The Power of Video Commerce with Eitan Koter

Brent Peterson (00:01.146) Welcome to this episode. Today I have Eitan Koter. He is the co-CEO of Vimmi. Eitan, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in life. Eitan Koter (00:13.42) Hey Brandt, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you really for this. So yeah, I'm the co-CEO of Vimmi, also the co-founder. I run the marketing, sales, finance part of the business. I have a co-founder and then he's an unknown chair who is just running R &D, operation and support. Vimmi is already 11 years in the business. We're in the video commerce space and we serve brand and retailers helping them use video for the promotion of their... products on social networks and on their own website. Besides the day to day work, I also have a variety of hobbies like mountain biking, just try to do like two, three times a week. I'm also a Qigong certified teacher, which is kind of a Tai Chi, like a Chinese medicine practice. So I try to do a variety of things just to keep my mind in the right place. Brent Peterson (01:04.09) That's great. Yeah, it's important to have something other than just work to do all the time. Anyway, so before we get started and we're going to talk about video and sales videos and sales in video before we get started, I'm going to tell you a joke. Just give me a rating one through five, five being the best. So here we go. I adopted a dog from a blacksmith. As soon as I bought him, he made a bolt for the door. Eitan Koter (01:08.676) Of course. Yeah. Eitan Koter (01:20.333) Mm-hmm. Eitan Koter (01:34.532) I would say maybe four. Brent Peterson (01:40.93) all right. Well, thanks. I appreciate that. Eitan Koter (01:43.598) Not bad, not bad. Brent Peterson (01:45.976) Okay, so give us the 10,000 foot view of your solution first to start off. Eitan Koter (01:53.122) Yes, I mean, there are a few trends that are pushing video to be like a foundational channel for any company out there. One is the difficulty to acquire a new customer to your own website, right? You're getting more expensive and difficult and crowded. And those advertising costs are sometimes questionable if the weekend on adspent is really make sense, both on Meta or Amazon or any type of channel that you choose. And also, companies decide just to deploy their products and say the opportunities where their potential shoppers are spending their time, which is usually on social media, right? So we spend a hours a day on social media and we just doing this endless scrolling, right? Whether it's on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, whether it doesn't matter. The idea is to deploy in a very authentic and consistent way videos that are not just for brand awareness or just for exposure, but also for reconversion. And today we have the concept of video commerce or shoppable video, which gives the ability to associate or sync product pages to videos. And those videos are showcasing a product, someone is presenting a product, whether it's the founder, the employees, or like a professional host or creator or influencers. But there is some kind of a call to action within the video player, like a buy now button that redirects to a checkout process or a link. redirect again to just add to cart and continue to purchase. And this is a very dramatic, like a mega opportunity right now for anyone out there. Like social commerce is probably what driving it from the various reasons I've just explained. And social commerce is going to be like more than $8 trillion in 2030. So this is like dramatic. Video is almost any company's using video. More than 90 % of companies are creating some sort of video. And of course, today we have the ability to create those we are converting like, you know, that e-commerce or online purchases built around impulse purchase and just, just see someone just showcasing a product, whether it's an unboxing, it was explaining the product is just next level of impulse purchase. So it's, very emotional type of experience. It's the more psychological aspect of our brains and it's really. Eitan Koter (04:16.654) Quite impressive, it? If it's done right, in terms of the conversion rates that it can achieve. Usually, know, last two decades, the industry average on e-commerce is like 2 % conversion rates, right? No one has ever able to change it so much, but those video, specifically live video or shopable video, have been able to trigger sometimes 10x this number of conversion rates and it's... really quite impressive if it's done right. So our platform syncs to existing e-commerce platforms, sync product pages, very easy to associate them with videos. And there is a posting capability to be able to post those interactive shoppable videos across all the brands or companies, social media accounts, marketplaces, publishers and affiliates. And also as an embed video player, an interactive video player, within the brand's retailer's website, whether it's a hero banner or just integrating more interactive video into product pages. Brent Peterson (05:24.758) Explain how it works. I know the TikTok shop is a big thing or becoming a big thing and Instagram stores or whatever they call Instagram is this This is in addition to one of those channels, right? This is an it's this would be a channel that would integrate directly into the e-commerce platform that the user has or the merchant has Eitan Koter (05:30.04) Mm-hmm. Eitan Koter (05:45.028) Exactly. I mean, if you look in Asia, for example, like 70 % plus or even up to 80 % of online businesses don't have an e-commerce store. All they do is just sell on TikTok, on Instagram, on Facebook. Today with TikTok Shop, you don't need an e-commerce platform even, right? Because the checkout and the product pages and all the fulfillment even can be done by TikTok for you. So every platform is introducing that kind of shopability. functionality in a different way. So TikTok are, I mean, you must check out within the TikTok environment. They are supporting also Amazon Prime shortly, by the way. But for example, on Instagram, you can just redirect to external product pages just to continue the checkout. Also YouTube introducing a lot of capabilities like digital shelf and interactive links to redirect to make a purchase. Obviously like Facebook with Facebook shops and Pinterest is already been You know those capability to shop on the on the platform are available for quite a while So we've integrated all the API's of this platform of these meet social media networks into our platforms And I keep changing and updating like on a daily basis and then we have the ability to just in one click Streamline this whole process and deploy the maximum solvability functionality on each one of those platforms that we can provide through those API. In just one click for the platform, instead of just deploying these teams of people who are launching those campaigns on every dedicated platform. So everything here is in just one dashboard, very easy to manage, get analytics from all the different platforms and make a smart decision on the next campaign. Brent Peterson (07:34.576) Okay, so if somebody's on YouTube already, can utilize your platform to be able to make more interactive videos on YouTube itself without having to go to a new platform. Give us some, I know that you kind of mentioned the uplift of say 20 % or 10x on the 2%. What is the real world examples that you can share with us where people have had a lot of success? Eitan Koter (07:44.716) Exactly. Eitan Koter (08:01.196) Look, mean, all the major companies, from Sephora to many others, it's like L'Oreal and of course, cosmetics and fashion. This is where it all started because these were like very kind of a small product. can showcase over a vertical video in a short form style, 30 seconds, 60 seconds. This is where it all started. Usually products below $100 that you can see like immediate conversion, like before and after. So this is how it all started probably a couple of years ago. It was very, very powerful today. All the niches are on short form videos and on TikTok and on Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts. And it's, it's growing quite substantially because those short form videos are really a snippets and they use the right hook at the beginning and a very, very powerful conversion. But we also know that long form video that usually is, has, you know, very high production. effort, right? With a lot of editing and those 16 by 9 or horizontal videos that goes to YouTube, they are growing as well. YouTube is growing as well. So any type of video is still in a massive growth because people are not reading, right? Anymore because of the overflow of AI content and just the amount of text out there. Podcast is also quite saturated and know, latest report shows a slight decline in podcast consumption, but the video is just keep growing on and on. Video is already 82, 83 % of the global internet traffic, right? According to Cisco and it is going to continue to grow and it's a very powerful way. And we just started, I mean, there are more planned, immersive type of experiences like virtual reality or augmented reality, which are introduced also by the major fashion brands and probably car brands and that enable you to be more immersed into the experience. All this comes obviously to try to make e-commerce feature-proof, just to create more of an intuitive real-life experience because we still see that offline retail is like 80 % of the overall retail business in the US. Like e-commerce is maybe 20 to 25 % of the overall retail. So that offline experience is still very, very important. And doing this... Eitan Koter (10:27.414) Omnichannel kind of offline online is very critical. And this is something by the way we can do on our platform. that for example, if we are doing a live shopping event, it can go to all the channels on social media, your website and affiliates, but you can also go to those digital shelf, which just screen on the, on the Britain border stores. And then we can just integrate a QR code right with a special promotion just right now for the next five minutes or so. So we see also interesting Omnichannel use cases that are. very very interesting and important. Brent Peterson (11:00.392) When somebody's producing a new video compared to an older video, it easy to add, just add the functionality to an already existing video to perhaps save some time? Eitan Koter (11:10.284) Exactly. Yeah, and this is a very good repurposing tactic. You can just repurpose your previous Instagram or YouTube video, just uploading it to the platform and take them to the next level, make them shoppable. And again, post them as a shoppable video. It can be also a snippet of a longer form video or the same video as well. But now with that shoppable capability, obviously deploy an area on your website. where you have like your amazing brand.com slash video, right? And then there is a specific area, which is like a YouTube or like Netflix, which is very, very intuitive and interesting and just makes this whole experience, shopping experience future-proof. Brent Peterson (11:58.35) The types of products that sell best, had mentioned cosmetics and things like that, it's growing, right? And how do you see that product selection and even service selection growing over time? Eitan Koter (12:08.931) Yes. Eitan Koter (12:14.626) So today it's very competitive all over the niches. So you have like furniture and car lea, like five, five figure items, everything works on TikTok. Sometimes people thought that is impossible, but it is. And that attribution for your overall sales. Once you do those short form videos is very, powerful. Maybe people will not check out on TikTok when they buy a car, but they see you, they know you, it's really an option for you to differentiate yourself from competition. And that video will be attributed to a sale that maybe you do offline or through other channels. So it's very, very fundamental these days to create that type of content, to differentiate. It's one of this, probably the last areas where organically you can make an impact, right? If you are consistent creating those videos. If you are the founder of the company or one of the key executives or even using EGC like employee generated content, this is probably the best thing you can do today. It's not a question of if you're going to succeed. It's a hundred percent. It's going to break through all the need is time, probably two to three months. So we're just posting, posting consistently and authenticity wins. Don't care about the algorithms. No one cares about your background. Have good mic, good lightning, and just show yourself out there. And there is a process that we teach what kind of content to create in various stages of the marketing funnel and what works in every one of stages. Brent Peterson (13:52.12) I come from the sort of enterprise e-commerce space. I was a Magento person when that still existed. You still don't see a lot of the professionals in the solution integration space or the platform space utilizing videos and call to action within videos. You think there's a reason that they're just not up to times or they don't see it yet or tell us kind of that's from the service side of the business. Where do you see it going and? How do you see people really succeeding in it? Eitan Koter (14:23.512) Yes, I mean, there is a perception that video is probably expensive. takes a lot of time to produce pre-production, post-production, editing. This is fine if you are in the long form type of video, but this is not where you need to start. mean, any business owner should create short form videos and post them on those few major social platforms, right? And anyone can do that. You don't need even just add subtitles. Don't need even editing, right? This is something that you can just... Do on your iPhone and just go there and post, right? It's important to post about what's happening in the company. I mean, if you're a new brand and just starting out or you're launching a new product, don't push your product, right? So in that first stage of the marketing fall on that awareness stage, create some educational content, provide market information, checklist, just provide value, right? And because people need to gain some confidence and they need to build some kind of a relationship with you. before they are more open to accept an offer. And once they're considering the purchase and evaluating option, yes, don't be afraid to share competitors information, prices, share links to your competition. Those versus articles brands remember that they used to written by the affiliates, right? So they would just compare all the product. Now Google just favors. those versus articles or videos coming from the vendors and the providers themselves. Right. So it's very, very powerful. Your potential shoppers, they know with whom you are competing. They will go to their website anyhow. So share that information, save time. You'll gain a lot of respect for that. Provide some case studies. And once they're in a decision mode, yes, provide product reviews, maybe case studies, testimonials, discuss your highlights only on that third level. Or you need to stop. pushing your product in a very nice way. And also create a list of like 50 customer pains, right? mean, if, if, if you can't do that in like half an hour, you're in the wrong business, right? And all on this customer pain point, just create 30 second video, just highlight the pain and your way to overcome this pain. So, just start posting on a daily basis. It can be, no one cares. How do you look? And again, about your background or anything, just be out there. Eitan Koter (16:45.77) Be consistent, build your small community, your niche, and start doing conversion throughout the process. And we see again and again and again, if you're being consistent for two to three months, it's going to be a really an amazing vehicle. We see those videos are becoming very, very effective in conversions. And once we see that video is performing very well for analytics, we then recommend to push that video with advertising spend with some paid media. And we know that the return on that spend is going to be very, very good. Now there is a, again, general belief that maybe video is too complicated to create, but it's fine. It's correct. There is a high end video, but this is not where you need to start. You need to start with this authentic short form videos using the right hook, taking into consideration the stage on the marketing funnel that you are and talk about customer pains. And I think anyone can do that from his iPhone. Brent Peterson (17:40.142) Yeah, I think even if you're using Riverside and we both discussed in the green room, we're both using Riverside. It's made it incredibly easy to just do that light editing. you know, even in my regular business, I always say to clients that we do minor, we don't do professional production, which means we don't have a $20,000 budget for a three minute video or a one minute video that most clients are perfectly happy with seeing what they're seeing. Eitan Koter (18:01.187) Yeah. Brent Peterson (18:08.136) Going back to the services versus product side I know that you kind of went through that funnel of when it's good to have a call to action within the video I'm assuming for a product it's better to have the call the action up front in those videos when you're doing that as opposed to the longer funnel services Eitan Koter (18:27.01) Yeah. Yes, I mean, the call direction at the beginning of the funnel can be not just to buy now, but maybe just to get additional resource, get additional video or just subscribe or get a subscribe to a newsletter and get some kind of a PDF or a demo or something like that. But once people are warmed up and they know you and they can trust, then you can just activate this call direction just to redirect to the product page for checkout. Okay. And then you need to highlight that. Yes. There is a unique opportunity, some kind of a promotion or a coupon code or discount, some kind of an event. Maybe you are launching a product and you're inviting some special host, you're building up this type of event. We also recommend to do like a weekly live show. Just build FOMO towards these events, market them in a very interesting way over social media and newsletter like three, four weeks before the event itself. And even during the event, just keep pushing this and also post the event. Sometimes we see that 50 % of the sales of the product are happening after the live event shows has finished and still the inventory is still there because people subscribe, but they had some issue they couldn't join. So they watched the recording of the event in a later stage. So having those intimate live shows together with customers is very important. And again, you can publish those live streams across all the channels from a single location, while enabling a chat system that you can communicate with your audience and a call to action to purchase. And usually if you're doing this kind of a combination, then it's really an effective marketing channel these days. And you don't need production crew, you don't need external team, right? You need your phone. That's the beauty of it. Brent Peterson (20:21.52) Where do you see the market going in terms of how they're using say TikTok shop versus embedded? Do you see people keeping their customers, if they have a Shopify store, they're their customers on Shopify rather than looking at moving it to another channel? Is that important in that realm? Eitan Koter (20:47.64) Yeah, I mean, it's getting, of course, you need to, it's a good combination to have both. You need to have direct to consumer relationship through an email subscription. And you need to be on social because it's very, very expensive for everyone to bring those users to your amazing brand.com website. Right. So social commerce and just deploying your videos on social is very, critical. It's not. probably in the priority of everyone. It's an evolution because there is always things that needs to be done. But yeah, this is very, really fundamental. And TikTok will take like eight to 12 % of your sales, right? And if you work with your affiliate network, they will charge between 15 to 25 % of the sale through gifting or selling the product. So you need to budget 35 to 40 % of the the revenues towards this kind of an effort. We use probably the same today if you spend that budget with better or Amazon at the time. Right. So we always suggest to try, right? What type of videos resonate? What works well? We have an analytics that can help you figure out length of video time of the day. You get the data, which can help you figure out how to structure, how to script those events, just best practices that we try to deploy. And the most powerful thing is that Fondo led content, right? Which is super, super interesting and important today. Brent Peterson (22:27.584) I've been working with a couple of smaller clients that have both a service and a product business. And I was actually just on a PMAX, working on a PMAX campaign today. And PMAX is really pushing you into having video and they'll even create video for you, depending on what it is. What is the type of client that you're looking for that would be a good fit? is it, yeah, just give us the type of clients you're looking for. Eitan Koter (22:37.017) Yep. Eitan Koter (22:56.31) Yes, just before the ICP, before the ICP, comment to what you said, those platforms encourage you to use video because video just keeps users more time on their platform. Sometimes it's a short form video, but then you click and maybe you click again and it just keeps the time. is a longer form type of media and the algorithm favorites video on all platforms, B2B like LinkedIn or Brent Peterson (22:56.964) the ICP. Eitan Koter (23:23.94) Instagram, but of course, TikTok and YouTube. And in terms of our ICP, so we work with the companies that they appreciate the opportunity with social commerce and they are ready to deploy their products on those channels. They need to have an interest in video. So they're already creating some kind of a video. I mean, if you're creating like one video about it's not a good fit, right? But if you have a substantial catalog of a video that you need to manage this. in a professional digital asset management, just in a very professional way, just archiving in, protecting the content, making sure the streaming works across the various peak times. So this is also very, very important. So usually it meets to large type of brands and retailers, typically the companies that we work with. Brent Peterson (24:15.216) That's perfect. you know, we're going into a Black Friday, Cyber Monday here. This recording will probably come out after that. What is your predictions for next year? What do you think 2025 is going to bring us? Eitan Koter (24:29.636) Yeah. So we saw 2024, we saw substantial growth on live shopping and shopable video. So this is just the beginning. Although those platforms are getting such, I mean, highly competitive in some of the niches, more and more niches will come. So we have started the really interesting projects on the automotive industry. We want to launch shopable video, live shopping, just differentiating with automotive. So I see more and more niches just going into video streamlining. Maybe number two is just streamlining, making all these processes easy for conversion because Meta is going to announce soon a lot of developments around shuttle video on the whole platform. YouTube is doing that. Like every month there is a new API that is just keep updating with the ability to shop from within the platform. And we see this evolution just growing. TikTok, know, or not banned, that doesn't matter, right? Because the other platform will capture that audience, whether it's X or, you know, Meta or YouTube. I think it's something that is critical. Yeah, I mean, that's just videos getting more priority into overall marketing mix and trying to probably experiment with a lot of different types of videos just to make sure what's working, you know, for those companies. Brent Peterson (25:58.074) That's great, Atan. As I close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they like. What would you like to plug today? Eitan Koter (26:07.03) Yeah, it's great. So everyone can go to our pricing page at vmi.net. That's v-i-m-m-i.net. There is a free for life package where you can go live, enable shop Google video, connect your social networks. And we are providing brand to your audience with a coupon code that you can get a 20 % discount for your listeners. We will share the coupon code in the show notes and those packages that are Provided there will be provided 20 % discount for your listeners. That's our plug for today. Brent Peterson (26:41.516) That's great. And how would they get a hold of you? How can they get in touch with you? Eitan Koter (26:45.002) Yeah, yes, I'm on LinkedIn and E-I-T-A-N-K-O-T-E-R. I post almost daily about video marketing, video commerce, and love to chat with everyone who is considering. Brent Peterson (26:58.916) That's perfect. Tan Koter, the co-founder, CEO of Vimi. Thank you so much for being here today. Eitan Koter (27:07.096) Thank you, Brent. It was a pleasure.