How can doggy treadmills and pet fashion shows help you get a better handle on your video commerce strategy? Watch this recent interview of Kenna Hurd, Video Content & Product Manager of PETCO & Liveclicker client, with our 2011 Video Commerce Summit Conversations Host, Larry Kless, President and Founder of Onlinevideopublishing.com.
In this interview, Kenna talked about the top initiatives of PETCO’s video strategy, specific examples of where the company is seeing success with video, and how it would like to use video in the future.
Key Focus of PETCO Video Program
Video is a somewhat new initiative for PETCO as of last year. As mentioned in the title of the post, the key focus for creating video content at PETCO, is to use it to establish the company as trusted expert in the pet industry. To accomplish this goal, PETCO uses video across multiple departments, and Liveclicker’s Video Commerce Platform helps the pet supplies giant do this.
Video has the most impact at PETCO in:
- Branding – PETCO sees video as a way to get the company voice out there, and to really establish itself as a trusted brand. Video, more than any other marketing medium, is able to get your brand image across in subtle yet persuasive ways.
- eCommerce – PETCO uses video on the product detail pages as a way to educate customers about their products so they can make an informed purchases. Product video, on top of educating buyers and preventing product returns, can increase conversions. Liveclicker clients see a significant increase in conversion rates once someone watches a product video on their site.
PETCO Video Wins
PETCO is distributing video content in almost every marketing channel. Kenna gave the following channels as examples of where video has been particularly successful.
Social Media
PETCO is very careful about which videos it puts on Facebook and other social media sites. Their main objective with social video is engagement. Kenna cited a “Doggy Tredmill” product video they created as a good example of choosing the right video to encourage good fan interaction.
Check out Liveclicker’s Interactive Suite for Facebook to learn how you can better integrate eCommerce videos into your social media channels.
Video in Email
PETCO created an email campaign showcasing a video of a dog apparel fashion show. By featuring the player in the email, the campaign was able to achieve amazing click-through and play-through rates for this email. One lesson learned from another campaign done featuring a text link to a video was that without the player in the email, the engagement was substantially less.
Check out Liveclicker’s Video Email Express to learn how you can easily automate a video in email campaign across multiple mail clients and web browsers.
The Future of PETCO’s Video Program
A year from now, Kenna professed to want to have a more well-rounded PETCO video library. As with many other retailers, scaling video production is often the hardest part of a retail video program. PETCO has video virtually on every part of its site, and a lot of strategy goes into deciding what types of videos go where on the site. Kenna mentioned specifically 3 more types of videos she would like to add to the site:
- More educational videos on different animal types and breeds on the animal specific pages.
- More broad vendor videos for the different category pages.
- More fun “love your pet” videos for the home page.
Creating video content specific to the nature of where it is being watched, whether on your site, in social media, or in stores, is a great best practice for retailers. If you can make your video content easy to watch, relevant, and enjoyable, you can ultimately shape your customers’ purchasing cycle and gain trust at the same time.
Stay tuned for our next 2011 Video Commerce Summit Conversations Interview with Mark Robertson of ReelSEO on the impact of social media on video SEO, and how retailers can go beyond the product video to create video content that lends itself to social sharing.
