Whether you’re an artist discussing your latest work, a sponsor promoting your athlete’s achievements, or a marketing manager about to launch a new product, online video provides a rich, engaging medium to tell your story and connect with your audience.
Follow The Eyeballs
With more than 10 million video ads being watched by American eyeballs each month, online video is no longer the nice-to-visit distant cousin of the marketing family; it is now a leading force behind digital marketing campaigns. And with web video spend expected to increase from $3 billion in 2012 to $8 billion in 2016, there is strong demand for fresh, engaging video content to sell, teach, train, educate, and simply entertain your audience. Here’s an interesting infographic for 2012 online video use.
Sticky Video
While more eyeballs are watching online video, the amount of time they engaged by your content is critical to understanding how much time you have to tell your story. Three-out-of-five consumers will spend at least two minutes watching a video about a product they plan to purchase while more than a third will watch a video for three minutes. To engage your audience in these short-form videos, tell them briefly why they should care and then follow through on that promise by demonstrating key features with personally relevant content.
Build Confidence with your Audience
If you sell your product online, then your audience needs to trust you. By demonstrating both your products and explaining your sales process, you can increase online consumer confidence. Recent statistics show that 52% of consumers say that watching online product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions. Furthermore, an equal number said they are less likely to return a product after watching a video.
Improve Sales Conversions
Quite simply, consumers who watch product video demonstrations are more likely to convert than those who don’t. As such, if you add professional video to your digital marketing campaign, you are effectively tipping the scales in favour of closing your sale. Statistics on sales conversions range from increases of 30% to 300% so you will need to carefully consider what information will convert your sale and when and where to deliver that video on your website.
Improve your SEO
By adding professional and user-generate video to your website, many online retailers have experienced substantial increases in their organic search results. To make the most of this opportunity and be seen on the first page of search results, optimize the keywords in your video title, subtitle, and keywords; include a call-to-action at the end of your video; and cross promote your video across your digital marketing world by uploading to LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook as well as YouTube.
Any Screen, Any Time.
While no longer a new concept, consumer desire to watch video content ‘where they want, when they want’ is being met by improvements in delivery across mobile and tablet devices. In fact, mobile and tablet consumers are 3x as likely to watch a video as laptop or desktop users. Further, nearly 40% report that videos increase their likelihood of making a purchase on a mobile device. Accompanying this trend, the most popular use of mobile action codes, such as QR codes or bar codes, is to link directly to a video content such as a product demonstration.
Easily Distribute Your Video Story
While you can certainly burn your video to a DVD or BlueRay Disc, delivering video content to the web is today’s primary distribution platform. In fact, getting your video on the web is the easy part – the challenge lies in choosing a platform and whether to use free sites or paid video hosting services. While free sites such as YouTube or Vimeo may provide you with everything you need, if you are delivering a lot of video content to many different types of screens and want to maintain your brand identity across all those touch points, you may want to consider a paid video hosting and HD streaming service such as Brightcove.
Track Your Video
If you create a video, chances are you’ll want to know if it is being watched. The good news is that not only can you see how many people are watching your video, depending on your distribution strategy, you can understand how long they are watching your video, where they are from, what device they are using, and when used holistically, understand how they impact sales conversions. If your video is part of a campaign, you can use this data to feedback into your next video to improve your story, better engage your audience, and if desired, improve sales conversions. To get started with tracking your video, check out Google Analytics for Video.
Facilitate Social Media
There are many resources on the web that discuss the ins and outs of social media. The core aspect to take away is that your audience is having a conversation within their circle of friends and colleagues – whether you’re there or not. By providing online video, you become part of that conversation as consumers are more likely to share video content than text – so along with personally relevant content, make the video entertaining to engage your audience.
Affordable Professional HD Video
I would never describe video as a cheap medium. If you have a few hundred bucks, spend it on slick business cards, a better landing page, or take some prospective clients out for a good meal. However, for a few thousand dollars, you can access high-quality video production tools and techniques that were previously reserved for commercial and broadcast level productions that would cost tens of thousands. The key to engaging your audience with your story is to invest in the elements that create a high-production value video content, from digital cinema cameras with professional glass to experienced editors who understand your story, video production is a worthwhile investment for your business.
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