Approaching Online Video Marketing

Creating high quality online videos about your business, its products and services, and useful subject matter expertise you can share with the world at large may sound like something far too involved and costly to even consider, especially if you are only just venturing into the Internet advertising space. However, there are compelling counterpoints to these potential worries which should inspire you to fully explore the possible benefit of making a video marketing investment. If you cover all your bases, you can come away with expertly produced video content which is relatively affordable and fully optimized for the search engines, allowing your prospects more avenues from which to find and interact with your business. Because of it’s effectiveness as a communication tool, video represents a valuable component to social media marketing.

To help you gain some perspective in making the video marketing decision, it’s important to understand some of the reasons that online video can be impactful to your marketing success overall. A lot of it comes down to some pretty obvious facts. People are simply predisposed to absorb video content. Remember that television your parents told you was rotting your brain? Addictive stuff, right? Well, online video taps into that same predisposition to become glued to televised content, capturing an audience’s attention in quite a different way than the printed word. Video conversion rates (the percentage of people taking the action you want vs. just watching a video and moving on) tend to be higher than conversion rates on text-based messaging. In a world keenly focused on the value of driving action more so than mere traffic, this is a critical factor to consider.

And don’t be fooled into thinking that people are online watching video solely as a brain rotting activity. While I’m sure there is plenty of that going on, when it comes to consuming video content related to products, services, and educational/informative topics, it must be understood that the viewer is most often arriving at this content after taking some sort of proactive step to find it in the first place. This audience is best described as “sit forward,” rather than one which “sits back” to watch more passively. The video searcher wants the “commercial” content they find. They are driving the delivery of what they view by actively seeking answers to questions.

Consider a person searching online for a solution to a termite problem in their garage. They might not even be looking for video, but finding a 30 to 60 second spot by a local pest control company that addresses the problem, and offers a solution, can be extremely impactful on the user. The premise is that a user is far more likely to engage with a company that they can “see and hear” than one they have to do a lot of reading on. Giving them all the information they need to make the decision to act (pick up the phone or fill out a form) in the span of 30 seconds, feeds perfectly into everyone’s appetite for quick actionable content. No one wants to waste their time unnecessarily.

Video can be more engaging. That’s just the way our television addicted minds work, even on the Internet. Is it foolproof? Of course not. Nothing online is. And I’m not saying that video is the silver bullet to all your online marketing woes. But, while companies are coming along making it more and more affordable to deliver high quality, SEO-ready video to your proactive end users, you can be sure it becomes easier to stick your toe into the video marketing water.

The rules for knowing what sort of video content to create follow the same rules related to printed content online: give people something useful. One suggestion that can start you down the right path is to come up with a list of commonly ask questions related to your particular industry. Then you can create the answers in video. This is a critical component in participating in the dialogue format of web 2.0’s social media landscape.

For example, an Orthodontist’s office could create numerous 60 second videos answering specific question often on the minds of parents: How many different types of braces are there? What’s the right age to start braces? Are there alternatives to braces? The list goes on and on.

Answering common questions plays directly into the foundation of social media. Forget for a moment that it might lead to business. These questions are an open door to an interactive conversation. There is an audience looking for topic-specific, useful information which you possess. Just as other facets of your online presence allow you to become an active participant in your online community, video can also play its part. It provides another vibrant layer in the multiple ways any business must seek to engage with its audience online.