Does participating in social networking sites translate into ROI for online retailers? While hoping that proves to be the case, for now some are experimenting just to see what happens. Online jeweler Ice.com, for example, has gained the beginnings of a foothold on video-sharing site YouTube.com using little more than the services of a videographer and the imagination of executive vice president of marketing Pinny Gniwisch.
Gniwisch is measuring the success of his efforts in the number of views Ice.com’s videos have received on YouTube.com – about 50,000 altogether -- in the 6,000 YouTubers who signed up for an Ice.com sweepstakes promoted with one video series release, and the 16,000 who have signed up for “Pinny’s World,” asking to be notified whenever Ice.com puts up new video on YouTube.
In addition, Gniwisch says he finds value in simply being on YouTube. “The people who watch and participate in YouTube are on the cusp. They are the trendsetters,” he says. “I want them to identify with my brand. If I can interact with these connectors, the word of mouth is tenfold what I would have gotten from someone else who’s part of my demographic but not on that level of web interaction.”
After seeing the one million views garnered by the humorous family video put up on YouTube.com by one of his employees early this year, Gniwisch decided to explore the opportunity on YouTube on behalf of Ice. Hitting the streets of New York with a video cameraman, Gniwisch did a series of impromptu interviews asking questions designed to prompt those being interviewed to mention jewelry as the best gift they had ever received.
“Most people did say jewelry, but it wasn’t funny,” says Gniwisch. “I realized after studying YouTube and what was successful there that this wasn’t going to do it. So we went in another direction.”
Gniwisch instead reviewed the 30 hours of taped footage to find the most amusing bits and then put them up as brief videos on YouTube with the identifying tagline, “A project of Ice.com.” A second series of videos was shot in connection with a swag suite Ice.com helped sponsor at the Academy Awards. Gniwisch asked visiting celebrities about their mothers and put up the resulting video footage on YouTube in time for Mother’s Day. He also gave viewers of that round of videos the opportunity to sign up for a sweepstakes.
Gniwisch says he’s willing to experiment with YouTube as an entertainment venue rather than a purely marketing vehicle for a while longer to see if ROI will materialize. That’s a progression similar to that followed by Ice.com’s blog, Sparkle Like the Stars, which was initially launched to lift search engine rankings but later started producing sales.
“If I can get enough people to watch my channel, I can eventually throw a product video that is both entertaining and ROI-driven into the mix,” figures Gniwisch. “As more people register to your channel, your ability to succeed as an ROI-based investment is more likely.”
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