Web video promotion is one of the most exciting and adaptable promotional platforms that are available to every business. Companies are wrongly put off by the price of this type of promotion, but when you compare the cost and longevity of a web video next to other forms of promotion, there is no contest.
There are many benefits of videos for business and in this article I want to explore this further and demonstrate the capabilities of video as an important promotional tool.
The Basics
A web video can quickly and effectively promote 3 core concepts:
1. Who you are.
2. What you do.
3. Why customers should buy off you.
Within 90 seconds, you can easily explain all these concepts using a more interesting visual style than a ream of text. That is not to say that simple text isn’t a good way of explaining your products or services, but by providing the option of watching a video, you empower your potential customer to find out about the information in a way they want. I will now explore in a little more detail some of the other benefits to video promotion.
24/7
One of the main features of a web video is that unlike your sales team, it never sleeps. The video is available to view/sell 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is even more important if your product is available to the world market. As we will discuss further in the article, this can be spread over many video platforms like YouTube and Vimeo to give your video maximum exposure.
Lifespan
If you plan your video properly, it can be used for an indefinite length of time. The lifespan of a video is unparalleled when compared to other forms of promotion. Take for example an advert appearing in a magazine, it will last for a week or month or as soon as they stop reading the publication, a video can last years.
Customers to your website
With the various promotional platforms available to web videos, using them makes it is a great way to bring potential customers to your website. Your video can be shown on YouTube, Vimeo, Directories and Industry websites. The video with the right call to action, keywords and tagging will help bring additional customers to your website and really push/promote your brand.
Increase sales conversion
Having a good quality product video on your website (preferably on your website’s product page) has been shown to increase sales conversion by 44%. It is easy to see why, a web video can quickly and visually show the products capabilities, benefits, build quality and even elements like the finish and materials used in the product. This can all be delivered in 2 minutes or less, giving the viewer all the information they might need to influence their buying behaviour.
Less noise
The term “message noise†is used to describe the distractions you are subject to when watching a promotional piece like a television advert, which could divert your attention away from the adverts’ message. This could be in the form of people talking when the advert is running or you are reading an article (hopefully this one) when the advert is playing. Web videos have next to no “noise†as the viewer has actively chosen to view the video, so most, if not all, of their attention is directed towards the web video.
Adaptability/ Promotional platforms
In my humble opinion, web videos are the most flexible promotional tool available to marketers. To emphasis this point here is a list of the available promotional platforms that videos work on:
1. Your website
2. Product page
3. Testimonial page
4. Directories
5. Social Media
6. Industry Website
7. Tradeshow
8. Video channels - YouTube/Vimeo
9. Webcasting
10. Networking
11. Sales Team
12. Email campaign
13. Mobile Devices
14. Direct Mail campaigns
S.E.O Practices
Video promotion is becoming an increasingly important aspect of the SEO mix. As we all know, SEO at a fundamental level, is about having good quality and relevant content on the Internet linking to your chosen website. Videos fit this ideal perfectly as you have a link from the second biggest search engine directly to your website. There are other important elements like having your video embedded on other websites and the simpler tasks like properly tagging your videos on a video platform like YouTube and Vimeo all aid this. Whilst video SEO is not going to overhaul your SEO strategy, you should view this as another important cog in the overall SEO mix.
Sharing
With the rise in mobile technology, people are not restricted to viewing your videos chained to a desk anymore. People can view the videos anywhere in the world. I have a client who produces promotional items for a major cosmetic manufacturer. His problem was dealing with the cost of samples, which would have to be sent all over the World. Samples in this instance were a necessity, as images alone could not accurately convey the finish and dimensions of the product and this was so important to his business and his client’s understanding of the products. I explained that if we produced some short and simple product videos, he could send this directly to his client’s phones for them to view at their convenience. Although he had the initial cost of the videos, his overall costs were dramatically reduced because of his use of the web videos instead of sending numerous different samples all over the World.
Cost
Now we get to the crunch issue/benefit. People believe that web videos are expensive and this is something I wholeheartedly disagree with. Whilst videos can be “expensive†to produce, I think this cost has to be looked at against the backdrop of the benefits. Going back to my example of adverts within newspaper and magazines, you could spend £1000 and more, for 1 hit in a chosen publication. This advert becomes obsolete as soon as the person has put the publication down. This problem is coupled with the “noise†of the magazine’s articles etc. Some of the most popular web videos are the most simple camera video and audio set-up with a representative of the product discussing its use. Case in point is the “how-to†apply make-up videos that have hundreds of thousand of hits. All I will say on this subject is that this is your brand image you want to promote, so you need to assign an appropriate budget that will make you achieve your video objectives.
There are many benefits of videos for business and in this article I want to explore this further and demonstrate the capabilities of video as an important promotional tool.
The Basics
A web video can quickly and effectively promote 3 core concepts:
1. Who you are.
2. What you do.
3. Why customers should buy off you.
Within 90 seconds, you can easily explain all these concepts using a more interesting visual style than a ream of text. That is not to say that simple text isn’t a good way of explaining your products or services, but by providing the option of watching a video, you empower your potential customer to find out about the information in a way they want. I will now explore in a little more detail some of the other benefits to video promotion.
24/7
One of the main features of a web video is that unlike your sales team, it never sleeps. The video is available to view/sell 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is even more important if your product is available to the world market. As we will discuss further in the article, this can be spread over many video platforms like YouTube and Vimeo to give your video maximum exposure.
Lifespan
If you plan your video properly, it can be used for an indefinite length of time. The lifespan of a video is unparalleled when compared to other forms of promotion. Take for example an advert appearing in a magazine, it will last for a week or month or as soon as they stop reading the publication, a video can last years.
Customers to your website
With the various promotional platforms available to web videos, using them makes it is a great way to bring potential customers to your website. Your video can be shown on YouTube, Vimeo, Directories and Industry websites. The video with the right call to action, keywords and tagging will help bring additional customers to your website and really push/promote your brand.
Increase sales conversion
Having a good quality product video on your website (preferably on your website’s product page) has been shown to increase sales conversion by 44%. It is easy to see why, a web video can quickly and visually show the products capabilities, benefits, build quality and even elements like the finish and materials used in the product. This can all be delivered in 2 minutes or less, giving the viewer all the information they might need to influence their buying behaviour.
Less noise
The term “message noise†is used to describe the distractions you are subject to when watching a promotional piece like a television advert, which could divert your attention away from the adverts’ message. This could be in the form of people talking when the advert is running or you are reading an article (hopefully this one) when the advert is playing. Web videos have next to no “noise†as the viewer has actively chosen to view the video, so most, if not all, of their attention is directed towards the web video.
Adaptability/ Promotional platforms
In my humble opinion, web videos are the most flexible promotional tool available to marketers. To emphasis this point here is a list of the available promotional platforms that videos work on:
1. Your website
2. Product page
3. Testimonial page
4. Directories
5. Social Media
6. Industry Website
7. Tradeshow
8. Video channels - YouTube/Vimeo
9. Webcasting
10. Networking
11. Sales Team
12. Email campaign
13. Mobile Devices
14. Direct Mail campaigns
S.E.O Practices
Video promotion is becoming an increasingly important aspect of the SEO mix. As we all know, SEO at a fundamental level, is about having good quality and relevant content on the Internet linking to your chosen website. Videos fit this ideal perfectly as you have a link from the second biggest search engine directly to your website. There are other important elements like having your video embedded on other websites and the simpler tasks like properly tagging your videos on a video platform like YouTube and Vimeo all aid this. Whilst video SEO is not going to overhaul your SEO strategy, you should view this as another important cog in the overall SEO mix.
Sharing
With the rise in mobile technology, people are not restricted to viewing your videos chained to a desk anymore. People can view the videos anywhere in the world. I have a client who produces promotional items for a major cosmetic manufacturer. His problem was dealing with the cost of samples, which would have to be sent all over the World. Samples in this instance were a necessity, as images alone could not accurately convey the finish and dimensions of the product and this was so important to his business and his client’s understanding of the products. I explained that if we produced some short and simple product videos, he could send this directly to his client’s phones for them to view at their convenience. Although he had the initial cost of the videos, his overall costs were dramatically reduced because of his use of the web videos instead of sending numerous different samples all over the World.
Cost
Now we get to the crunch issue/benefit. People believe that web videos are expensive and this is something I wholeheartedly disagree with. Whilst videos can be “expensive†to produce, I think this cost has to be looked at against the backdrop of the benefits. Going back to my example of adverts within newspaper and magazines, you could spend £1000 and more, for 1 hit in a chosen publication. This advert becomes obsolete as soon as the person has put the publication down. This problem is coupled with the “noise†of the magazine’s articles etc. Some of the most popular web videos are the most simple camera video and audio set-up with a representative of the product discussing its use. Case in point is the “how-to†apply make-up videos that have hundreds of thousand of hits. All I will say on this subject is that this is your brand image you want to promote, so you need to assign an appropriate budget that will make you achieve your video objectives.
