It’s news to no one that ecommerce is on the rise. Not only are more consumers turning to the web to purchase online for the first time, they’re also beginning to purchase in more expensive categories — including, one startup has found, in fine jewelry.
Gemvara is a Boston-based startup that specializes in high-end, customizable jewelry. Shoppers can browse a catalog of more than 1,500 original designs and mix and match from 26 different kinds of gemstones and eight precious metals to create an arguably unique, made-to-order piece.
The one-year-old company announced this week it has raised $15 million in a Series C round of funding led by European venture capital firm Balderton Capital, a lead investor in another well-known Boston startup, SCVNGR. Gemvara has raised more than $25 million to date.
Gemvara plans on using the funds to build out its catalog and further develop its online shopping experience. The company also has plans to open a NYC office and double its staff of 40.
26-year-old CEO Matt Lauzon attributes much of the company’s success to its Zappos-like customer service, which is available via phone, email and live chat. Establishing trust between the company and consumers, especially for expensive purchases like fine jewelry, is essential, Lauzon says. Around 45% of Gemvara’s customers have never purchased a piece of jewelry online before, the company found in a recent internal survey.
“What’s amazing is the number of interactions [our customer care representatives] have after a purchase,” Lauzon says. “It has nothing to do with the product; customers are just checking in because a friendship has been built with the customer care rep.”
The average price of an order is close to $1,000, he says, and the company frequently receives orders in the $5,000-to-$10,000 range.
“Jewelry stores aren’t ever going to go away, but more of their business is going online,” Lauzon claims. “Because of inventory restraints [store] customers often have to settle, and that’s disappointing. Our goal is to match people with the perfect piece of jewelry,” he says.
Brands and businesses are looking for ways to leverage Facebook’s recently unveiled Questions tool in ways that differ from what they’re already doing on Q&A sites such as Quora, Yahoo Answers and LocalMind.
The feature, which Facebook rolled out to all users March 24, functions as a recommendation engine. It also presents a major opportunity for businesses to conduct market research and crowdsource in a far more elegant way than was previously possible, according to Ben Grossman, communication strategist for marketing agency Oxford Communications.
“We know from Nielsen that recommendations from friends and family and the opinions of online strangers are the top two most trusted forms of advertising,” Grossman told Mashable. “Facebook Questions offers the perfect opportunity for brands to tap into exactly that.” NOTE: Page owners can access Questions by logging into their page and then heading to the Questions page to enable the feature. For detailed instructions, click here.
Brands, businesses, groups and organizations can then use Questions in several ways. For example, Grossman said:
Ice cream parlors can find out what the flavor of the week should be.
A gym can find out what time is best for its new hip-hop yoga class.
Radio stations can determine the hottest concerts for the summer.
Manufacturers can do a pulse check on fans’ holiday shopping plans.
“The best part about this is that it’s in a trusting, social and real-time setting,” he said. “The opportunity to gain instant feedback from a brand’s biggest fans is amazing.”
Fittingly, we had some more questions about Questions. Below, Grossman weighs in on the feature to help brands better understand the tool.
Mashable: How is Facebook Questions different than the Q&A tools already online?
Grossman: Though Questions certainly falls into a similar category as Yahoo Answers and Quora, there are two very major differences:
Answers to questions are not free-form; users are limited to multiple-choice responses.
Questions (and their answers) are not catalogued by search engines at this time. Public Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers and Quora will still remain important for public-facing customer support and inquiries.
Mashable: How will Facebook Questions change the way users of Facebook Pages interact with their fans? Why is this important?
Grossman: Though third-party Facebook application development companies such as Involver and Wildfire have developed turn-key “poll” applications, many users were likely to get hung up on that pesky “Applications Permissions” box that demands access to users personal information.
Questions changes that. No permissions are required, and the Questions platform lets you answer and talk about questions with all your friends no matter if they’ve engaged with a third-party application before or not.
The other great thing about Questions is it comes with a setting that allows users to add more answers to the multiple-choice answers. This bit of flexibility will really and truly allow businesses to learn from their consumers — they just have to know the right questions to ask.
Questions also demands a higher level of fidelity to opinion statistics for brands. If brands bind themselves to the Questions platform to pose questions and they relate to the brand’s business, it’s going to be a lot clearer to all the fans what public opinion is. If the brand doesn’t follow through by acting on that opinion, Questions has a nice comment area that gives fans the perfect place to call a brand out on it.
Mashable: How have you or Oxford used Facebook Questions so far? How do you plan to use the feature in the future?
Grossman:Oxford Communications decided to test out the functionality and float this question out to our fans:
Within 15 hours, we had engaged 13% of our fanbase and had not only gained votes on answers we had given to the question; we also had fans suggesting (and voting for) new answers, including local couponing sites, LiveTVChat and more. For us, it was an opportunity to enjoy a high level of engagement with our followers, emerge as a thought leader and learn a little all at the same time.
The next frontier, after some additional testing, will be to activate Questions on behalf of our clients. Next month, we are planning on extending Legends Outlets Kansas City’s “Charity Check-In” program through use of Facebook Questions. On Legends Outlets Facbeook Page, Legends Outlets is currently encouraging its consumers to check-in with Facebook Places in order to trigger the brand to donate $1 to a pre-determined, local Kansas City charity.
Next month, the brand will be doing the same, but we will also be employing Facebook Questions to ask the fans what charities they would like to see appear as part of the ongoing Charity Check-In program. We’re excited to help Legends Outlets partner with the charities that mean the most to its fans, while raising their friends’ awareness of ways they can give back to the community.
Mashable: What was your initial reaction to the new Facebook Questions tool?
Grossman: Any time Facebook adds a new standard application to all user and business profiles, I get excited. When Facebook adds major new functionality like Questions, it stands to shift the social dynamic of over 500 million people, creating richer, more diverse and increasingly dynamic conversations.
Beyond the impact it will have on users, the widespread release of Facebook Questions is also emblematic of the continuing trend we’ve seen from Facebook: As soon as a new trend in social media begins to rise up, Facebook acts quickly and decisively. For those long-time Facebook users out there, Questions will hearken back to the days when Polls were far more common on Facebook. But this round of Q&A-based functionality released by Facebook is likely more of a direct response to the increasing popularity of up-and-coming sites like Quora and LocalMind.
What I love about Questions is how true it is to Facebook’s zeal for transparency and trust.
Will You Be Using Questions For Your Business or Brand?
How do you plan to use Facebook Questions for your brand, business, group or organization? Let us know in the comments.
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
The path to YouTube marketing success can be littered with potholes that budget- and time-strapped small businesses can’t afford to fall in to.
We’ve spoken to three top experts in the video marketing arena to get professional advice about the common mistakes that small companies make on the video-sharing platform so that you can avoid making those same errors.
For your viewing pleasure and enlightenment, we’ve also included a few successful YouTube videos that were produced by small businesses.
1. Having Unrealistic Expectations
Some businesses mistakenly believe that they just need to upload a video to YouTube and wait for viewers to watch by the millions. According to Sarah Wood, founder of social video distribution and engagement company Unruly Media, this rarely happens.
“Yes, there is a massive appetite for online video content, but there are 35 hours of video content uploaded to YouTube every minute, so the competition for eyeballs is intense,” says Wood.
You need to manage expectations when it comes to the success of your YouTube content. There are a ton of high-quality, company-made videos on YouTube that never manage more than a few thousand views.
“Remind yourself that having a video go viral is a notable success, not the norm,” says Matt Smith, director of strategy at digital agency The Viral Factory. Smith counts Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?” series (see above) as one such success.
“Blendtec happens to be one of the most brilliant viral marketing campaigns ever, and it’s the exception rather than the rule,” he says.
No matter how good your content is, you can’t just upload a clip, sit back and wait for people to come to you — you need to have a promotion and distribution plan.
“You need to think through why you’re on YouTube and what you want out of it, then tailor the content and the delivery strategy appropriately,” says Smith. “Putting content on YouTube is step one, step two is getting out there and promoting it.”
Justin Gonzalez, social media strategist for creative video agency BARS + TONE agrees that videos won’t go viral on their own — you must allocate time and resources to seed it properly.
“Try using social networks like Facebook and Twitter to get your social strategy started — then promote your video using those vehicles. At the very least, friends and family are a great way to get a video to start circulating,” says Gonzalez. “After all, you put money into making the video, so you better do it justice and get it in front of the right people.”
2. Thinking Small
Although expectations need to be kept realistic, don’t think that viral success is totally out of reach just because you’re a small business.
“There are plenty of small brands that think they need to be a Nike or an Adidas to be successful in social video,” says Wood. “This is simply not true! Any brand, large or small, can score a hit in social video.”
And Wood has a great example of a small business with a successful video: Alphabet Photography’s Christmas Food Court Flash Mob (see above). The clip was one of the surprise hits over the holidays last year, garnering more than 30 million views and almost 773,000 shares on Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere, according to Unruly Media’s Video Viral Chart.”
3. Treating a Viral Video as a Commercial
YouTube is new media, it’s social, it’s about engagement. Don’t sign up for the platform with a limited, old media perspective.
“When you go into online video with the understanding that it can do more than just sell a product or service, you’re already ahead of the game,” says Gonzalez. YouTube is a social channel where people want to consume and share fun and engaging content, so don’t hit them over the head with a sales pitch.
“YouTube requires as much thought as any other social media channel and shouldn’t be looked at as a dumping ground for marketing videos,” says Gonzalez. “Everything you post should represent your brand’s personality and inspire some type of reaction from your viewers -– whether it’s provoking thought, laughing out loud or making a purchase.”
4. Putting All Your Eggs in the YouTube Basket
It’s certainly the biggest, but don’t forget that YouTube isn’t the only online video platform, and it may not offer the best chance of success for your brand. Vimeo, for example, could be considered a more credible platform for creative professionals.
“Businesses that want to leverage the word of mouth potential of social video need to focus away from just YouTube and explore the world of social video that exists beyond YouTube, Twitter and Facebook,” says Wood.
Wood also names action-sports site Mpora and comedy site Funny or Die as effective outlets for hopefully-going-viral videos because they can “deliver high-quality video engagement to a more targeted and niche demographic.”
5. Basing Success on View Counts Alone
Too often, businesses produce videos and hope to get 1 million views. On today’s social web, success isn’t always counted with stats or measured in view counts — meaningful engagement is what matters.
“At Unruly, we place a greater emphasis on brand engagement, so we also look at the number of times a video has been shared on various social media platforms, time spent with the video and uplift in relevant brand metrics,” says Wood.
Gonzalez thinks this is a particularly important point for small businesses, which have limited resources and must decide from the outset what they hope to gain from YouTube.
“Sometimes marketers get bogged down in looking at the metrics and trying to determine whether the number of video views really made a difference in the bottom line, or whether it was just enough to build buzz around the product or service,” says Gonzalez. “When you can clearly define why it’s necessary for your business to be on YouTube, you’re ready to move on to the next steps.”
BONUS: Don’t Underestimate the Power of Cats
And finally, Smith chimes in with the most insightful and important point of all that will help any brand on YouTube — regardless of size or industry.
“Don’t ignore cats. Failure to put a cute or funny cat in your YouTube marketing material will cost you dearly in terms of exposure, credibility, sales and reputation,” he opines. “Everyone will know you are a failing business, and they’ll hate you and your product.”
How do we decrease our dependence on oil? How can we improve security measures with nuclear energy? How can we provide clean water to developing nations? How can we decrease pollution? Save our oceans? Save our planet? It’s these questions that OnGreen CEO and Founder Nikhil R. Jain hope to solve.
“We know green tech is here to stay and that we have to embrace green technologies very quickly, but there is a lack of information and clarity in the green technology field. Investors want to invest but they’re not sure which are the best technologies because clean technology companies aren’t as easy to understand as consumer facing Internet companies. With OnGreen, we are trying to improve the ratio of capital raised in clean tech to capital sought.”
-OnGreen CEO and Founder Nikhil R. Jain
OnGreen, a Los Angeles, California based company wants to remove the barriers between investors and clean tech startups to make investing in clean energy efficient and easy. In pursuit of this mission, OnGreen officially announced the public launch of its website today, establishing itself as a destination for cleantech entrepreneurs, investors and consultants. It is the world’s largest cleantech social network based on the number of projects in clean technology and the amount of money sought by startups.
“The nature of today’s global cleantech market is that innovation doesn’t always occur where capital is available,” says OnGreen CEO Nikhil R. Jain, who grew up in Bombay, a city without limited resources, and has learned to be sustainable since birth. “As a global platform, OnGreen overcomes the physical separation between innovation, capital and expertise and helps speed the time from idea to commercialization.”
The OnGreen platform is divided into three key areas:
Deal Marketplace: Rntrepreneurs seek funding for their cleantech businesses and investors make use of the search and filter capabilities to streamline dealflow.
Patent Exchange: Where inventors and companies post their intellectual property for sale or licensing and allow outside investors and enabling service providers to review them.
Expert Community: Where business and technology experts promote their expertise, collaborate with their peers, engage in opportunity evaluations, share due diligence and make themselves available for mentoring, contract work or even employment.
To date, OnGreen has attracted 280 cleantech startups from more than 35 countries with 150 patents, raising $143 million in funding of $1.9 billion in sought after capital. Its new platform already has 25 industry experts including OnGreen’s Chief Expert Dr. Mark Bernsbein, who runs The Energy Institute for the University of Southern California.
Part of OnGreen’s strategy includes a collaboration with the University of Michigan and Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean Energy (JUCCCE), to facilitate Chinese investment at US universities. The project will allow Chinese companies to invest in University R&D and patents in exchange for joint rights to the associated intellectual property. OnGreen will be partnering with more universities going forward.
“China has a gap between their desire to save energy and reduce pollution, and their capability to go green as fast as they are building.” She adds, “This joint research project would not only bring positive trade flow into the U .S. from China and create jobs, but also potentially help the U.S. bypass historic patent infringement issues in China.”
-JUCCCE’s Co-Founder Peggy Liu
To monetize, OnGreen is introducing programs that will vet out 12 projects from its site and take them to China next month. In this way, it will be billing itself out as a virtual investment bank. The company is using its recent $1.4 million series A investment from its own jointly owned fund between Blue Marble Ventures in Los Angeles and China Southern Hong Kong Investment Ltd. in Shanghai to provide investors with deal vetting, a larger patent exchange system, and to expand its Chinese and Indian marketplace.
Tomer Tishgarten is vice president of technology at Engauge, one of the nation’s largest independent advertising agencies. Follow him @tomerific.
If you’re among the many marketers trying to grasp the game-changing impact of Xbox’s motion-controlled add-on Kinect, you’re not alone. Even Microsoft didn’t realize what it had on its hands. When launching in November, Microsoft predicted sales of 3 million units by the end of 2010. Instead, the company sold 8 million in two months and recently entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest-selling consumer electronics product in history. For brands, the excitement is just beginning — and so are the challenges.
In addition to sensing motion, Microsoft’s newest periphery for the Xbox 360 recognizes voices, captures facial expressions in real time, and can even tell players apart. It’s arguably the biggest advance in mainstream digital interface design since the widespread adoption of the computer mouse in the ’80s.
Kinect and its underlying PrimeSense technology promise to open new doors and could explode our conceptions of what’s possible online. Today’s online world remains governed by the conventions of preset hyperlinks and point-and-click devices, but over time, those constraints will be shattered. The popularity of touchscreens on smartphones and tablets suggest we were already headed in this direction. Marketers may play an important role in determining how quickly Kinect technology crosses the chasm from hardcore gamers to mainstream adoption.
The Engagement Potential for Brands
Big brands, including Burger King and Samsung, jumped in first with Kinect gaming promotions. But the marketing potential of Kinect extends far beyond video games. In the near term, marketers could leverage Kinect technology to create eye-opening trade show displays and in-store promotions. Freed from the gaming console, the technology can draw people into an immersive, interactive experience.
Innovative web-based applications will also be worth considering as the technology reaches a critical mass of 15% of households or users, a point at which adoption rates tend to accelerate.
With Avatar Kinect, Microsoft will soon move into augmented social media. Microsoft’s plans for the new technology clearly go beyond gaming. And Kinect’s controller-free environment should appeal to casual gamers, not just the hardcore console jocks, which will heighten appeal for mass marketers. Indeed, the pitch to advertisers from Microsoft is that women, younger children and tweens are “joining in the fun” with Kinect. Most importantly, perhaps, the price is relatively inexpensive; approximately $150.
In the future, it’s conceivable that consumers scanned into the system could theoretically interact with three-dimensional models of products. Why couldn’t Ford, which recently launched an exclusive Xbox campaign for its C-MAX, put consumers behind the wheel and let them take the newest model for a spin?
For catalog clothing brands, the ecommerce implications are immense. Why couldn’t Eddie Bauer let consumers try on clothes virtually? In the travel industry, the applications are even more numerous — a walking tour of the cabanas at Club Med, anyone? And with the capacity to scan an entire room, why couldn’t The Home Depot let customers design the layout of new kitchen cabinets or Ikea showcase sofas within digital models of consumers’ living rooms?
Peak Expectations Meet Practical Challenges
Marketers have tremendous opportunities to differentiate themselves from their competitors in this new environment. Yet they also face the challenge of developing those experiences without instructions or precedents.
Before agencies and developers can create the architecture of this new world — and customized applications for brands — they must first study what makes the new technology tick, which is why developers have been so busy “hacking” Kinect.
The development tools for Kinect are still fairly immature at this stage, but they do provide enough capabilities to build some interesting applications. As more work is done to support these tools by Microsoft and the larger development community, the possibilities for Kinect will grow exponentially.
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The OnGreen platform is divided into three key areas:
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