Video Marketing
More and more website owners are adopting video marketing methods as online technologies become more accessible. Online video marketing is really taking off. Visitors’ attention can be captured and your marketing messages stand out from the crowd in an increasingly ad-cluttered internet environment. I highly recommend the Video Marketing Tool Kit for learning the basics quickly.
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For the uninitiated, video is thought to be very complex and very expensive. Technology has rendered video marketing very doable, even for the non-techie type website owner. Just like learning to use email, once you learn the basics, you can complete the tasks yourself. Video marketing is as revolutionary as email was when it first became popular. Sending and receiving email was what it was intended for. However, those in the know developed and used methods to use email to market their businesses. Email marketing has been the most prolific and most profitable marketing method on the internet.
Successfully using video is no longer a challenge for people. The challenge is knowing how you can use it to benefit your business. One-size-does-NOT-fit-all! Yes, video has the best potential to explode your website traffic. But, it is critical that you learn how to maximize its power for your benefit, not just so you can say that you use video.
Another surprising fact about the phenomenal power of video, it doesn’t require the ‘professionalism’ of television! In fact, the most successful marketing videos don’t involve professional talent. It seems that website visitors feel that they get to ‘know you better, when they see you in online video. And that familiarity contributes to the relationship building experience so critical in business success.
Video to be used on the Internet should be information and communication focused while video to be used on television should be focused on entertainment.
Like everything else, there are good ways and bad ways to use video marketing. Right now most marketers are incorporating their audio-visual content into existing embedded ad formats like banners or over-content formats like pop-ups. Though this could reach a potentially large audience, viewers are likely to be less captivated and more annoyed by these disruptive and distracting placements.
Cached or streaming video on a specific destination site offers the best chance of interesting consumers in brand messages, but it is not likely to reach a large audience unless it generates a viral outcome.
Whatever you come up with, don't forget to make it easy to open and distribute. File size is important, as is the media format. If your viral video has been created for a particular type of software that not many people use, how will you get people to spread it like wildfire?
Also, if you've made a video the impact will be better if you send the clip as an attachment rather than stream it. It's cheaper and, if you're not hosting it, it's more viral, too.
If the last couple of paragraphs seemed overly technical, don’t worry. Again, similar to learning to use email, it only seems too technical when you don’t know the basics of how things work. It is simply a matter of learning the basics of video marketing and how you and your business can benefit.
