully aware of the phenomenon of social influencers taking on celebrity status and being sought after as sales reps. At a more modest scale, small e-commerce companies (or any local business) that’s adopted digital sales models should identify one or more staff members with the necessary talents to become a video host for the brand.
You’ll need a spot of luck to secure relatable hosts. Just keep in mind that QVC’s secret formula is to get the viewer to ask, “Is this me?”, and that should help you match a host to your audience. This example of a nicely-done, low-key, densely-detailed presentation of a camping chair by a plainspoken host shows how simple and effective a short product video can be.
Guest hosts
Many QVC segments feature a representative from the brand associated with the product being sold. In our example, the guest host from Aran Crafts is a member of her family’s business, signing in remotely (due to the pandemic) to share the company’s story and build romance around the product.
Depending on the model you’re marketing, having a rep from any brand you resell would be an extra trust signal to convey via video sales. Think of the back-and-forth chat in a podcast and you’re almost there. Small retailers just reselling big brands may face a challenge here, but if you have a good portion of inventory from smaller companies and specialty or local manufacturers, definitely invite them to step in front of the camera with your host, as higher sales will benefit you both.
Models
Frequently, sales presentations include one or more models further interacting with the product. In our example, models are wearing these Irish sweaters while strolling around Ashford Castle. More romance.
Other segments feature models as subjects of various cosmetic treatments or as demonstrators of how merchandise is to be used. Models and demonstrators used to be standard in major American department stores. QVC brilliantly televised this incredible form of persuasion at about the same time it disappeared from real-world shopping in the US. Their sales figures prove just how huge the desire still is to see merchandise worn and used before buying.
For our scenario of creating online sales videos, such models could be a convincing extra in selling certain types of products, and many products should be demonstrated by the host or guest host. One thing I’ve not seen QVC do that I think e-commerce and O2O local brands definitely could do is a UGC approach of making your customer your model, demoing how they use your products in their real-world lives. Almost everybody can film themselves these days.
Callers
There are no live callers in our example, but QVC traditionally increases interactivity with the public with on-air phone calls.
If your sales videos are static, you’re not quite to the point of having to learn the art of handling live calls, but your product support phone and SMS numbers and links should be featured in every video.
Method
“If you go up there with the intent to sell, it’s all going to come crashing down around you...The real goal of QVC.... was to feel like a conversation between the host, the product specialist (us), and ‘Her’ – the woman age 35 to 65 who is sitting at home watching television.” - I went on air at QVC and sold something to America
There’s an element of magic to how QVC vends such a massive volume of products, but it’s all data-based. They’ve invested so heavily in understanding customer demographics that they’ve mastered exactly how to sell to them. Your consumer base may be totally different, but the key is to know your customer so well that you understand the exact approach to take when offering them your inventory of goods and services.
Another excerpt from the article cited above really gets this point across when talking about guest hosts:
“Our experienced guests tend to focus on the product. But our best guests are focused on the viewer. Is this for the viewer? Everything goes through that filter. And if you do that, everything comes out more naturally.”
Here at Moz, there may be Whiteboard Friday hosts you especially enjoy learning from. As a business owner or marketer, your job will be to identify talented people who can blend your brand culture with consumer research and translate that into a form of vending infotainment that succeeds with your particular shoppers. Successful QVC hosts make upwards of $500,000 a year for being so good at what they do.
Being good, in the sweater sample, means pairing QVC’s customer-centric, conversational selling method with USPs and an aura of scarcity. I’ll paraphrase the cues I heard:
“These sweaters are made exclusively for QVC” — a USP regarding rarity.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC” — this is a strong USP based on having better prices than a traveler would find if buying direct from the manufacturer.
“Reviews read like a love letter to this sweater” — incorporating persuasive UGC into the pitch.
“Half of our supply is already gone; don’t wait to order if you want one of these” —- this creates a sense of urgency to prompt customers to buy right away.
Analytics
The example presentation probably looked quite seamless and simple to you. But what’s actually going on “behind the scenes” of a QVC sales segment is that the host is receiving earpiece cues on exactly how to shape the pitch.
QVC’s analytics track what’s called a “feverline” of reaction to each word the host says and each movement they make. Producers can tell in real time which verbal signals and gestures are causing sales spikes, and communicate to the host to repeat them. One host, for example, dances repeatedly while demoing food products because more customers buy when he does so.
For most of the brands you market, you’re not likely to be called upon to deliver analytical data on par with QVC’s mission control-style setup, but you will want to learn about video analytics and do A/B testing to measure performance of product pages with video vs. those with static images. As you progress, analytics should be able to tell you which hosts, guests, and products are yielding the best ROI.
Three O2O advantages
In a large 2020 survey of local business owners and marketers, Moz found that more than half of respondents intend to maintain pandemic-era services of convenience beyond the hoped-for end of COVID-19. I’d expect this number to be even higher if we reran the survey in mid-2021. Online-to-offline shopping falls in this category and readers of my column know I’m always looking for advantages specific to local businesses.
I see three ways local brands have a leg up on their virtual e-commerce cousins, including behemoths like Amazon and even QVC:
1. Limited local competition = better SERP visibility
Virtual e-commerce brands have to compete against a whole country or the world for SERP visibility. Google Shopping’s “available nearby” filter cuts your market down to local map-size, making it easier to capture the attention of customers nearest your business. If you’re one of the only local brands supporting sales of your goods and services via videos on your website, you’re really going to stand out in the cities you serve.
2. Limited local inventory = more convincing authenticity
QVC is certainly an impressive enterprise, but one drawback of their methodology, at least in my eyes, is that their hosts have to be endlessly excited about millions of products. The same host who is exuding enthusiasm one minute over an electric toothbrush is breathless with admiration over a flameless candle the next. While QVC’s amazingly loyal customers are clearly not put off by the bottomless supply of energy over every single product sold, I find I don’t quite believe that the joy is continuously genuine. In my recognition of the sales pitch tactics, the company feels big and remote to me.
70% of Americans say they want to shop small. Your advantage in marketing a local business is that it will have limited inventory and an owner and staff who can realistically convey authenticity to the video viewer about products the business has hand-selected to sell. A big chain supermarket wants me to believe all of its apples are crisp, but my local farmer telling me in a product video that this year’s crop is crisper than last year’s makes a world of believable difference.
3. Even a small boost in conversions = a big difference for local brands
Backlinko recently compiled this list of exciting video marketing statistics that I hope you’ll read in full. I want to excerpt a few that really caught my eye:
84% of consumers cite video as the convincing factor in purchases
Product videos can help e-commerce stores increase sales by up to 144%
96% of people have watched an explainer video to better understand a product they’re evaluating
The Local Search Association found that 53% of people contact a business after watching one of their videos and 71% of people who made a purchase had watched an online video from that brand
Including filmed content on an e-commerce page can increase the average order value by 50+%
Video on a landing page can grow its conversion rate by up to 80%
If the company you’re promoting is one of the only ones in your local market to seize the opportunities hinted at by these statistics, think of what a difference it would make to see conversions (including leads and sales) rise by even a fraction of these numbers. Moreover, if the standout UX and helpfulness of the “v-commerce” environment you create makes you memorable to customers, you could grow local loyalty to new levels as the best resource in a community, generating a recipe for retention that, if not quite as astonishing as QVC’s, is pretty amazing for your region.
Go n-éirí leat — good luck!
Like you, I’m longing for the time when all customers can safely return to shopping locally in-person, but I do agree with fellow analysts predicting that the taste we’ve gotten for the convenience of shipping and local home delivery, curbside pickup, and tele-meetings is one that consumers won’t simply abandon.
Sales videos tackle one of digital marketing’s largest challenges by letting customers see people interacting with products when they can’t do it themselves, and 2021 is a good year to begin your investigation of this promising medium. My top tip is to spend some time this week watching QVC on TV and examining how they’ve parlayed live broadcasts into static
product videos that sell inventory like hotcakes on their website. I’m wishing you the luck and intrepidity of the Irish in your video ventures!
Ready to learn more about video marketing? Try these resources:
17 Best Ecommerce Product Video Examples
The ABCs of Video Content
8 Beginner Tips for Making Professional-Looking Videos
How to Film Creative Product Videos
YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020
How to Track YouTube Videos in Google Analytics Using Google Tag Manager in 4 Steps
Need to learn more about local search marketing before you start filming yourself and your products? Read The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide.
0 notes
lakelandseo · 3 years
Text
Are You Ready to Sell Like QVC?
A photo. Some text. A shopping cart button.
It’s the setup you’ve been used to since you were Internet-years-old.
Electronic commerce has existed since the 1970s, passing through a prescient experimental phase of telephone-based TV shopping in the 1980s, and setting the tone for the future with Stephan Schambach’s 1990s invention of the first standardized online shopping software. US consumers spent $861.12 billion with online merchants in 2020. By making the “add to cart” ritual so familiar, it may seem like we’ve seen it all when it comes to digital commerce.
But hold onto your hats, because signs are emerging that we���re on the verge of the next online sales phase, akin to the 19th century leap from still photos to moving pictures.
If I’m right, with its standard product shots, conventional e-commerce will soon start to seem dull and dated in many categories compared to products sold via interactive video and further supported with post-purchase video.
Now is the time to prep for a filmed future, and fortunately, the trail has already been blazed for us by home shopping leader QVC, which took over television and then digitally remastered itself for the web, perfecting the art of video-based sales. Today, we’re going to deconstruct what’s happening on QVC, and how and why you may need to learn to apply it as an SEO, local SEO, or business owner — sooner than you think.
Why video sales?
A series of developments and disruptions point to a future in which many product sales will be facilitated via video. Let’s have a look at them:
First, we all know that humans love video content so much, they’ve caused YouTube to be the #2 search engine.
Google has documented the growth of video searches for “which (product) should I buy”.
When we look beyond the US, we encounter the phenomenon that livestreaming e-commerce video has become in China, highly-monopolized by Alibaba’s Taobao and creating celebrities out of its hosts.
Meanwhile, within the US, the pandemic caused a 44% increase in digital shopping spend between 2019-2020. We moved online last year for both our basic needs and nonessentials like never before.
The pandemic has also caused physical local brands to implement digital shopping, blurring former online-to-offline (O2O) barriers to such a degree that Internet transactions are no longer the special property of virtual e-commerce companies. This weirdly-dubbed “phygital” phenomenon — which is making Google the nexus of Maps-based local product sales — can be seen as a boon to local brands that take advantage of the search engine’s famed user-to-business proximity bias to rank their inventory for nearby customers.
At least, Google hopes to be the nexus of all this. The truth is, Google is reacting strongly right now to consumers starting half of their product searches on Amazon instead of on Google. Are you seeing ads everywhere these days informing you that Google is the best place to shop? So am I. With that massive, lucrative local business index in their back pocket and with GMB listings long supporting video uploads, Google has recently:
Acquired Pointy to integrate with retail POS systems
Made product listings free
Amped up their nearby shopping filter
Attempted to insert themselves directly into consumers’ curbside pickup routines while integrating deeply into data partnerships with major grocery brands
Experienced massive growth in local business reviews, and just released an algorithmic update specific to product review content (look out, Amazon!)
Experimented with detecting products in YouTube videos amid rumors flying about product results appearing in YouTube
Been spotted experimenting beyond influencer cameo videos to product cameos in knowledge panels
Meanwhile, big brands everywhere are getting into video sales. Walmart leapt ahead in the shoppable video contest with their debut of Cookshop, in which celebrity chefs cook while consumers click on the interactive video cues to add ingredients to their shopping carts.
Crate & Barrel is tiptoeing into the pool with quick product romance videos that resemble perfume ads, in which models lounge about on lovely accent chairs, creating the aura of a lifestyle to be lived. Nordstrom is filming bite-sized home shopping channel-style product videos for their website and YouTube channel, complete with hosts.
And, smaller brands are experimenting with video-supported sales content, too. Check out Green Building Supply’s product videos for their eco-friendly home improvement inventory (with personable hosts). Absolute Domestics shows how SABs can use video to support sales of services rather than goods, as in this simple but nicely-produced video on what to expect from their cleaning service. Meanwhile, post-sales support videos are a persuasive value add from Purl Soho to help you master knitting techniques needed when you buy a pattern from them.
To sum up, at the deep end of the pool, live-streamed e-commerce and shoppable video are already in use by big brands, but smaller brands can wade in with basic static goods-and-services videos on their websites and social channels to support sales.
Now is the time to look for inspiration about what video sales could do for brands you market, and nobody — nobody — has more experience with all of this than QVC.
Why QVC?
“I didn’t even know QVC still existed,” more than one of my marketing colleagues has responded when I’ve pointed to the 35-year-old home shopping empire as the way of the future.
The truth is, I’d probably be sleeping on QVC, too, if it weren’t for my Irish ancestry having drawn me to their annual St. Patrick’s Day sales event for the past 30+ years to enjoy their made-in-Ireland product lineup.
About seven times more people with Irish roots live in the United States than on the actual island of Ireland, yet the shopping channel’s holiday broadcast is one of the few televised events tailored to our famous nostalgia for our old country home. My family tunes in every March for the craic of examining Aran Crafts sweaters, Nicholas Mosse pottery, Belleek china, and Solvar jewelry, while munching on cake made from my great-grandmother Cotter’s recipe. Sometimes we get so excited, we buy things, but for the past few years, I’ve mainly been actively studying how QVC sells these items with such stunning success.
“Stunning” is the word and the wakeup call
QVC, which is a subsidiary of Quarate Retail International, generated $11.47 billion in 2020 and as early as 2015, nearly half of those sales were taking place online — consistently placing the brand in the top 10 for e-commerce sales, including mobile sales. The company has 16.5 million consolidated customers worldwide, and marketers’ mouths will surely water to learn that 90% of QVC’s revenue comes from loyal repeat shoppers. The average QVC shopper makes between 22-25 purchases per year!
Figures like these, paired with QVC’s graceful pas de deux incorporating both TV remotes and mobile devices should command our attention long enough to study what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC!”
While supplies last, I want to invite you to spend the next 10 minutes watching this Internet rebroadcast of a televised segment selling an Aran Crafts sweater, with your marketer’s eye on the magic happening in it. Watch this while imagining how it might translate as a static product or service video for a brand you’re marketing.
TL;DW? Here’s the breakdown of how QVC sells:
Main host
QVC hosts are personalities, many of whom have devoted fan bases. They’re trained in the products they sell, often visiting manufacturing plants to school themselves. When on air, the host juggles promoting a product and interacting with models, guest hosts, callers, and off-screen analysts. The host physically interacts with the product, highlights its features in abundant detail, and makes their sales pitch.
For our purposes, digital marketers are fully aware of the phenomenon of social influencers taking on celebrity status and being sought after as sales reps. At a more modest scale, small e-commerce companies (or any local business) that’s adopted digital sales models should identify one or more staff members with the necessary talents to become a video host for the brand.
You’ll need a spot of luck to secure relatable hosts. Just keep in mind that QVC’s secret formula is to get the viewer to ask, “Is this me?”, and that should help you match a host to your audience. This example of a nicely-done, low-key, densely-detailed presentation of a camping chair by a plainspoken host shows how simple and effective a short product video can be.
Guest hosts
Many QVC segments feature a representative from the brand associated with the product being sold. In our example, the guest host from Aran Crafts is a member of her family’s business, signing in remotely (due to the pandemic) to share the company’s story and build romance around the product.
Depending on the model you’re marketing, having a rep from any brand you resell would be an extra trust signal to convey via video sales. Think of the back-and-forth chat in a podcast and you’re almost there. Small retailers just reselling big brands may face a challenge here, but if you have a good portion of inventory from smaller companies and specialty or local manufacturers, definitely invite them to step in front of the camera with your host, as higher sales will benefit you both.
Models
Frequently, sales presentations include one or more models further interacting with the product. In our example, models are wearing these Irish sweaters while strolling around Ashford Castle. More romance.
Other segments feature models as subjects of various cosmetic treatments or as demonstrators of how merchandise is to be used. Models and demonstrators used to be standard in major American department stores. QVC brilliantly televised this incredible form of persuasion at about the same time it disappeared from real-world shopping in the US. Their sales figures prove just how huge the desire still is to see merchandise worn and used before buying.
For our scenario of creating online sales videos, such models could be a convincing extra in selling certain types of products, and many products should be demonstrated by the host or guest host. One thing I’ve not seen QVC do that I think e-commerce and O2O local brands definitely could do is a UGC approach of making your customer your model, demoing how they use your products in their real-world lives. Almost everybody can film themselves these days.
Callers
There are no live callers in our example, but QVC traditionally increases interactivity with the public with on-air phone calls.
If your sales videos are static, you’re not quite to the point of having to learn the art of handling live calls, but your product support phone and SMS numbers and links should be featured in every video.
Method
“If you go up there with the intent to sell, it’s all going to come crashing down around you...The real goal of QVC.... was to feel like a conversation between the host, the product specialist (us), and ‘Her’ – the woman age 35 to 65 who is sitting at home watching television.” - I went on air at QVC and sold something to America
There’s an element of magic to how QVC vends such a massive volume of products, but it’s all data-based. They’ve invested so heavily in understanding customer demographics that they’ve mastered exactly how to sell to them. Your consumer base may be totally different, but the key is to know your customer so well that you understand the exact approach to take when offering them your inventory of goods and services.
Another excerpt from the article cited above really gets this point across when talking about guest hosts:
“Our experienced guests tend to focus on the product. But our best guests are focused on the viewer. Is this for the viewer? Everything goes through that filter. And if you do that, everything comes out more naturally.”
Here at Moz, there may be Whiteboard Friday hosts you especially enjoy learning from. As a business owner or marketer, your job will be to identify talented people who can blend your brand culture with consumer research and translate that into a form of vending infotainment that succeeds with your particular shoppers. Successful QVC hosts make upwards of $500,000 a year for being so good at what they do.
Being good, in the sweater sample, means pairing QVC’s customer-centric, conversational selling method with USPs and an aura of scarcity. I’ll paraphrase the cues I heard:
“These sweaters are made exclusively for QVC” — a USP regarding rarity.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC” — this is a strong USP based on having better prices than a traveler would find if buying direct from the manufacturer.
“Reviews read like a love letter to this sweater” — incorporating persuasive UGC into the pitch.
“Half of our supply is already gone; don’t wait to order if you want one of these” —- this creates a sense of urgency to prompt customers to buy right away.
Analytics
The example presentation probably looked quite seamless and simple to you. But what’s actually going on “behind the scenes” of a QVC sales segment is that the host is receiving earpiece cues on exactly how to shape the pitch.
QVC’s analytics track what’s called a “feverline” of reaction to each word the host says and each movement they make. Producers can tell in real time which verbal signals and gestures are causing sales spikes, and communicate to the host to repeat them. One host, for example, dances repeatedly while demoing food products because more customers buy when he does so.
For most of the brands you market, you’re not likely to be called upon to deliver analytical data on par with QVC’s mission control-style setup, but you will want to learn about video analytics and do A/B testing to measure performance of product pages with video vs. those with static images. As you progress, analytics should be able to tell you which hosts, guests, and products are yielding the best ROI.
Three O2O advantages
In a large 2020 survey of local business owners and marketers, Moz found that more than half of respondents intend to maintain pandemic-era services of convenience beyond the hoped-for end of COVID-19. I’d expect this number to be even higher if we reran the survey in mid-2021. Online-to-offline shopping falls in this category and readers of my column know I’m always looking for advantages specific to local businesses.
I see three ways local brands have a leg up on their virtual e-commerce cousins, including behemoths like Amazon and even QVC:
1. Limited local competition = better SERP visibility
Virtual e-commerce brands have to compete against a whole country or the world for SERP visibility. Google Shopping’s “available nearby” filter cuts your market down to local map-size, making it easier to capture the attention of customers nearest your business. If you’re one of the only local brands supporting sales of your goods and services via videos on your website, you’re really going to stand out in the cities you serve.
2. Limited local inventory = more convincing authenticity
QVC is certainly an impressive enterprise, but one drawback of their methodology, at least in my eyes, is that their hosts have to be endlessly excited about millions of products. The same host who is exuding enthusiasm one minute over an electric toothbrush is breathless with admiration over a flameless candle the next. While QVC’s amazingly loyal customers are clearly not put off by the bottomless supply of energy over every single product sold, I find I don’t quite believe that the joy is continuously genuine. In my recognition of the sales pitch tactics, the company feels big and remote to me.
70% of Americans say they want to shop small. Your advantage in marketing a local business is that it will have limited inventory and an owner and staff who can realistically convey authenticity to the video viewer about products the business has hand-selected to sell. A big chain supermarket wants me to believe all of its apples are crisp, but my local farmer telling me in a product video that this year’s crop is crisper than last year’s makes a world of believable difference.
3. Even a small boost in conversions = a big difference for local brands
Backlinko recently compiled this list of exciting video marketing statistics that I hope you’ll read in full. I want to excerpt a few that really caught my eye:
84% of consumers cite video as the convincing factor in purchases
Product videos can help e-commerce stores increase sales by up to 144%
96% of people have watched an explainer video to better understand a product they’re evaluating
The Local Search Association found that 53% of people contact a business after watching one of their videos and 71% of people who made a purchase had watched an online video from that brand
Including filmed content on an e-commerce page can increase the average order value by 50+%
Video on a landing page can grow its conversion rate by up to 80%
If the company you’re promoting is one of the only ones in your local market to seize the opportunities hinted at by these statistics, think of what a difference it would make to see conversions (including leads and sales) rise by even a fraction of these numbers. Moreover, if the standout UX and helpfulness of the “v-commerce” environment you create makes you memorable to customers, you could grow local loyalty to new levels as the best resource in a community, generating a recipe for retention that, if not quite as astonishing as QVC’s, is pretty amazing for your region.
Go n-éirí leat — good luck!
Like you, I’m longing for the time when all customers can safely return to shopping locally in-person, but I do agree with fellow analysts predicting that the taste we’ve gotten for the convenience of shipping and local home delivery, curbside pickup, and tele-meetings is one that consumers won’t simply abandon.
Sales videos tackle one of digital marketing’s largest challenges by letting customers see people interacting with products when they can’t do it themselves, and 2021 is a good year to begin your investigation of this promising medium. My top tip is to spend some time this week watching QVC on TV and examining how they’ve parlayed live broadcasts into static
product videos that sell inventory like hotcakes on their website. I’m wishing you the luck and intrepidity of the Irish in your video ventures!
Ready to learn more about video marketing? Try these resources:
17 Best Ecommerce Product Video Examples
The ABCs of Video Content
8 Beginner Tips for Making Professional-Looking Videos
How to Film Creative Product Videos
YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020
How to Track YouTube Videos in Google Analytics Using Google Tag Manager in 4 Steps
Need to learn more about local search marketing before you start filming yourself and your products? Read The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide.
0 notes
epackingvietnam · 3 years
Text
Are You Ready to Sell Like QVC?
A photo. Some text. A shopping cart button.
It’s the setup you’ve been used to since you were Internet-years-old.
Electronic commerce has existed since the 1970s, passing through a prescient experimental phase of telephone-based TV shopping in the 1980s, and setting the tone for the future with Stephan Schambach’s 1990s invention of the first standardized online shopping software. US consumers spent $861.12 billion with online merchants in 2020. By making the “add to cart” ritual so familiar, it may seem like we’ve seen it all when it comes to digital commerce.
But hold onto your hats, because signs are emerging that we’re on the verge of the next online sales phase, akin to the 19th century leap from still photos to moving pictures.
If I’m right, with its standard product shots, conventional e-commerce will soon start to seem dull and dated in many categories compared to products sold via interactive video and further supported with post-purchase video.
Now is the time to prep for a filmed future, and fortunately, the trail has already been blazed for us by home shopping leader QVC, which took over television and then digitally remastered itself for the web, perfecting the art of video-based sales. Today, we’re going to deconstruct what’s happening on QVC, and how and why you may need to learn to apply it as an SEO, local SEO, or business owner — sooner than you think.
Why video sales?
A series of developments and disruptions point to a future in which many product sales will be facilitated via video. Let’s have a look at them:
First, we all know that humans love video content so much, they’ve caused YouTube to be the #2 search engine.
Google has documented the growth of video searches for “which (product) should I buy”.
When we look beyond the US, we encounter the phenomenon that livestreaming e-commerce video has become in China, highly-monopolized by Alibaba’s Taobao and creating celebrities out of its hosts.
Meanwhile, within the US, the pandemic caused a 44% increase in digital shopping spend between 2019-2020. We moved online last year for both our basic needs and nonessentials like never before.
The pandemic has also caused physical local brands to implement digital shopping, blurring former online-to-offline (O2O) barriers to such a degree that Internet transactions are no longer the special property of virtual e-commerce companies. This weirdly-dubbed “phygital” phenomenon — which is making Google the nexus of Maps-based local product sales — can be seen as a boon to local brands that take advantage of the search engine’s famed user-to-business proximity bias to rank their inventory for nearby customers.
At least, Google hopes to be the nexus of all this. The truth is, Google is reacting strongly right now to consumers starting half of their product searches on Amazon instead of on Google. Are you seeing ads everywhere these days informing you that Google is the best place to shop? So am I. With that massive, lucrative local business index in their back pocket and with GMB listings long supporting video uploads, Google has recently:
Acquired Pointy to integrate with retail POS systems
Made product listings free
Amped up their nearby shopping filter
Attempted to insert themselves directly into consumers’ curbside pickup routines while integrating deeply into data partnerships with major grocery brands
Experienced massive growth in local business reviews, and just released an algorithmic update specific to product review content (look out, Amazon!)
Experimented with detecting products in YouTube videos amid rumors flying about product results appearing in YouTube
Been spotted experimenting beyond influencer cameo videos to product cameos in knowledge panels
Meanwhile, big brands everywhere are getting into video sales. Walmart leapt ahead in the shoppable video contest with their debut of Cookshop, in which celebrity chefs cook while consumers click on the interactive video cues to add ingredients to their shopping carts.
Crate & Barrel is tiptoeing into the pool with quick product romance videos that resemble perfume ads, in which models lounge about on lovely accent chairs, creating the aura of a lifestyle to be lived. Nordstrom is filming bite-sized home shopping channel-style product videos for their website and YouTube channel, complete with hosts.
And, smaller brands are experimenting with video-supported sales content, too. Check out Green Building Supply’s product videos for their eco-friendly home improvement inventory (with personable hosts). Absolute Domestics shows how SABs can use video to support sales of services rather than goods, as in this simple but nicely-produced video on what to expect from their cleaning service. Meanwhile, post-sales support videos are a persuasive value add from Purl Soho to help you master knitting techniques needed when you buy a pattern from them.
To sum up, at the deep end of the pool, live-streamed e-commerce and shoppable video are already in use by big brands, but smaller brands can wade in with basic static goods-and-services videos on their websites and social channels to support sales.
Now is the time to look for inspiration about what video sales could do for brands you market, and nobody — nobody — has more experience with all of this than QVC.
Why QVC?
“I didn’t even know QVC still existed,” more than one of my marketing colleagues has responded when I’ve pointed to the 35-year-old home shopping empire as the way of the future.
The truth is, I’d probably be sleeping on QVC, too, if it weren’t for my Irish ancestry having drawn me to their annual St. Patrick’s Day sales event for the past 30+ years to enjoy their made-in-Ireland product lineup.
About seven times more people with Irish roots live in the United States than on the actual island of Ireland, yet the shopping channel’s holiday broadcast is one of the few televised events tailored to our famous nostalgia for our old country home. My family tunes in every March for the craic of examining Aran Crafts sweaters, Nicholas Mosse pottery, Belleek china, and Solvar jewelry, while munching on cake made from my great-grandmother Cotter’s recipe. Sometimes we get so excited, we buy things, but for the past few years, I’ve mainly been actively studying how QVC sells these items with such stunning success.
“Stunning” is the word and the wakeup call
QVC, which is a subsidiary of Quarate Retail International, generated $11.47 billion in 2020 and as early as 2015, nearly half of those sales were taking place online — consistently placing the brand in the top 10 for e-commerce sales, including mobile sales. The company has 16.5 million consolidated customers worldwide, and marketers’ mouths will surely water to learn that 90% of QVC’s revenue comes from loyal repeat shoppers. The average QVC shopper makes between 22-25 purchases per year!
Figures like these, paired with QVC’s graceful pas de deux incorporating both TV remotes and mobile devices should command our attention long enough to study what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC!”
While supplies last, I want to invite you to spend the next 10 minutes watching this Internet rebroadcast of a televised segment selling an Aran Crafts sweater, with your marketer’s eye on the magic happening in it. Watch this while imagining how it might translate as a static product or service video for a brand you’re marketing.
TL;DW? Here’s the breakdown of how QVC sells:
Main host
QVC hosts are personalities, many of whom have devoted fan bases. They’re trained in the products they sell, often visiting manufacturing plants to school themselves. When on air, the host juggles promoting a product and interacting with models, guest hosts, callers, and off-screen analysts. The host physically interacts with the product, highlights its features in abundant detail, and makes their sales pitch.
For our purposes, digital marketers are fully aware of the phenomenon of social influencers taking on celebrity status and being sought after as sales reps. At a more modest scale, small e-commerce companies (or any local business) that’s adopted digital sales models should identify one or more staff members with the necessary talents to become a video host for the brand.
You’ll need a spot of luck to secure relatable hosts. Just keep in mind that QVC’s secret formula is to get the viewer to ask, “Is this me?”, and that should help you match a host to your audience. This example of a nicely-done, low-key, densely-detailed presentation of a camping chair by a plainspoken host shows how simple and effective a short product video can be.
Guest hosts
Many QVC segments feature a representative from the brand associated with the product being sold. In our example, the guest host from Aran Crafts is a member of her family’s business, signing in remotely (due to the pandemic) to share the company’s story and build romance around the product.
Depending on the model you’re marketing, having a rep from any brand you resell would be an extra trust signal to convey via video sales. Think of the back-and-forth chat in a podcast and you’re almost there. Small retailers just reselling big brands may face a challenge here, but if you have a good portion of inventory from smaller companies and specialty or local manufacturers, definitely invite them to step in front of the camera with your host, as higher sales will benefit you both.
Models
Frequently, sales presentations include one or more models further interacting with the product. In our example, models are wearing these Irish sweaters while strolling around Ashford Castle. More romance.
Other segments feature models as subjects of various cosmetic treatments or as demonstrators of how merchandise is to be used. Models and demonstrators used to be standard in major American department stores. QVC brilliantly televised this incredible form of persuasion at about the same time it disappeared from real-world shopping in the US. Their sales figures prove just how huge the desire still is to see merchandise worn and used before buying.
For our scenario of creating online sales videos, such models could be a convincing extra in selling certain types of products, and many products should be demonstrated by the host or guest host. One thing I’ve not seen QVC do that I think e-commerce and O2O local brands definitely could do is a UGC approach of making your customer your model, demoing how they use your products in their real-world lives. Almost everybody can film themselves these days.
Callers
There are no live callers in our example, but QVC traditionally increases interactivity with the public with on-air phone calls.
If your sales videos are static, you’re not quite to the point of having to learn the art of handling live calls, but your product support phone and SMS numbers and links should be featured in every video.
Method
“If you go up there with the intent to sell, it’s all going to come crashing down around you...The real goal of QVC.... was to feel like a conversation between the host, the product specialist (us), and ‘Her’ – the woman age 35 to 65 who is sitting at home watching television.” - I went on air at QVC and sold something to America
There’s an element of magic to how QVC vends such a massive volume of products, but it’s all data-based. They’ve invested so heavily in understanding customer demographics that they’ve mastered exactly how to sell to them. Your consumer base may be totally different, but the key is to know your customer so well that you understand the exact approach to take when offering them your inventory of goods and services.
Another excerpt from the article cited above really gets this point across when talking about guest hosts:
“Our experienced guests tend to focus on the product. But our best guests are focused on the viewer. Is this for the viewer? Everything goes through that filter. And if you do that, everything comes out more naturally.”
Here at Moz, there may be Whiteboard Friday hosts you especially enjoy learning from. As a business owner or marketer, your job will be to identify talented people who can blend your brand culture with consumer research and translate that into a form of vending infotainment that succeeds with your particular shoppers. Successful QVC hosts make upwards of $500,000 a year for being so good at what they do.
Being good, in the sweater sample, means pairing QVC’s customer-centric, conversational selling method with USPs and an aura of scarcity. I’ll paraphrase the cues I heard:
“These sweaters are made exclusively for QVC” — a USP regarding rarity.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC” — this is a strong USP based on having better prices than a traveler would find if buying direct from the manufacturer.
“Reviews read like a love letter to this sweater” — incorporating persuasive UGC into the pitch.
“Half of our supply is already gone; don’t wait to order if you want one of these” —- this creates a sense of urgency to prompt customers to buy right away.
Analytics
The example presentation probably looked quite seamless and simple to you. But what’s actually going on “behind the scenes” of a QVC sales segment is that the host is receiving earpiece cues on exactly how to shape the pitch.
QVC’s analytics track what’s called a “feverline” of reaction to each word the host says and each movement they make. Producers can tell in real time which verbal signals and gestures are causing sales spikes, and communicate to the host to repeat them. One host, for example, dances repeatedly while demoing food products because more customers buy when he does so.
For most of the brands you market, you’re not likely to be called upon to deliver analytical data on par with QVC’s mission control-style setup, but you will want to learn about video analytics and do A/B testing to measure performance of product pages with video vs. those with static images. As you progress, analytics should be able to tell you which hosts, guests, and products are yielding the best ROI.
Three O2O advantages
In a large 2020 survey of local business owners and marketers, Moz found that more than half of respondents intend to maintain pandemic-era services of convenience beyond the hoped-for end of COVID-19. I’d expect this number to be even higher if we reran the survey in mid-2021. Online-to-offline shopping falls in this category and readers of my column know I’m always looking for advantages specific to local businesses.
I see three ways local brands have a leg up on their virtual e-commerce cousins, including behemoths like Amazon and even QVC:
1. Limited local competition = better SERP visibility
Virtual e-commerce brands have to compete against a whole country or the world for SERP visibility. Google Shopping’s “available nearby” filter cuts your market down to local map-size, making it easier to capture the attention of customers nearest your business. If you’re one of the only local brands supporting sales of your goods and services via videos on your website, you’re really going to stand out in the cities you serve.
2. Limited local inventory = more convincing authenticity
QVC is certainly an impressive enterprise, but one drawback of their methodology, at least in my eyes, is that their hosts have to be endlessly excited about millions of products. The same host who is exuding enthusiasm one minute over an electric toothbrush is breathless with admiration over a flameless candle the next. While QVC’s amazingly loyal customers are clearly not put off by the bottomless supply of energy over every single product sold, I find I don’t quite believe that the joy is continuously genuine. In my recognition of the sales pitch tactics, the company feels big and remote to me.
70% of Americans say they want to shop small. Your advantage in marketing a local business is that it will have limited inventory and an owner and staff who can realistically convey authenticity to the video viewer about products the business has hand-selected to sell. A big chain supermarket wants me to believe all of its apples are crisp, but my local farmer telling me in a product video that this year’s crop is crisper than last year’s makes a world of believable difference.
3. Even a small boost in conversions = a big difference for local brands
Backlinko recently compiled this list of exciting video marketing statistics that I hope you’ll read in full. I want to excerpt a few that really caught my eye:
84% of consumers cite video as the convincing factor in purchases
Product videos can help e-commerce stores increase sales by up to 144%
96% of people have watched an explainer video to better understand a product they’re evaluating
The Local Search Association found that 53% of people contact a business after watching one of their videos and 71% of people who made a purchase had watched an online video from that brand
Including filmed content on an e-commerce page can increase the average order value by 50+%
Video on a landing page can grow its conversion rate by up to 80%
If the company you’re promoting is one of the only ones in your local market to seize the opportunities hinted at by these statistics, think of what a difference it would make to see conversions (including leads and sales) rise by even a fraction of these numbers. Moreover, if the standout UX and helpfulness of the “v-commerce” environment you create makes you memorable to customers, you could grow local loyalty to new levels as the best resource in a community, generating a recipe for retention that, if not quite as astonishing as QVC’s, is pretty amazing for your region.
Go n-éirí leat — good luck!
Like you, I’m longing for the time when all customers can safely return to shopping locally in-person, but I do agree with fellow analysts predicting that the taste we’ve gotten for the convenience of shipping and local home delivery, curbside pickup, and tele-meetings is one that consumers won’t simply abandon.
Sales videos tackle one of digital marketing’s largest challenges by letting customers see people interacting with products when they can’t do it themselves, and 2021 is a good year to begin your investigation of this promising medium. My top tip is to spend some time this week watching QVC on TV and examining how they’ve parlayed live broadcasts into static
product videos that sell inventory like hotcakes on their website. I’m wishing you the luck and intrepidity of the Irish in your video ventures!
Ready to learn more about video marketing? Try these resources:
17 Best Ecommerce Product Video Examples
The ABCs of Video Content
8 Beginner Tips for Making Professional-Looking Videos
How to Film Creative Product Videos
YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020
How to Track YouTube Videos in Google Analytics Using Google Tag Manager in 4 Steps
Need to learn more about local search marketing before you start filming yourself and your products? Read The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide.
#túi_giấy_epacking_việt_nam #túi_giấy_epacking #in_túi_giấy_giá_rẻ #in_túi_giấy #epackingvietnam #tuigiayepacking
0 notes
bfxenon · 3 years
Text
Are You Ready to Sell Like QVC?
A photo. Some text. A shopping cart button.
It’s the setup you’ve been used to since you were Internet-years-old.
Electronic commerce has existed since the 1970s, passing through a prescient experimental phase of telephone-based TV shopping in the 1980s, and setting the tone for the future with Stephan Schambach’s 1990s invention of the first standardized online shopping software. US consumers spent $861.12 billion with online merchants in 2020. By making the “add to cart” ritual so familiar, it may seem like we’ve seen it all when it comes to digital commerce.
But hold onto your hats, because signs are emerging that we’re on the verge of the next online sales phase, akin to the 19th century leap from still photos to moving pictures.
If I’m right, with its standard product shots, conventional e-commerce will soon start to seem dull and dated in many categories compared to products sold via interactive video and further supported with post-purchase video.
Now is the time to prep for a filmed future, and fortunately, the trail has already been blazed for us by home shopping leader QVC, which took over television and then digitally remastered itself for the web, perfecting the art of video-based sales. Today, we’re going to deconstruct what’s happening on QVC, and how and why you may need to learn to apply it as an SEO, local SEO, or business owner — sooner than you think.
Why video sales?
A series of developments and disruptions point to a future in which many product sales will be facilitated via video. Let’s have a look at them:
First, we all know that humans love video content so much, they’ve caused YouTube to be the #2 search engine.
Google has documented the growth of video searches for “which (product) should I buy”.
When we look beyond the US, we encounter the phenomenon that livestreaming e-commerce video has become in China, highly-monopolized by Alibaba’s Taobao and creating celebrities out of its hosts.
Meanwhile, within the US, the pandemic caused a 44% increase in digital shopping spend between 2019-2020. We moved online last year for both our basic needs and nonessentials like never before.
The pandemic has also caused physical local brands to implement digital shopping, blurring former online-to-offline (O2O) barriers to such a degree that Internet transactions are no longer the special property of virtual e-commerce companies. This weirdly-dubbed “phygital” phenomenon — which is making Google the nexus of Maps-based local product sales — can be seen as a boon to local brands that take advantage of the search engine’s famed user-to-business proximity bias to rank their inventory for nearby customers.
At least, Google hopes to be the nexus of all this. The truth is, Google is reacting strongly right now to consumers starting half of their product searches on Amazon instead of on Google. Are you seeing ads everywhere these days informing you that Google is the best place to shop? So am I. With that massive, lucrative local business index in their back pocket and with GMB listings long supporting video uploads, Google has recently:
Acquired Pointy to integrate with retail POS systems
Made product listings free
Amped up their nearby shopping filter
Attempted to insert themselves directly into consumers’ curbside pickup routines while integrating deeply into data partnerships with major grocery brands
Experienced massive growth in local business reviews, and just released an algorithmic update specific to product review content (look out, Amazon!)
Experimented with detecting products in YouTube videos amid rumors flying about product results appearing in YouTube
Been spotted experimenting beyond influencer cameo videos to product cameos in knowledge panels
Meanwhile, big brands everywhere are getting into video sales. Walmart leapt ahead in the shoppable video contest with their debut of Cookshop, in which celebrity chefs cook while consumers click on the interactive video cues to add ingredients to their shopping carts.
Crate & Barrel is tiptoeing into the pool with quick product romance videos that resemble perfume ads, in which models lounge about on lovely accent chairs, creating the aura of a lifestyle to be lived. Nordstrom is filming bite-sized home shopping channel-style product videos for their website and YouTube channel, complete with hosts.
And, smaller brands are experimenting with video-supported sales content, too. Check out Green Building Supply’s product videos for their eco-friendly home improvement inventory (with personable hosts). Absolute Domestics shows how SABs can use video to support sales of services rather than goods, as in this simple but nicely-produced video on what to expect from their cleaning service. Meanwhile, post-sales support videos are a persuasive value add from Purl Soho to help you master knitting techniques needed when you buy a pattern from them.
To sum up, at the deep end of the pool, live-streamed e-commerce and shoppable video are already in use by big brands, but smaller brands can wade in with basic static goods-and-services videos on their websites and social channels to support sales.
Now is the time to look for inspiration about what video sales could do for brands you market, and nobody — nobody — has more experience with all of this than QVC.
Why QVC?
“I didn’t even know QVC still existed,” more than one of my marketing colleagues has responded when I’ve pointed to the 35-year-old home shopping empire as the way of the future.
The truth is, I’d probably be sleeping on QVC, too, if it weren’t for my Irish ancestry having drawn me to their annual St. Patrick’s Day sales event for the past 30+ years to enjoy their made-in-Ireland product lineup.
About seven times more people with Irish roots live in the United States than on the actual island of Ireland, yet the shopping channel’s holiday broadcast is one of the few televised events tailored to our famous nostalgia for our old country home. My family tunes in every March for the craic of examining Aran Crafts sweaters, Nicholas Mosse pottery, Belleek china, and Solvar jewelry, while munching on cake made from my great-grandmother Cotter’s recipe. Sometimes we get so excited, we buy things, but for the past few years, I’ve mainly been actively studying how QVC sells these items with such stunning success.
“Stunning” is the word and the wakeup call
QVC, which is a subsidiary of Quarate Retail International, generated $11.47 billion in 2020 and as early as 2015, nearly half of those sales were taking place online — consistently placing the brand in the top 10 for e-commerce sales, including mobile sales. The company has 16.5 million consolidated customers worldwide, and marketers’ mouths will surely water to learn that 90% of QVC’s revenue comes from loyal repeat shoppers. The average QVC shopper makes between 22-25 purchases per year!
Figures like these, paired with QVC’s graceful pas de deux incorporating both TV remotes and mobile devices should command our attention long enough to study what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC!”
While supplies last, I want to invite you to spend the next 10 minutes watching this Internet rebroadcast of a televised segment selling an Aran Crafts sweater, with your marketer’s eye on the magic happening in it. Watch this while imagining how it might translate as a static product or service video for a brand you’re marketing.
TL;DW? Here’s the breakdown of how QVC sells:
Main host
QVC hosts are personalities, many of whom have devoted fan bases. They’re trained in the products they sell, often visiting manufacturing plants to school themselves. When on air, the host juggles promoting a product and interacting with models, guest hosts, callers, and off-screen analysts. The host physically interacts with the product, highlights its features in abundant detail, and makes their sales pitch.
For our purposes, digital marketers are fully aware of the phenomenon of social influencers taking on celebrity status and being sought after as sales reps. At a more modest scale, small e-commerce companies (or any local business) that’s adopted digital sales models should identify one or more staff members with the necessary talents to become a video host for the brand.
You’ll need a spot of luck to secure relatable hosts. Just keep in mind that QVC’s secret formula is to get the viewer to ask, “Is this me?”, and that should help you match a host to your audience. This example of a nicely-done, low-key, densely-detailed presentation of a camping chair by a plainspoken host shows how simple and effective a short product video can be.
Guest hosts
Many QVC segments feature a representative from the brand associated with the product being sold. In our example, the guest host from Aran Crafts is a member of her family’s business, signing in remotely (due to the pandemic) to share the company’s story and build romance around the product.
Depending on the model you’re marketing, having a rep from any brand you resell would be an extra trust signal to convey via video sales. Think of the back-and-forth chat in a podcast and you’re almost there. Small retailers just reselling big brands may face a challenge here, but if you have a good portion of inventory from smaller companies and specialty or local manufacturers, definitely invite them to step in front of the camera with your host, as higher sales will benefit you both.
Models
Frequently, sales presentations include one or more models further interacting with the product. In our example, models are wearing these Irish sweaters while strolling around Ashford Castle. More romance.
Other segments feature models as subjects of various cosmetic treatments or as demonstrators of how merchandise is to be used. Models and demonstrators used to be standard in major American department stores. QVC brilliantly televised this incredible form of persuasion at about the same time it disappeared from real-world shopping in the US. Their sales figures prove just how huge the desire still is to see merchandise worn and used before buying.
For our scenario of creating online sales videos, such models could be a convincing extra in selling certain types of products, and many products should be demonstrated by the host or guest host. One thing I’ve not seen QVC do that I think e-commerce and O2O local brands definitely could do is a UGC approach of making your customer your model, demoing how they use your products in their real-world lives. Almost everybody can film themselves these days.
Callers
There are no live callers in our example, but QVC traditionally increases interactivity with the public with on-air phone calls.
If your sales videos are static, you’re not quite to the point of having to learn the art of handling live calls, but your product support phone and SMS numbers and links should be featured in every video.
Method
“If you go up there with the intent to sell, it’s all going to come crashing down around you...The real goal of QVC.... was to feel like a conversation between the host, the product specialist (us), and ‘Her’ – the woman age 35 to 65 who is sitting at home watching television.” - I went on air at QVC and sold something to America
There’s an element of magic to how QVC vends such a massive volume of products, but it’s all data-based. They’ve invested so heavily in understanding customer demographics that they’ve mastered exactly how to sell to them. Your consumer base may be totally different, but the key is to know your customer so well that you understand the exact approach to take when offering them your inventory of goods and services.
Another excerpt from the article cited above really gets this point across when talking about guest hosts:
“Our experienced guests tend to focus on the product. But our best guests are focused on the viewer. Is this for the viewer? Everything goes through that filter. And if you do that, everything comes out more naturally.”
Here at Moz, there may be Whiteboard Friday hosts you especially enjoy learning from. As a business owner or marketer, your job will be to identify talented people who can blend your brand culture with consumer research and translate that into a form of vending infotainment that succeeds with your particular shoppers. Successful QVC hosts make upwards of $500,000 a year for being so good at what they do.
Being good, in the sweater sample, means pairing QVC’s customer-centric, conversational selling method with USPs and an aura of scarcity. I’ll paraphrase the cues I heard:
“These sweaters are made exclusively for QVC” — a USP regarding rarity.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC” — this is a strong USP based on having better prices than a traveler would find if buying direct from the manufacturer.
“Reviews read like a love letter to this sweater” — incorporating persuasive UGC into the pitch.
“Half of our supply is already gone; don’t wait to order if you want one of these” —- this creates a sense of urgency to prompt customers to buy right away.
Analytics
The example presentation probably looked quite seamless and simple to you. But what’s actually going on “behind the scenes” of a QVC sales segment is that the host is receiving earpiece cues on exactly how to shape the pitch.
QVC’s analytics track what’s called a “feverline” of reaction to each word the host says and each movement they make. Producers can tell in real time which verbal signals and gestures are causing sales spikes, and communicate to the host to repeat them. One host, for example, dances repeatedly while demoing food products because more customers buy when he does so.
For most of the brands you market, you’re not likely to be called upon to deliver analytical data on par with QVC’s mission control-style setup, but you will want to learn about video analytics and do A/B testing to measure performance of product pages with video vs. those with static images. As you progress, analytics should be able to tell you which hosts, guests, and products are yielding the best ROI.
Three O2O advantages
In a large 2020 survey of local business owners and marketers, Moz found that more than half of respondents intend to maintain pandemic-era services of convenience beyond the hoped-for end of COVID-19. I’d expect this number to be even higher if we reran the survey in mid-2021. Online-to-offline shopping falls in this category and readers of my column know I’m always looking for advantages specific to local businesses.
I see three ways local brands have a leg up on their virtual e-commerce cousins, including behemoths like Amazon and even QVC:
1. Limited local competition = better SERP visibility
Virtual e-commerce brands have to compete against a whole country or the world for SERP visibility. Google Shopping’s “available nearby” filter cuts your market down to local map-size, making it easier to capture the attention of customers nearest your business. If you’re one of the only local brands supporting sales of your goods and services via videos on your website, you’re really going to stand out in the cities you serve.
2. Limited local inventory = more convincing authenticity
QVC is certainly an impressive enterprise, but one drawback of their methodology, at least in my eyes, is that their hosts have to be endlessly excited about millions of products. The same host who is exuding enthusiasm one minute over an electric toothbrush is breathless with admiration over a flameless candle the next. While QVC’s amazingly loyal customers are clearly not put off by the bottomless supply of energy over every single product sold, I find I don’t quite believe that the joy is continuously genuine. In my recognition of the sales pitch tactics, the company feels big and remote to me.
70% of Americans say they want to shop small. Your advantage in marketing a local business is that it will have limited inventory and an owner and staff who can realistically convey authenticity to the video viewer about products the business has hand-selected to sell. A big chain supermarket wants me to believe all of its apples are crisp, but my local farmer telling me in a product video that this year’s crop is crisper than last year’s makes a world of believable difference.
3. Even a small boost in conversions = a big difference for local brands
Backlinko recently compiled this list of exciting video marketing statistics that I hope you’ll read in full. I want to excerpt a few that really caught my eye:
84% of consumers cite video as the convincing factor in purchases
Product videos can help e-commerce stores increase sales by up to 144%
96% of people have watched an explainer video to better understand a product they’re evaluating
The Local Search Association found that 53% of people contact a business after watching one of their videos and 71% of people who made a purchase had watched an online video from that brand
Including filmed content on an e-commerce page can increase the average order value by 50+%
Video on a landing page can grow its conversion rate by up to 80%
If the company you’re promoting is one of the only ones in your local market to seize the opportunities hinted at by these statistics, think of what a difference it would make to see conversions (including leads and sales) rise by even a fraction of these numbers. Moreover, if the standout UX and helpfulness of the “v-commerce” environment you create makes you memorable to customers, you could grow local loyalty to new levels as the best resource in a community, generating a recipe for retention that, if not quite as astonishing as QVC’s, is pretty amazing for your region.
Go n-éirí leat — good luck!
Like you, I’m longing for the time when all customers can safely return to shopping locally in-person, but I do agree with fellow analysts predicting that the taste we’ve gotten for the convenience of shipping and local home delivery, curbside pickup, and tele-meetings is one that consumers won’t simply abandon.
Sales videos tackle one of digital marketing’s largest challenges by letting customers see people interacting with products when they can’t do it themselves, and 2021 is a good year to begin your investigation of this promising medium. My top tip is to spend some time this week watching QVC on TV and examining how they’ve parlayed live broadcasts into static
product videos that sell inventory like hotcakes on their website. I’m wishing you the luck and intrepidity of the Irish in your video ventures!
Ready to learn more about video marketing? Try these resources:
17 Best Ecommerce Product Video Examples
The ABCs of Video Content
8 Beginner Tips for Making Professional-Looking Videos
How to Film Creative Product Videos
YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020
How to Track YouTube Videos in Google Analytics Using Google Tag Manager in 4 Steps
Need to learn more about local search marketing before you start filming yourself and your products? Read The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide.
0 notes
nutrifami · 3 years
Text
Are You Ready to Sell Like QVC?
A photo. Some text. A shopping cart button.
It’s the setup you’ve been used to since you were Internet-years-old.
Electronic commerce has existed since the 1970s, passing through a prescient experimental phase of telephone-based TV shopping in the 1980s, and setting the tone for the future with Stephan Schambach’s 1990s invention of the first standardized online shopping software. US consumers spent $861.12 billion with online merchants in 2020. By making the “add to cart” ritual so familiar, it may seem like we’ve seen it all when it comes to digital commerce.
But hold onto your hats, because signs are emerging that we’re on the verge of the next online sales phase, akin to the 19th century leap from still photos to moving pictures.
If I’m right, with its standard product shots, conventional e-commerce will soon start to seem dull and dated in many categories compared to products sold via interactive video and further supported with post-purchase video.
Now is the time to prep for a filmed future, and fortunately, the trail has already been blazed for us by home shopping leader QVC, which took over television and then digitally remastered itself for the web, perfecting the art of video-based sales. Today, we’re going to deconstruct what’s happening on QVC, and how and why you may need to learn to apply it as an SEO, local SEO, or business owner — sooner than you think.
Why video sales?
A series of developments and disruptions point to a future in which many product sales will be facilitated via video. Let’s have a look at them:
First, we all know that humans love video content so much, they’ve caused YouTube to be the #2 search engine.
Google has documented the growth of video searches for “which (product) should I buy”.
When we look beyond the US, we encounter the phenomenon that livestreaming e-commerce video has become in China, highly-monopolized by Alibaba’s Taobao and creating celebrities out of its hosts.
Meanwhile, within the US, the pandemic caused a 44% increase in digital shopping spend between 2019-2020. We moved online last year for both our basic needs and nonessentials like never before.
The pandemic has also caused physical local brands to implement digital shopping, blurring former online-to-offline (O2O) barriers to such a degree that Internet transactions are no longer the special property of virtual e-commerce companies. This weirdly-dubbed “phygital” phenomenon — which is making Google the nexus of Maps-based local product sales — can be seen as a boon to local brands that take advantage of the search engine’s famed user-to-business proximity bias to rank their inventory for nearby customers.
At least, Google hopes to be the nexus of all this. The truth is, Google is reacting strongly right now to consumers starting half of their product searches on Amazon instead of on Google. Are you seeing ads everywhere these days informing you that Google is the best place to shop? So am I. With that massive, lucrative local business index in their back pocket and with GMB listings long supporting video uploads, Google has recently:
Acquired Pointy to integrate with retail POS systems
Made product listings free
Amped up their nearby shopping filter
Attempted to insert themselves directly into consumers’ curbside pickup routines while integrating deeply into data partnerships with major grocery brands
Experienced massive growth in local business reviews, and just released an algorithmic update specific to product review content (look out, Amazon!)
Experimented with detecting products in YouTube videos amid rumors flying about product results appearing in YouTube
Been spotted experimenting beyond influencer cameo videos to product cameos in knowledge panels
Meanwhile, big brands everywhere are getting into video sales. Walmart leapt ahead in the shoppable video contest with their debut of Cookshop, in which celebrity chefs cook while consumers click on the interactive video cues to add ingredients to their shopping carts.
Crate & Barrel is tiptoeing into the pool with quick product romance videos that resemble perfume ads, in which models lounge about on lovely accent chairs, creating the aura of a lifestyle to be lived. Nordstrom is filming bite-sized home shopping channel-style product videos for their website and YouTube channel, complete with hosts.
And, smaller brands are experimenting with video-supported sales content, too. Check out Green Building Supply’s product videos for their eco-friendly home improvement inventory (with personable hosts). Absolute Domestics shows how SABs can use video to support sales of services rather than goods, as in this simple but nicely-produced video on what to expect from their cleaning service. Meanwhile, post-sales support videos are a persuasive value add from Purl Soho to help you master knitting techniques needed when you buy a pattern from them.
To sum up, at the deep end of the pool, live-streamed e-commerce and shoppable video are already in use by big brands, but smaller brands can wade in with basic static goods-and-services videos on their websites and social channels to support sales.
Now is the time to look for inspiration about what video sales could do for brands you market, and nobody — nobody — has more experience with all of this than QVC.
Why QVC?
“I didn’t even know QVC still existed,” more than one of my marketing colleagues has responded when I’ve pointed to the 35-year-old home shopping empire as the way of the future.
The truth is, I’d probably be sleeping on QVC, too, if it weren’t for my Irish ancestry having drawn me to their annual St. Patrick’s Day sales event for the past 30+ years to enjoy their made-in-Ireland product lineup.
About seven times more people with Irish roots live in the United States than on the actual island of Ireland, yet the shopping channel’s holiday broadcast is one of the few televised events tailored to our famous nostalgia for our old country home. My family tunes in every March for the craic of examining Aran Crafts sweaters, Nicholas Mosse pottery, Belleek china, and Solvar jewelry, while munching on cake made from my great-grandmother Cotter’s recipe. Sometimes we get so excited, we buy things, but for the past few years, I’ve mainly been actively studying how QVC sells these items with such stunning success.
“Stunning” is the word and the wakeup call
QVC, which is a subsidiary of Quarate Retail International, generated $11.47 billion in 2020 and as early as 2015, nearly half of those sales were taking place online — consistently placing the brand in the top 10 for e-commerce sales, including mobile sales. The company has 16.5 million consolidated customers worldwide, and marketers’ mouths will surely water to learn that 90% of QVC’s revenue comes from loyal repeat shoppers. The average QVC shopper makes between 22-25 purchases per year!
Figures like these, paired with QVC’s graceful pas de deux incorporating both TV remotes and mobile devices should command our attention long enough to study what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC!”
While supplies last, I want to invite you to spend the next 10 minutes watching this Internet rebroadcast of a televised segment selling an Aran Crafts sweater, with your marketer’s eye on the magic happening in it. Watch this while imagining how it might translate as a static product or service video for a brand you’re marketing.
TL;DW? Here’s the breakdown of how QVC sells:
Main host
QVC hosts are personalities, many of whom have devoted fan bases. They’re trained in the products they sell, often visiting manufacturing plants to school themselves. When on air, the host juggles promoting a product and interacting with models, guest hosts, callers, and off-screen analysts. The host physically interacts with the product, highlights its features in abundant detail, and makes their sales pitch.
For our purposes, digital marketers are fully aware of the phenomenon of social influencers taking on celebrity status and being sought after as sales reps. At a more modest scale, small e-commerce companies (or any local business) that’s adopted digital sales models should identify one or more staff members with the necessary talents to become a video host for the brand.
You’ll need a spot of luck to secure relatable hosts. Just keep in mind that QVC’s secret formula is to get the viewer to ask, “Is this me?”, and that should help you match a host to your audience. This example of a nicely-done, low-key, densely-detailed presentation of a camping chair by a plainspoken host shows how simple and effective a short product video can be.
Guest hosts
Many QVC segments feature a representative from the brand associated with the product being sold. In our example, the guest host from Aran Crafts is a member of her family’s business, signing in remotely (due to the pandemic) to share the company’s story and build romance around the product.
Depending on the model you’re marketing, having a rep from any brand you resell would be an extra trust signal to convey via video sales. Think of the back-and-forth chat in a podcast and you’re almost there. Small retailers just reselling big brands may face a challenge here, but if you have a good portion of inventory from smaller companies and specialty or local manufacturers, definitely invite them to step in front of the camera with your host, as higher sales will benefit you both.
Models
Frequently, sales presentations include one or more models further interacting with the product. In our example, models are wearing these Irish sweaters while strolling around Ashford Castle. More romance.
Other segments feature models as subjects of various cosmetic treatments or as demonstrators of how merchandise is to be used. Models and demonstrators used to be standard in major American department stores. QVC brilliantly televised this incredible form of persuasion at about the same time it disappeared from real-world shopping in the US. Their sales figures prove just how huge the desire still is to see merchandise worn and used before buying.
For our scenario of creating online sales videos, such models could be a convincing extra in selling certain types of products, and many products should be demonstrated by the host or guest host. One thing I’ve not seen QVC do that I think e-commerce and O2O local brands definitely could do is a UGC approach of making your customer your model, demoing how they use your products in their real-world lives. Almost everybody can film themselves these days.
Callers
There are no live callers in our example, but QVC traditionally increases interactivity with the public with on-air phone calls.
If your sales videos are static, you’re not quite to the point of having to learn the art of handling live calls, but your product support phone and SMS numbers and links should be featured in every video.
Method
“If you go up there with the intent to sell, it’s all going to come crashing down around you...The real goal of QVC.... was to feel like a conversation between the host, the product specialist (us), and ‘Her’ – the woman age 35 to 65 who is sitting at home watching television.” - I went on air at QVC and sold something to America
There’s an element of magic to how QVC vends such a massive volume of products, but it’s all data-based. They’ve invested so heavily in understanding customer demographics that they’ve mastered exactly how to sell to them. Your consumer base may be totally different, but the key is to know your customer so well that you understand the exact approach to take when offering them your inventory of goods and services.
Another excerpt from the article cited above really gets this point across when talking about guest hosts:
“Our experienced guests tend to focus on the product. But our best guests are focused on the viewer. Is this for the viewer? Everything goes through that filter. And if you do that, everything comes out more naturally.”
Here at Moz, there may be Whiteboard Friday hosts you especially enjoy learning from. As a business owner or marketer, your job will be to identify talented people who can blend your brand culture with consumer research and translate that into a form of vending infotainment that succeeds with your particular shoppers. Successful QVC hosts make upwards of $500,000 a year for being so good at what they do.
Being good, in the sweater sample, means pairing QVC’s customer-centric, conversational selling method with USPs and an aura of scarcity. I’ll paraphrase the cues I heard:
“These sweaters are made exclusively for QVC” — a USP regarding rarity.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC” — this is a strong USP based on having better prices than a traveler would find if buying direct from the manufacturer.
“Reviews read like a love letter to this sweater” — incorporating persuasive UGC into the pitch.
“Half of our supply is already gone; don’t wait to order if you want one of these” —- this creates a sense of urgency to prompt customers to buy right away.
Analytics
The example presentation probably looked quite seamless and simple to you. But what’s actually going on “behind the scenes” of a QVC sales segment is that the host is receiving earpiece cues on exactly how to shape the pitch.
QVC’s analytics track what’s called a “feverline” of reaction to each word the host says and each movement they make. Producers can tell in real time which verbal signals and gestures are causing sales spikes, and communicate to the host to repeat them. One host, for example, dances repeatedly while demoing food products because more customers buy when he does so.
For most of the brands you market, you’re not likely to be called upon to deliver analytical data on par with QVC’s mission control-style setup, but you will want to learn about video analytics and do A/B testing to measure performance of product pages with video vs. those with static images. As you progress, analytics should be able to tell you which hosts, guests, and products are yielding the best ROI.
Three O2O advantages
In a large 2020 survey of local business owners and marketers, Moz found that more than half of respondents intend to maintain pandemic-era services of convenience beyond the hoped-for end of COVID-19. I’d expect this number to be even higher if we reran the survey in mid-2021. Online-to-offline shopping falls in this category and readers of my column know I’m always looking for advantages specific to local businesses.
I see three ways local brands have a leg up on their virtual e-commerce cousins, including behemoths like Amazon and even QVC:
1. Limited local competition = better SERP visibility
Virtual e-commerce brands have to compete against a whole country or the world for SERP visibility. Google Shopping’s “available nearby” filter cuts your market down to local map-size, making it easier to capture the attention of customers nearest your business. If you’re one of the only local brands supporting sales of your goods and services via videos on your website, you’re really going to stand out in the cities you serve.
2. Limited local inventory = more convincing authenticity
QVC is certainly an impressive enterprise, but one drawback of their methodology, at least in my eyes, is that their hosts have to be endlessly excited about millions of products. The same host who is exuding enthusiasm one minute over an electric toothbrush is breathless with admiration over a flameless candle the next. While QVC’s amazingly loyal customers are clearly not put off by the bottomless supply of energy over every single product sold, I find I don’t quite believe that the joy is continuously genuine. In my recognition of the sales pitch tactics, the company feels big and remote to me.
70% of Americans say they want to shop small. Your advantage in marketing a local business is that it will have limited inventory and an owner and staff who can realistically convey authenticity to the video viewer about products the business has hand-selected to sell. A big chain supermarket wants me to believe all of its apples are crisp, but my local farmer telling me in a product video that this year’s crop is crisper than last year’s makes a world of believable difference.
3. Even a small boost in conversions = a big difference for local brands
Backlinko recently compiled this list of exciting video marketing statistics that I hope you’ll read in full. I want to excerpt a few that really caught my eye:
84% of consumers cite video as the convincing factor in purchases
Product videos can help e-commerce stores increase sales by up to 144%
96% of people have watched an explainer video to better understand a product they’re evaluating
The Local Search Association found that 53% of people contact a business after watching one of their videos and 71% of people who made a purchase had watched an online video from that brand
Including filmed content on an e-commerce page can increase the average order value by 50+%
Video on a landing page can grow its conversion rate by up to 80%
If the company you’re promoting is one of the only ones in your local market to seize the opportunities hinted at by these statistics, think of what a difference it would make to see conversions (including leads and sales) rise by even a fraction of these numbers. Moreover, if the standout UX and helpfulness of the “v-commerce” environment you create makes you memorable to customers, you could grow local loyalty to new levels as the best resource in a community, generating a recipe for retention that, if not quite as astonishing as QVC’s, is pretty amazing for your region.
Go n-éirí leat — good luck!
Like you, I’m longing for the time when all customers can safely return to shopping locally in-person, but I do agree with fellow analysts predicting that the taste we’ve gotten for the convenience of shipping and local home delivery, curbside pickup, and tele-meetings is one that consumers won’t simply abandon.
Sales videos tackle one of digital marketing’s largest challenges by letting customers see people interacting with products when they can’t do it themselves, and 2021 is a good year to begin your investigation of this promising medium. My top tip is to spend some time this week watching QVC on TV and examining how they’ve parlayed live broadcasts into static
product videos that sell inventory like hotcakes on their website. I’m wishing you the luck and intrepidity of the Irish in your video ventures!
Ready to learn more about video marketing? Try these resources:
17 Best Ecommerce Product Video Examples
The ABCs of Video Content
8 Beginner Tips for Making Professional-Looking Videos
How to Film Creative Product Videos
YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020
How to Track YouTube Videos in Google Analytics Using Google Tag Manager in 4 Steps
Need to learn more about local search marketing before you start filming yourself and your products? Read The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide.
0 notes
xaydungtruonggia · 3 years
Text
Are You Ready to Sell Like QVC?
A photo. Some text. A shopping cart button.
It’s the setup you’ve been used to since you were Internet-years-old.
Electronic commerce has existed since the 1970s, passing through a prescient experimental phase of telephone-based TV shopping in the 1980s, and setting the tone for the future with Stephan Schambach’s 1990s invention of the first standardized online shopping software. US consumers spent $861.12 billion with online merchants in 2020. By making the “add to cart” ritual so familiar, it may seem like we’ve seen it all when it comes to digital commerce.
But hold onto your hats, because signs are emerging that we’re on the verge of the next online sales phase, akin to the 19th century leap from still photos to moving pictures.
If I’m right, with its standard product shots, conventional e-commerce will soon start to seem dull and dated in many categories compared to products sold via interactive video and further supported with post-purchase video.
Now is the time to prep for a filmed future, and fortunately, the trail has already been blazed for us by home shopping leader QVC, which took over television and then digitally remastered itself for the web, perfecting the art of video-based sales. Today, we’re going to deconstruct what’s happening on QVC, and how and why you may need to learn to apply it as an SEO, local SEO, or business owner — sooner than you think.
Why video sales?
A series of developments and disruptions point to a future in which many product sales will be facilitated via video. Let’s have a look at them:
First, we all know that humans love video content so much, they’ve caused YouTube to be the #2 search engine.
Google has documented the growth of video searches for “which (product) should I buy”.
When we look beyond the US, we encounter the phenomenon that livestreaming e-commerce video has become in China, highly-monopolized by Alibaba’s Taobao and creating celebrities out of its hosts.
Meanwhile, within the US, the pandemic caused a 44% increase in digital shopping spend between 2019-2020. We moved online last year for both our basic needs and nonessentials like never before.
The pandemic has also caused physical local brands to implement digital shopping, blurring former online-to-offline (O2O) barriers to such a degree that Internet transactions are no longer the special property of virtual e-commerce companies. This weirdly-dubbed “phygital” phenomenon — which is making Google the nexus of Maps-based local product sales — can be seen as a boon to local brands that take advantage of the search engine’s famed user-to-business proximity bias to rank their inventory for nearby customers.
At least, Google hopes to be the nexus of all this. The truth is, Google is reacting strongly right now to consumers starting half of their product searches on Amazon instead of on Google. Are you seeing ads everywhere these days informing you that Google is the best place to shop? So am I. With that massive, lucrative local business index in their back pocket and with GMB listings long supporting video uploads, Google has recently:
Acquired Pointy to integrate with retail POS systems
Made product listings free
Amped up their nearby shopping filter
Attempted to insert themselves directly into consumers’ curbside pickup routines while integrating deeply into data partnerships with major grocery brands
Experienced massive growth in local business reviews, and just released an algorithmic update specific to product review content (look out, Amazon!)
Experimented with detecting products in YouTube videos amid rumors flying about product results appearing in YouTube
Been spotted experimenting beyond influencer cameo videos to product cameos in knowledge panels
Meanwhile, big brands everywhere are getting into video sales. Walmart leapt ahead in the shoppable video contest with their debut of Cookshop, in which celebrity chefs cook while consumers click on the interactive video cues to add ingredients to their shopping carts.
Crate & Barrel is tiptoeing into the pool with quick product romance videos that resemble perfume ads, in which models lounge about on lovely accent chairs, creating the aura of a lifestyle to be lived. Nordstrom is filming bite-sized home shopping channel-style product videos for their website and YouTube channel, complete with hosts.
And, smaller brands are experimenting with video-supported sales content, too. Check out Green Building Supply’s product videos for their eco-friendly home improvement inventory (with personable hosts). Absolute Domestics shows how SABs can use video to support sales of services rather than goods, as in this simple but nicely-produced video on what to expect from their cleaning service. Meanwhile, post-sales support videos are a persuasive value add from Purl Soho to help you master knitting techniques needed when you buy a pattern from them.
To sum up, at the deep end of the pool, live-streamed e-commerce and shoppable video are already in use by big brands, but smaller brands can wade in with basic static goods-and-services videos on their websites and social channels to support sales.
Now is the time to look for inspiration about what video sales could do for brands you market, and nobody — nobody — has more experience with all of this than QVC.
Why QVC?
“I didn’t even know QVC still existed,” more than one of my marketing colleagues has responded when I’ve pointed to the 35-year-old home shopping empire as the way of the future.
The truth is, I’d probably be sleeping on QVC, too, if it weren’t for my Irish ancestry having drawn me to their annual St. Patrick’s Day sales event for the past 30+ years to enjoy their made-in-Ireland product lineup.
About seven times more people with Irish roots live in the United States than on the actual island of Ireland, yet the shopping channel’s holiday broadcast is one of the few televised events tailored to our famous nostalgia for our old country home. My family tunes in every March for the craic of examining Aran Crafts sweaters, Nicholas Mosse pottery, Belleek china, and Solvar jewelry, while munching on cake made from my great-grandmother Cotter’s recipe. Sometimes we get so excited, we buy things, but for the past few years, I’ve mainly been actively studying how QVC sells these items with such stunning success.
“Stunning” is the word and the wakeup call
QVC, which is a subsidiary of Quarate Retail International, generated $11.47 billion in 2020 and as early as 2015, nearly half of those sales were taking place online — consistently placing the brand in the top 10 for e-commerce sales, including mobile sales. The company has 16.5 million consolidated customers worldwide, and marketers’ mouths will surely water to learn that 90% of QVC’s revenue comes from loyal repeat shoppers. The average QVC shopper makes between 22-25 purchases per year!
Figures like these, paired with QVC’s graceful pas de deux incorporating both TV remotes and mobile devices should command our attention long enough to study what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC!”
While supplies last, I want to invite you to spend the next 10 minutes watching this Internet rebroadcast of a televised segment selling an Aran Crafts sweater, with your marketer’s eye on the magic happening in it. Watch this while imagining how it might translate as a static product or service video for a brand you’re marketing.
TL;DW? Here’s the breakdown of how QVC sells:
Main host
QVC hosts are personalities, many of whom have devoted fan bases. They’re trained in the products they sell, often visiting manufacturing plants to school themselves. When on air, the host juggles promoting a product and interacting with models, guest hosts, callers, and off-screen analysts. The host physically interacts with the product, highlights its features in abundant detail, and makes their sales pitch.
For our purposes, digital marketers are fully aware of the phenomenon of social influencers taking on celebrity status and being sought after as sales reps. At a more modest scale, small e-commerce companies (or any local business) that’s adopted digital sales models should identify one or more staff members with the necessary talents to become a video host for the brand.
You’ll need a spot of luck to secure relatable hosts. Just keep in mind that QVC’s secret formula is to get the viewer to ask, “Is this me?”, and that should help you match a host to your audience. This example of a nicely-done, low-key, densely-detailed presentation of a camping chair by a plainspoken host shows how simple and effective a short product video can be.
Guest hosts
Many QVC segments feature a representative from the brand associated with the product being sold. In our example, the guest host from Aran Crafts is a member of her family’s business, signing in remotely (due to the pandemic) to share the company’s story and build romance around the product.
Depending on the model you’re marketing, having a rep from any brand you resell would be an extra trust signal to convey via video sales. Think of the back-and-forth chat in a podcast and you’re almost there. Small retailers just reselling big brands may face a challenge here, but if you have a good portion of inventory from smaller companies and specialty or local manufacturers, definitely invite them to step in front of the camera with your host, as higher sales will benefit you both.
Models
Frequently, sales presentations include one or more models further interacting with the product. In our example, models are wearing these Irish sweaters while strolling around Ashford Castle. More romance.
Other segments feature models as subjects of various cosmetic treatments or as demonstrators of how merchandise is to be used. Models and demonstrators used to be standard in major American department stores. QVC brilliantly televised this incredible form of persuasion at about the same time it disappeared from real-world shopping in the US. Their sales figures prove just how huge the desire still is to see merchandise worn and used before buying.
For our scenario of creating online sales videos, such models could be a convincing extra in selling certain types of products, and many products should be demonstrated by the host or guest host. One thing I’ve not seen QVC do that I think e-commerce and O2O local brands definitely could do is a UGC approach of making your customer your model, demoing how they use your products in their real-world lives. Almost everybody can film themselves these days.
Callers
There are no live callers in our example, but QVC traditionally increases interactivity with the public with on-air phone calls.
If your sales videos are static, you’re not quite to the point of having to learn the art of handling live calls, but your product support phone and SMS numbers and links should be featured in every video.
Method
“If you go up there with the intent to sell, it’s all going to come crashing down around you...The real goal of QVC.... was to feel like a conversation between the host, the product specialist (us), and ‘Her’ – the woman age 35 to 65 who is sitting at home watching television.” - I went on air at QVC and sold something to America
There’s an element of magic to how QVC vends such a massive volume of products, but it’s all data-based. They’ve invested so heavily in understanding customer demographics that they’ve mastered exactly how to sell to them. Your consumer base may be totally different, but the key is to know your customer so well that you understand the exact approach to take when offering them your inventory of goods and services.
Another excerpt from the article cited above really gets this point across when talking about guest hosts:
“Our experienced guests tend to focus on the product. But our best guests are focused on the viewer. Is this for the viewer? Everything goes through that filter. And if you do that, everything comes out more naturally.”
Here at Moz, there may be Whiteboard Friday hosts you especially enjoy learning from. As a business owner or marketer, your job will be to identify talented people who can blend your brand culture with consumer research and translate that into a form of vending infotainment that succeeds with your particular shoppers. Successful QVC hosts make upwards of $500,000 a year for being so good at what they do.
Being good, in the sweater sample, means pairing QVC’s customer-centric, conversational selling method with USPs and an aura of scarcity. I’ll paraphrase the cues I heard:
“These sweaters are made exclusively for QVC” — a USP regarding rarity.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC” — this is a strong USP based on having better prices than a traveler would find if buying direct from the manufacturer.
“Reviews read like a love letter to this sweater” — incorporating persuasive UGC into the pitch.
“Half of our supply is already gone; don’t wait to order if you want one of these” —- this creates a sense of urgency to prompt customers to buy right away.
Analytics
The example presentation probably looked quite seamless and simple to you. But what’s actually going on “behind the scenes” of a QVC sales segment is that the host is receiving earpiece cues on exactly how to shape the pitch.
QVC’s analytics track what’s called a “feverline” of reaction to each word the host says and each movement they make. Producers can tell in real time which verbal signals and gestures are causing sales spikes, and communicate to the host to repeat them. One host, for example, dances repeatedly while demoing food products because more customers buy when he does so.
For most of the brands you market, you’re not likely to be called upon to deliver analytical data on par with QVC’s mission control-style setup, but you will want to learn about video analytics and do A/B testing to measure performance of product pages with video vs. those with static images. As you progress, analytics should be able to tell you which hosts, guests, and products are yielding the best ROI.
Three O2O advantages
In a large 2020 survey of local business owners and marketers, Moz found that more than half of respondents intend to maintain pandemic-era services of convenience beyond the hoped-for end of COVID-19. I’d expect this number to be even higher if we reran the survey in mid-2021. Online-to-offline shopping falls in this category and readers of my column know I’m always looking for advantages specific to local businesses.
I see three ways local brands have a leg up on their virtual e-commerce cousins, including behemoths like Amazon and even QVC:
1. Limited local competition = better SERP visibility
Virtual e-commerce brands have to compete against a whole country or the world for SERP visibility. Google Shopping’s “available nearby” filter cuts your market down to local map-size, making it easier to capture the attention of customers nearest your business. If you’re one of the only local brands supporting sales of your goods and services via videos on your website, you’re really going to stand out in the cities you serve.
2. Limited local inventory = more convincing authenticity
QVC is certainly an impressive enterprise, but one drawback of their methodology, at least in my eyes, is that their hosts have to be endlessly excited about millions of products. The same host who is exuding enthusiasm one minute over an electric toothbrush is breathless with admiration over a flameless candle the next. While QVC’s amazingly loyal customers are clearly not put off by the bottomless supply of energy over every single product sold, I find I don’t quite believe that the joy is continuously genuine. In my recognition of the sales pitch tactics, the company feels big and remote to me.
70% of Americans say they want to shop small. Your advantage in marketing a local business is that it will have limited inventory and an owner and staff who can realistically convey authenticity to the video viewer about products the business has hand-selected to sell. A big chain supermarket wants me to believe all of its apples are crisp, but my local farmer telling me in a product video that this year’s crop is crisper than last year’s makes a world of believable difference.
3. Even a small boost in conversions = a big difference for local brands
Backlinko recently compiled this list of exciting video marketing statistics that I hope you’ll read in full. I want to excerpt a few that really caught my eye:
84% of consumers cite video as the convincing factor in purchases
Product videos can help e-commerce stores increase sales by up to 144%
96% of people have watched an explainer video to better understand a product they’re evaluating
The Local Search Association found that 53% of people contact a business after watching one of their videos and 71% of people who made a purchase had watched an online video from that brand
Including filmed content on an e-commerce page can increase the average order value by 50+%
Video on a landing page can grow its conversion rate by up to 80%
If the company you’re promoting is one of the only ones in your local market to seize the opportunities hinted at by these statistics, think of what a difference it would make to see conversions (including leads and sales) rise by even a fraction of these numbers. Moreover, if the standout UX and helpfulness of the “v-commerce” environment you create makes you memorable to customers, you could grow local loyalty to new levels as the best resource in a community, generating a recipe for retention that, if not quite as astonishing as QVC’s, is pretty amazing for your region.
Go n-éirí leat — good luck!
Like you, I’m longing for the time when all customers can safely return to shopping locally in-person, but I do agree with fellow analysts predicting that the taste we’ve gotten for the convenience of shipping and local home delivery, curbside pickup, and tele-meetings is one that consumers won’t simply abandon.
Sales videos tackle one of digital marketing’s largest challenges by letting customers see people interacting with products when they can’t do it themselves, and 2021 is a good year to begin your investigation of this promising medium. My top tip is to spend some time this week watching QVC on TV and examining how they’ve parlayed live broadcasts into static
product videos that sell inventory like hotcakes on their website. I’m wishing you the luck and intrepidity of the Irish in your video ventures!
Ready to learn more about video marketing? Try these resources:
17 Best Ecommerce Product Video Examples
The ABCs of Video Content
8 Beginner Tips for Making Professional-Looking Videos
How to Film Creative Product Videos
YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020
How to Track YouTube Videos in Google Analytics Using Google Tag Manager in 4 Steps
Need to learn more about local search marketing before you start filming yourself and your products? Read The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide.
0 notes
ductrungnguyen87 · 3 years
Text
Are You Ready to Sell Like QVC?
A photo. Some text. A shopping cart button.
It’s the setup you’ve been used to since you were Internet-years-old.
Electronic commerce has existed since the 1970s, passing through a prescient experimental phase of telephone-based TV shopping in the 1980s, and setting the tone for the future with Stephan Schambach’s 1990s invention of the first standardized online shopping software. US consumers spent $861.12 billion with online merchants in 2020. By making the “add to cart” ritual so familiar, it may seem like we’ve seen it all when it comes to digital commerce.
But hold onto your hats, because signs are emerging that we’re on the verge of the next online sales phase, akin to the 19th century leap from still photos to moving pictures.
If I’m right, with its standard product shots, conventional e-commerce will soon start to seem dull and dated in many categories compared to products sold via interactive video and further supported with post-purchase video.
Now is the time to prep for a filmed future, and fortunately, the trail has already been blazed for us by home shopping leader QVC, which took over television and then digitally remastered itself for the web, perfecting the art of video-based sales. Today, we’re going to deconstruct what’s happening on QVC, and how and why you may need to learn to apply it as an SEO, local SEO, or business owner — sooner than you think.
Why video sales?
A series of developments and disruptions point to a future in which many product sales will be facilitated via video. Let’s have a look at them:
First, we all know that humans love video content so much, they’ve caused YouTube to be the #2 search engine.
Google has documented the growth of video searches for “which (product) should I buy”.
When we look beyond the US, we encounter the phenomenon that livestreaming e-commerce video has become in China, highly-monopolized by Alibaba’s Taobao and creating celebrities out of its hosts.
Meanwhile, within the US, the pandemic caused a 44% increase in digital shopping spend between 2019-2020. We moved online last year for both our basic needs and nonessentials like never before.
The pandemic has also caused physical local brands to implement digital shopping, blurring former online-to-offline (O2O) barriers to such a degree that Internet transactions are no longer the special property of virtual e-commerce companies. This weirdly-dubbed “phygital” phenomenon — which is making Google the nexus of Maps-based local product sales — can be seen as a boon to local brands that take advantage of the search engine’s famed user-to-business proximity bias to rank their inventory for nearby customers.
At least, Google hopes to be the nexus of all this. The truth is, Google is reacting strongly right now to consumers starting half of their product searches on Amazon instead of on Google. Are you seeing ads everywhere these days informing you that Google is the best place to shop? So am I. With that massive, lucrative local business index in their back pocket and with GMB listings long supporting video uploads, Google has recently:
Acquired Pointy to integrate with retail POS systems
Made product listings free
Amped up their nearby shopping filter
Attempted to insert themselves directly into consumers’ curbside pickup routines while integrating deeply into data partnerships with major grocery brands
Experienced massive growth in local business reviews, and just released an algorithmic update specific to product review content (look out, Amazon!)
Experimented with detecting products in YouTube videos amid rumors flying about product results appearing in YouTube
Been spotted experimenting beyond influencer cameo videos to product cameos in knowledge panels
Meanwhile, big brands everywhere are getting into video sales. Walmart leapt ahead in the shoppable video contest with their debut of Cookshop, in which celebrity chefs cook while consumers click on the interactive video cues to add ingredients to their shopping carts.
Crate & Barrel is tiptoeing into the pool with quick product romance videos that resemble perfume ads, in which models lounge about on lovely accent chairs, creating the aura of a lifestyle to be lived. Nordstrom is filming bite-sized home shopping channel-style product videos for their website and YouTube channel, complete with hosts.
And, smaller brands are experimenting with video-supported sales content, too. Check out Green Building Supply’s product videos for their eco-friendly home improvement inventory (with personable hosts). Absolute Domestics shows how SABs can use video to support sales of services rather than goods, as in this simple but nicely-produced video on what to expect from their cleaning service. Meanwhile, post-sales support videos are a persuasive value add from Purl Soho to help you master knitting techniques needed when you buy a pattern from them.
To sum up, at the deep end of the pool, live-streamed e-commerce and shoppable video are already in use by big brands, but smaller brands can wade in with basic static goods-and-services videos on their websites and social channels to support sales.
Now is the time to look for inspiration about what video sales could do for brands you market, and nobody — nobody — has more experience with all of this than QVC.
Why QVC?
“I didn’t even know QVC still existed,” more than one of my marketing colleagues has responded when I’ve pointed to the 35-year-old home shopping empire as the way of the future.
The truth is, I’d probably be sleeping on QVC, too, if it weren’t for my Irish ancestry having drawn me to their annual St. Patrick’s Day sales event for the past 30+ years to enjoy their made-in-Ireland product lineup.
About seven times more people with Irish roots live in the United States than on the actual island of Ireland, yet the shopping channel’s holiday broadcast is one of the few televised events tailored to our famous nostalgia for our old country home. My family tunes in every March for the craic of examining Aran Crafts sweaters, Nicholas Mosse pottery, Belleek china, and Solvar jewelry, while munching on cake made from my great-grandmother Cotter’s recipe. Sometimes we get so excited, we buy things, but for the past few years, I’ve mainly been actively studying how QVC sells these items with such stunning success.
“Stunning” is the word and the wakeup call
QVC, which is a subsidiary of Quarate Retail International, generated $11.47 billion in 2020 and as early as 2015, nearly half of those sales were taking place online — consistently placing the brand in the top 10 for e-commerce sales, including mobile sales. The company has 16.5 million consolidated customers worldwide, and marketers’ mouths will surely water to learn that 90% of QVC’s revenue comes from loyal repeat shoppers. The average QVC shopper makes between 22-25 purchases per year!
Figures like these, paired with QVC’s graceful pas de deux incorporating both TV remotes and mobile devices should command our attention long enough to study what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC!”
While supplies last, I want to invite you to spend the next 10 minutes watching this Internet rebroadcast of a televised segment selling an Aran Crafts sweater, with your marketer’s eye on the magic happening in it. Watch this while imagining how it might translate as a static product or service video for a brand you’re marketing.
TL;DW? Here’s the breakdown of how QVC sells:
Main host
QVC hosts are personalities, many of whom have devoted fan bases. They’re trained in the products they sell, often visiting manufacturing plants to school themselves. When on air, the host juggles promoting a product and interacting with models, guest hosts, callers, and off-screen analysts. The host physically interacts with the product, highlights its features in abundant detail, and makes their sales pitch.
For our purposes, digital marketers are fully aware of the phenomenon of social influencers taking on celebrity status and being sought after as sales reps. At a more modest scale, small e-commerce companies (or any local business) that’s adopted digital sales models should identify one or more staff members with the necessary talents to become a video host for the brand.
You’ll need a spot of luck to secure relatable hosts. Just keep in mind that QVC’s secret formula is to get the viewer to ask, “Is this me?”, and that should help you match a host to your audience. This example of a nicely-done, low-key, densely-detailed presentation of a camping chair by a plainspoken host shows how simple and effective a short product video can be.
Guest hosts
Many QVC segments feature a representative from the brand associated with the product being sold. In our example, the guest host from Aran Crafts is a member of her family’s business, signing in remotely (due to the pandemic) to share the company’s story and build romance around the product.
Depending on the model you’re marketing, having a rep from any brand you resell would be an extra trust signal to convey via video sales. Think of the back-and-forth chat in a podcast and you’re almost there. Small retailers just reselling big brands may face a challenge here, but if you have a good portion of inventory from smaller companies and specialty or local manufacturers, definitely invite them to step in front of the camera with your host, as higher sales will benefit you both.
Models
Frequently, sales presentations include one or more models further interacting with the product. In our example, models are wearing these Irish sweaters while strolling around Ashford Castle. More romance.
Other segments feature models as subjects of various cosmetic treatments or as demonstrators of how merchandise is to be used. Models and demonstrators used to be standard in major American department stores. QVC brilliantly televised this incredible form of persuasion at about the same time it disappeared from real-world shopping in the US. Their sales figures prove just how huge the desire still is to see merchandise worn and used before buying.
For our scenario of creating online sales videos, such models could be a convincing extra in selling certain types of products, and many products should be demonstrated by the host or guest host. One thing I’ve not seen QVC do that I think e-commerce and O2O local brands definitely could do is a UGC approach of making your customer your model, demoing how they use your products in their real-world lives. Almost everybody can film themselves these days.
Callers
There are no live callers in our example, but QVC traditionally increases interactivity with the public with on-air phone calls.
If your sales videos are static, you’re not quite to the point of having to learn the art of handling live calls, but your product support phone and SMS numbers and links should be featured in every video.
Method
“If you go up there with the intent to sell, it’s all going to come crashing down around you...The real goal of QVC.... was to feel like a conversation between the host, the product specialist (us), and ‘Her’ – the woman age 35 to 65 who is sitting at home watching television.” - I went on air at QVC and sold something to America
There’s an element of magic to how QVC vends such a massive volume of products, but it’s all data-based. They’ve invested so heavily in understanding customer demographics that they’ve mastered exactly how to sell to them. Your consumer base may be totally different, but the key is to know your customer so well that you understand the exact approach to take when offering them your inventory of goods and services.
Another excerpt from the article cited above really gets this point across when talking about guest hosts:
“Our experienced guests tend to focus on the product. But our best guests are focused on the viewer. Is this for the viewer? Everything goes through that filter. And if you do that, everything comes out more naturally.”
Here at Moz, there may be Whiteboard Friday hosts you especially enjoy learning from. As a business owner or marketer, your job will be to identify talented people who can blend your brand culture with consumer research and translate that into a form of vending infotainment that succeeds with your particular shoppers. Successful QVC hosts make upwards of $500,000 a year for being so good at what they do.
Being good, in the sweater sample, means pairing QVC’s customer-centric, conversational selling method with USPs and an aura of scarcity. I’ll paraphrase the cues I heard:
“These sweaters are made exclusively for QVC” — a USP regarding rarity.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC” — this is a strong USP based on having better prices than a traveler would find if buying direct from the manufacturer.
“Reviews read like a love letter to this sweater” — incorporating persuasive UGC into the pitch.
“Half of our supply is already gone; don’t wait to order if you want one of these” —- this creates a sense of urgency to prompt customers to buy right away.
Analytics
The example presentation probably looked quite seamless and simple to you. But what’s actually going on “behind the scenes” of a QVC sales segment is that the host is receiving earpiece cues on exactly how to shape the pitch.
QVC’s analytics track what’s called a “feverline” of reaction to each word the host says and each movement they make. Producers can tell in real time which verbal signals and gestures are causing sales spikes, and communicate to the host to repeat them. One host, for example, dances repeatedly while demoing food products because more customers buy when he does so.
For most of the brands you market, you’re not likely to be called upon to deliver analytical data on par with QVC’s mission control-style setup, but you will want to learn about video analytics and do A/B testing to measure performance of product pages with video vs. those with static images. As you progress, analytics should be able to tell you which hosts, guests, and products are yielding the best ROI.
Three O2O advantages
In a large 2020 survey of local business owners and marketers, Moz found that more than half of respondents intend to maintain pandemic-era services of convenience beyond the hoped-for end of COVID-19. I’d expect this number to be even higher if we reran the survey in mid-2021. Online-to-offline shopping falls in this category and readers of my column know I’m always looking for advantages specific to local businesses.
I see three ways local brands have a leg up on their virtual e-commerce cousins, including behemoths like Amazon and even QVC:
1. Limited local competition = better SERP visibility
Virtual e-commerce brands have to compete against a whole country or the world for SERP visibility. Google Shopping’s “available nearby” filter cuts your market down to local map-size, making it easier to capture the attention of customers nearest your business. If you’re one of the only local brands supporting sales of your goods and services via videos on your website, you’re really going to stand out in the cities you serve.
2. Limited local inventory = more convincing authenticity
QVC is certainly an impressive enterprise, but one drawback of their methodology, at least in my eyes, is that their hosts have to be endlessly excited about millions of products. The same host who is exuding enthusiasm one minute over an electric toothbrush is breathless with admiration over a flameless candle the next. While QVC’s amazingly loyal customers are clearly not put off by the bottomless supply of energy over every single product sold, I find I don’t quite believe that the joy is continuously genuine. In my recognition of the sales pitch tactics, the company feels big and remote to me.
70% of Americans say they want to shop small. Your advantage in marketing a local business is that it will have limited inventory and an owner and staff who can realistically convey authenticity to the video viewer about products the business has hand-selected to sell. A big chain supermarket wants me to believe all of its apples are crisp, but my local farmer telling me in a product video that this year’s crop is crisper than last year’s makes a world of believable difference.
3. Even a small boost in conversions = a big difference for local brands
Backlinko recently compiled this list of exciting video marketing statistics that I hope you’ll read in full. I want to excerpt a few that really caught my eye:
84% of consumers cite video as the convincing factor in purchases
Product videos can help e-commerce stores increase sales by up to 144%
96% of people have watched an explainer video to better understand a product they’re evaluating
The Local Search Association found that 53% of people contact a business after watching one of their videos and 71% of people who made a purchase had watched an online video from that brand
Including filmed content on an e-commerce page can increase the average order value by 50+%
Video on a landing page can grow its conversion rate by up to 80%
If the company you’re promoting is one of the only ones in your local market to seize the opportunities hinted at by these statistics, think of what a difference it would make to see conversions (including leads and sales) rise by even a fraction of these numbers. Moreover, if the standout UX and helpfulness of the “v-commerce” environment you create makes you memorable to customers, you could grow local loyalty to new levels as the best resource in a community, generating a recipe for retention that, if not quite as astonishing as QVC’s, is pretty amazing for your region.
Go n-éirí leat — good luck!
Like you, I’m longing for the time when all customers can safely return to shopping locally in-person, but I do agree with fellow analysts predicting that the taste we’ve gotten for the convenience of shipping and local home delivery, curbside pickup, and tele-meetings is one that consumers won’t simply abandon.
Sales videos tackle one of digital marketing’s largest challenges by letting customers see people interacting with products when they can’t do it themselves, and 2021 is a good year to begin your investigation of this promising medium. My top tip is to spend some time this week watching QVC on TV and examining how they’ve parlayed live broadcasts into static
product videos that sell inventory like hotcakes on their website. I’m wishing you the luck and intrepidity of the Irish in your video ventures!
Ready to learn more about video marketing? Try these resources:
17 Best Ecommerce Product Video Examples
The ABCs of Video Content
8 Beginner Tips for Making Professional-Looking Videos
How to Film Creative Product Videos
YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020
How to Track YouTube Videos in Google Analytics Using Google Tag Manager in 4 Steps
Need to learn more about local search marketing before you start filming yourself and your products? Read The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide.
0 notes
camerasieunhovn · 3 years
Text
Are You Ready to Sell Like QVC?
A photo. Some text. A shopping cart button.
It’s the setup you’ve been used to since you were Internet-years-old.
Electronic commerce has existed since the 1970s, passing through a prescient experimental phase of telephone-based TV shopping in the 1980s, and setting the tone for the future with Stephan Schambach’s 1990s invention of the first standardized online shopping software. US consumers spent $861.12 billion with online merchants in 2020. By making the “add to cart” ritual so familiar, it may seem like we’ve seen it all when it comes to digital commerce.
But hold onto your hats, because signs are emerging that we’re on the verge of the next online sales phase, akin to the 19th century leap from still photos to moving pictures.
If I’m right, with its standard product shots, conventional e-commerce will soon start to seem dull and dated in many categories compared to products sold via interactive video and further supported with post-purchase video.
Now is the time to prep for a filmed future, and fortunately, the trail has already been blazed for us by home shopping leader QVC, which took over television and then digitally remastered itself for the web, perfecting the art of video-based sales. Today, we’re going to deconstruct what’s happening on QVC, and how and why you may need to learn to apply it as an SEO, local SEO, or business owner — sooner than you think.
Why video sales?
A series of developments and disruptions point to a future in which many product sales will be facilitated via video. Let’s have a look at them:
First, we all know that humans love video content so much, they’ve caused YouTube to be the #2 search engine.
Google has documented the growth of video searches for “which (product) should I buy”.
When we look beyond the US, we encounter the phenomenon that livestreaming e-commerce video has become in China, highly-monopolized by Alibaba’s Taobao and creating celebrities out of its hosts.
Meanwhile, within the US, the pandemic caused a 44% increase in digital shopping spend between 2019-2020. We moved online last year for both our basic needs and nonessentials like never before.
The pandemic has also caused physical local brands to implement digital shopping, blurring former online-to-offline (O2O) barriers to such a degree that Internet transactions are no longer the special property of virtual e-commerce companies. This weirdly-dubbed “phygital” phenomenon — which is making Google the nexus of Maps-based local product sales — can be seen as a boon to local brands that take advantage of the search engine’s famed user-to-business proximity bias to rank their inventory for nearby customers.
At least, Google hopes to be the nexus of all this. The truth is, Google is reacting strongly right now to consumers starting half of their product searches on Amazon instead of on Google. Are you seeing ads everywhere these days informing you that Google is the best place to shop? So am I. With that massive, lucrative local business index in their back pocket and with GMB listings long supporting video uploads, Google has recently:
Acquired Pointy to integrate with retail POS systems
Made product listings free
Amped up their nearby shopping filter
Attempted to insert themselves directly into consumers’ curbside pickup routines while integrating deeply into data partnerships with major grocery brands
Experienced massive growth in local business reviews, and just released an algorithmic update specific to product review content (look out, Amazon!)
Experimented with detecting products in YouTube videos amid rumors flying about product results appearing in YouTube
Been spotted experimenting beyond influencer cameo videos to product cameos in knowledge panels
Meanwhile, big brands everywhere are getting into video sales. Walmart leapt ahead in the shoppable video contest with their debut of Cookshop, in which celebrity chefs cook while consumers click on the interactive video cues to add ingredients to their shopping carts.
Crate & Barrel is tiptoeing into the pool with quick product romance videos that resemble perfume ads, in which models lounge about on lovely accent chairs, creating the aura of a lifestyle to be lived. Nordstrom is filming bite-sized home shopping channel-style product videos for their website and YouTube channel, complete with hosts.
And, smaller brands are experimenting with video-supported sales content, too. Check out Green Building Supply’s product videos for their eco-friendly home improvement inventory (with personable hosts). Absolute Domestics shows how SABs can use video to support sales of services rather than goods, as in this simple but nicely-produced video on what to expect from their cleaning service. Meanwhile, post-sales support videos are a persuasive value add from Purl Soho to help you master knitting techniques needed when you buy a pattern from them.
To sum up, at the deep end of the pool, live-streamed e-commerce and shoppable video are already in use by big brands, but smaller brands can wade in with basic static goods-and-services videos on their websites and social channels to support sales.
Now is the time to look for inspiration about what video sales could do for brands you market, and nobody — nobody — has more experience with all of this than QVC.
Why QVC?
“I didn’t even know QVC still existed,” more than one of my marketing colleagues has responded when I’ve pointed to the 35-year-old home shopping empire as the way of the future.
The truth is, I’d probably be sleeping on QVC, too, if it weren’t for my Irish ancestry having drawn me to their annual St. Patrick’s Day sales event for the past 30+ years to enjoy their made-in-Ireland product lineup.
About seven times more people with Irish roots live in the United States than on the actual island of Ireland, yet the shopping channel’s holiday broadcast is one of the few televised events tailored to our famous nostalgia for our old country home. My family tunes in every March for the craic of examining Aran Crafts sweaters, Nicholas Mosse pottery, Belleek china, and Solvar jewelry, while munching on cake made from my great-grandmother Cotter’s recipe. Sometimes we get so excited, we buy things, but for the past few years, I’ve mainly been actively studying how QVC sells these items with such stunning success.
“Stunning” is the word and the wakeup call
QVC, which is a subsidiary of Quarate Retail International, generated $11.47 billion in 2020 and as early as 2015, nearly half of those sales were taking place online — consistently placing the brand in the top 10 for e-commerce sales, including mobile sales. The company has 16.5 million consolidated customers worldwide, and marketers’ mouths will surely water to learn that 90% of QVC’s revenue comes from loyal repeat shoppers. The average QVC shopper makes between 22-25 purchases per year!
Figures like these, paired with QVC’s graceful pas de deux incorporating both TV remotes and mobile devices should command our attention long enough to study what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC!”
While supplies last, I want to invite you to spend the next 10 minutes watching this Internet rebroadcast of a televised segment selling an Aran Crafts sweater, with your marketer’s eye on the magic happening in it. Watch this while imagining how it might translate as a static product or service video for a brand you’re marketing.
TL;DW? Here’s the breakdown of how QVC sells:
Main host
QVC hosts are personalities, many of whom have devoted fan bases. They’re trained in the products they sell, often visiting manufacturing plants to school themselves. When on air, the host juggles promoting a product and interacting with models, guest hosts, callers, and off-screen analysts. The host physically interacts with the product, highlights its features in abundant detail, and makes their sales pitch.
For our purposes, digital marketers are fully aware of the phenomenon of social influencers taking on celebrity status and being sought after as sales reps. At a more modest scale, small e-commerce companies (or any local business) that’s adopted digital sales models should identify one or more staff members with the necessary talents to become a video host for the brand.
You’ll need a spot of luck to secure relatable hosts. Just keep in mind that QVC’s secret formula is to get the viewer to ask, “Is this me?”, and that should help you match a host to your audience. This example of a nicely-done, low-key, densely-detailed presentation of a camping chair by a plainspoken host shows how simple and effective a short product video can be.
Guest hosts
Many QVC segments feature a representative from the brand associated with the product being sold. In our example, the guest host from Aran Crafts is a member of her family’s business, signing in remotely (due to the pandemic) to share the company’s story and build romance around the product.
Depending on the model you’re marketing, having a rep from any brand you resell would be an extra trust signal to convey via video sales. Think of the back-and-forth chat in a podcast and you’re almost there. Small retailers just reselling big brands may face a challenge here, but if you have a good portion of inventory from smaller companies and specialty or local manufacturers, definitely invite them to step in front of the camera with your host, as higher sales will benefit you both.
Models
Frequently, sales presentations include one or more models further interacting with the product. In our example, models are wearing these Irish sweaters while strolling around Ashford Castle. More romance.
Other segments feature models as subjects of various cosmetic treatments or as demonstrators of how merchandise is to be used. Models and demonstrators used to be standard in major American department stores. QVC brilliantly televised this incredible form of persuasion at about the same time it disappeared from real-world shopping in the US. Their sales figures prove just how huge the desire still is to see merchandise worn and used before buying.
For our scenario of creating online sales videos, such models could be a convincing extra in selling certain types of products, and many products should be demonstrated by the host or guest host. One thing I’ve not seen QVC do that I think e-commerce and O2O local brands definitely could do is a UGC approach of making your customer your model, demoing how they use your products in their real-world lives. Almost everybody can film themselves these days.
Callers
There are no live callers in our example, but QVC traditionally increases interactivity with the public with on-air phone calls.
If your sales videos are static, you’re not quite to the point of having to learn the art of handling live calls, but your product support phone and SMS numbers and links should be featured in every video.
Method
“If you go up there with the intent to sell, it’s all going to come crashing down around you...The real goal of QVC.... was to feel like a conversation between the host, the product specialist (us), and ‘Her’ – the woman age 35 to 65 who is sitting at home watching television.” - I went on air at QVC and sold something to America
There’s an element of magic to how QVC vends such a massive volume of products, but it’s all data-based. They’ve invested so heavily in understanding customer demographics that they’ve mastered exactly how to sell to them. Your consumer base may be totally different, but the key is to know your customer so well that you understand the exact approach to take when offering them your inventory of goods and services.
Another excerpt from the article cited above really gets this point across when talking about guest hosts:
“Our experienced guests tend to focus on the product. But our best guests are focused on the viewer. Is this for the viewer? Everything goes through that filter. And if you do that, everything comes out more naturally.”
Here at Moz, there may be Whiteboard Friday hosts you especially enjoy learning from. As a business owner or marketer, your job will be to identify talented people who can blend your brand culture with consumer research and translate that into a form of vending infotainment that succeeds with your particular shoppers. Successful QVC hosts make upwards of $500,000 a year for being so good at what they do.
Being good, in the sweater sample, means pairing QVC’s customer-centric, conversational selling method with USPs and an aura of scarcity. I’ll paraphrase the cues I heard:
“These sweaters are made exclusively for QVC” — a USP regarding rarity.
“Enjoy visiting Ireland, but buy your sweaters on QVC” — this is a strong USP based on having better prices than a traveler would find if buying direct from the manufacturer.
“Reviews read like a love letter to this sweater” — incorporating persuasive UGC into the pitch.
“Half of our supply is already gone; don’t wait to order if you want one of these” —- this creates a sense of urgency to prompt customers to buy right away.
Analytics
The example presentation probably looked quite seamless and simple to you. But what’s actually going on “behind the scenes” of a QVC sales segment is that the host is receiving earpiece cues on exactly how to shape the pitch.
QVC’s analytics track what’s called a “feverline” of reaction to each word the host says and each movement they make. Producers can tell in real time which verbal signals and gestures are causing sales spikes, and communicate to the host to repeat them. One host, for example, dances repeatedly while demoing food products because more customers buy when he does so.
For most of the brands you market, you’re not likely to be called upon to deliver analytical data on par with QVC’s mission control-style setup, but you will want to learn about video analytics and do A/B testing to measure performance of product pages with video vs. those with static images. As you progress, analytics should be able to tell you which hosts, guests, and products are yielding the best ROI.
Three O2O advantages
In a large 2020 survey of local business owners and marketers, Moz found that more than half of respondents intend to maintain pandemic-era services of convenience beyond the hoped-for end of COVID-19. I’d expect this number to be even higher if we reran the survey in mid-2021. Online-to-offline shopping falls in this category and readers of my column know I’m always looking for advantages specific to local businesses.
I see three ways local brands have a leg up on their virtual e-commerce cousins, including behemoths like Amazon and even QVC:
1. Limited local competition = better SERP visibility
Virtual e-commerce brands have to compete against a whole country or the world for SERP visibility. Google Shopping’s “available nearby” filter cuts your market down to local map-size, making it easier to capture the attention of customers nearest your business. If you’re one of the only local brands supporting sales of your goods and services via videos on your website, you’re really going to stand out in the cities you serve.
2. Limited local inventory = more convincing authenticity
QVC is certainly an impressive enterprise, but one drawback of their methodology, at least in my eyes, is that their hosts have to be endlessly excited about millions of products. The same host who is exuding enthusiasm one minute over an electric toothbrush is breathless with admiration over a flameless candle the next. While QVC’s amazingly loyal customers are clearly not put off by the bottomless supply of energy over every single product sold, I find I don’t quite believe that the joy is continuously genuine. In my recognition of the sales pitch tactics, the company feels big and remote to me.
70% of Americans say they want to shop small. Your advantage in marketing a local business is that it will have limited inventory and an owner and staff who can realistically convey authenticity to the video viewer about products the business has hand-selected to sell. A big chain supermarket wants me to believe all of its apples are crisp, but my local farmer telling me in a product video that this year’s crop is crisper than last year’s makes a world of believable difference.
3. Even a small boost in conversions = a big difference for local brands
Backlinko recently compiled this list of exciting video marketing statistics that I hope you’ll read in full. I want to excerpt a few that really caught my eye:
84% of consumers cite video as the convincing factor in purchases
Product videos can help e-commerce stores increase sales by up to 144%
96% of people have watched an explainer video to better understand a product they’re evaluating
The Local Search Association found that 53% of people contact a business after watching one of their videos and 71% of people who made a purchase had watched an online video from that brand
Including filmed content on an e-commerce page can increase the average order value by 50+%
Video on a landing page can grow its conversion rate by up to 80%
If the company you’re promoting is one of the only ones in your local market to seize the opportunities hinted at by these statistics, think of what a difference it would make to see conversions (including leads and sales) rise by even a fraction of these numbers. Moreover, if the standout UX and helpfulness of the “v-commerce” environment you create makes you memorable to customers, you could grow local loyalty to new levels as the best resource in a community, generating a recipe for retention that, if not quite as astonishing as QVC’s, is pretty amazing for your region.
Go n-éirí leat — good luck!
Like you, I’m longing for the time when all customers can safely return to shopping locally in-person, but I do agree with fellow analysts predicting that the taste we’ve gotten for the convenience of shipping and local home delivery, curbside pickup, and tele-meetings is one that consumers won’t simply abandon.
Sales videos tackle one of digital marketing’s largest challenges by letting customers see people interacting with products when they can’t do it themselves, and 2021 is a good year to begin your investigation of this promising medium. My top tip is to spend some time this week watching QVC on TV and examining how they’ve parlayed live broadcasts into static
product videos that sell inventory like hotcakes on their website. I’m wishing you the luck and intrepidity of the Irish in your video ventures!
Ready to learn more about video marketing? Try these resources:
17 Best Ecommerce Product Video Examples
The ABCs of Video Content
8 Beginner Tips for Making Professional-Looking Videos
How to Film Creative Product Videos
YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020
How to Track YouTube Videos in Google Analytics Using Google Tag Manager in 4 Steps
Need to learn more about local search marketing before you start filming yourself and your products? Read The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide.
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