Online videos are a great marketing tool. Photo credit: woodlywonderworks
2015 will be the year of online video.
Forecasters agree that use of online video for marketing will expand rapidly in coming years. According to Cisco, video will account for 69 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2017. Video-on-demand traffic alone will almost triple.
Online marketing videos boost conversion rates and improve customer trust in brands, studies show. Product videos improve conversion rates online by demonstrating product features and reassuring customers. The videos allay customer fears and overcome one of the major disadvantages of online purchases: not being able to hold the product before purchase.
What are the attributes of a successful marketing video? The consensus is clear: Product videos should be short, snappy and — as much as possible — entertaining.
Keep it short. Time-constrained viewers, already overloaded with information and images, won’t hesitate to click the back button if the video lasts too long. Limit videos to five minutes at most. A few minutes may be sufficient. Consider re-editing longer videos or splitting them into a series of shorter ones, says digital marketing expert Ryan Joneson.
When you start production, ask yourself: What’s your marketing goal? What are the consumers’ information needs? How can a video best achieve the goal and meet their needs?
Don’t worry about going viral
Don’t create a video just for the sake of it. Don’t propose strange ideas in an attempt to “go viral,” advises David Moth at Econsultancy. In the first place, that’s extremely unlikely to happen. In the second place, what would you gain if that did happen? Perhaps plenty of views but not more sales. An attempt to go viral may result in something silly and pointless.
On the other hand, a dull talking-head video will almost certainly fail. Good video requires compelling visuals. Your video has to be both something your audience wants to see and something that fulfills a business goal.
Instructional videos on how to use or assemble products are obvious choices, especially for complicated products.
Simplyhike, a retailer offering hiking and camping merchandise, has created more than 1,000 videos that showcase its outdoor products. Moth credits them for being short, well produced, and giving shoppers a comprehensive look at products not available through photographs.
As an example of a product video that’s succinct yet informative, Moth points to a Qubit video that pits its software against a barista, something that’s easy for most people to understand.
Another good example is the video on the home page of Zady that shows where the wool comes from that goes into its sweaters. By showing the heritage and origins of its sweaters, Zady improves the perception of its products, reinforces its image as a company that cares about sustainability, and improves its conversion rates.
How to promote videos
Even the best produced video is virtually useless without proper distribution. YouTube and Facebook are the dominant distributors of online marketing video. Place it on those sites and add description tags and a keyword-laden description to help viewers find the video. Strong keywords can help it appear in the “related videos” section of YouTube and in Facebook news feeds.
The keywords in the video title and description should match the keywords used by your media monitoring service in order to assure you’ll track all video placements.
Promote it. Add a link to it on your website. Share it on social media channels. Distribute it to your email subscribers. Seek people who frequently engage on videos, and connect with them socially by commenting or sharing. Start a conversation so they’ll remember you. Use inexpensive keyword advertising on YouTube or Google to attract viewers.
Bottom Line: Video is a powerful and underutilized marketing tool. The most successful marketing videos are short, lively and entertaining, and target a specific business goal. They have compelling visuals. They are widely distributed and have solid promotion programs to support them.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
I think that video marketing will continue grow up in the next years. Great article