Online video can serve as an engaging part of a company’s content marketing strategy and in turn improve SEO results. Nearly 37 million videos were viewed in May 2012, with the average user watching nearly 22 hours of video. Additionally, online video is beginning to play a role in the B2B marketing world. B2B prospects are more likely to look up a brand after seeing it in an online video, and including video in email marketing has been shown to reduce unsubscribe rate and increase click-through rates.
Video marketing is not as easy as taking a video of your CEO talking and uploading it to YouTube. Like most other marketing practices, it is best to start with developing a strategy for this tactic in order to see how it fits within your company’s overall marketing strategy. Here are a few tips for producing online videos:
Make it entertaining—People who are watching videos online don’t want to watch a boring sales pitch. Also, if viewers are entertained enough by your video, they will be more likely to spread it to their social networks, potentially increasing the reach of your message exponentially.
Teach something—In addition to entertaining your audience, consider educating them on something that your company is knowledgeable of (and if you can entertain them at the same time, even better!). Not only will the viewer learn something that is relevant to them, they will associate your company with knowledge on that subject matter.
Start off strong—If you don’t catch people’s attention in the first few seconds, they’re not going to sit through a 5 minute video. One study showed that about 20% of viewers don’t even make it past the first 10 seconds of a video. Remember that you don’t have a captive audience and that there are literally millions of other videos online that they could be watching.
Relate it to your brand—While a video of dancing kittens might be entertaining, it is still important to derive some value from your efforts. Does it drive visitors to your website or social media accounts? Does it tie into your brand messaging? If not, you may want to think about how to tie the video into your marketing strategy.
Help it out—Don’t expect to upload a video to YouTube and automatically get 5 million views. While it can happen, it’s very rare (30% of videos on YouTube drive over 99% of total views). In order to drive more viewers to your video, utilize other outlets of your marketing strategy such as email, social media or a corporate blog. Getting your video into the hands of several key social influencers will help your video spread farther and faster.
Looking to branch out into online video creation? Check out this video we created to highlight Launch’s 10 year anniversary and read more about our interactive services.
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