Corporate Video Marketing Strategies in 2013
Video is rapidly changing marketing, and companies are beginning to realize its potential. A recent study by Borrell Associates reported that in the next five years, companies plan to spend more than a third of all advertising dollars on online video production. In fact, business video spend will increase to $8.3 billion by 2015 according to Interactive Media Strategies, growing more than 50% annually.
Online video has come of age now that technology can deliver videos quickly and inexpensively on many size devices. Now all types of companies can use online video to get a better return on investment from their web traffic, achieve higher product sales with fewer returns, and share new ideas with potential customers. Every company should create an online video strategy in order to create a video following, engage with these followers, and convert them to paying customers.
So what are the considerations and best practices for putting together corporate video marketing strategies? There are several factors to consider:
· Content – what to video, how often to video, and improving video experience for the watcher
· Distribution – placing videos on the internet to grow video following
· Video ROI – creating videos that result in customer purchases
· Tracking – track video followers and monetization of videos
· Mobile – get mobile device users to watch and share videos
1. Content: Decide What You Want to Create.
As you come up with a corporate video strategy, enter the planned videos on a calendar. These videos should answer your customers questions as they browse your website.
This should include the list of themes you will video for the coming months. Before making new videos, inventory and asses all your current videos and see if any meet the themes you have specified or need to be updated to better inform the customer. Make sure they meet your quality standards for user engagement, and if they don’t, remove them. Update the keywords on your existing videos. As you are inventorying your current videos, make sure that any comments or questions on your YouTube channel have been addressed.
Next come up with the titles and basic content that will go in each video. Keep the video scripts under five minutes and focused on a particular topic. You can add watermarks or a featured video on all the videos in your YouTube channel to ensure people know they were made by you.
There are many types of videos that are inexpensive and popular that should be part of your video strategy. For instance, customer testimonials allow you to promote both your customer’s and your own business. Rather than having the customer alone in the video, it is often more engaging to do the customer testimonial in a question and answer session so that an interesting story unfolds that holds the attention of your audience.
A great way to interview people, present information and presentations from your computer, or engage video followers is by using an interactive Google Hangout which is available to everyone with a Google Plus account.
All your videos do not have to be professionally produced. Some of the most shared content on the web are video interviews of people with an interesting or informative story. These kinds of story based videos can be longer, but they should be focused on one or two discussion points, and be about some compelling insight that people will want to share. The interview topic doesn’t have to relate directly to your products, but it should have some connection to a topic of general interest to your visitors. Don’t be afraid to interview some of your own employees or customers. They are experts or have valid opinions about your products and services that others will want to hear.
After you have created a video and uploaded it to your YouTube channel, you should make use of the many features that YouTube offers to make your videos stand out. For instance, annotation can be added to direct the viewer’s attention to a subscribe button or link to another video, or simply to highlight something discussed in the video.
At this time, Google does not allow you to annotate a link to a web page unless it is for a fundraising project, but this could change. Google Adwords representatives have suggested annotating in text during the video and linking to the video description, where a URL to a product or service landing page can be shown.
2. Distribution: Place Your Videos On The Web to Grow Your Video Following.
Add your videos to YouTube and embed them on your site. In addition to your YouTube channel you can also put videos in more focused video distribution sites with large social followings. Here is a list of possible video sites that will also allow a link back to your own website:
- · http://www.brightcove.com/en/trial
· https://secure.photobucket.com/register
· http://www.dailymotion.com/register
· http://blip.tv/users/apply
· http://www.grindtv.com/register/
· https://secure.metacafe.com/account/login
· https://myspace.com/signup
· https://vimeo.com/join
· http://www.liveleak.com/user?a=register
· http://www.stupidvideos.com/registration/
· http://www.flixya.com/sign-up
· http://www.pandora.tv/sign/signup.ptv?retUrl=myupload
· https://www.viddler.com/login
· http://www.tubetorial.com/submit/
· http://www.videowebtown.com/community/sign_up.php
· http://www.clipmoon.com/signup/
· http://www.thatshow.com/signup
· http://www.clipchef.com/signup
· http://www.break.com/user/register
Video will increase website traffic and sales. In fact, there are some very compelling recent statistics about videos in search results. For instance, Search Metrics reported that “Video results appear in over 63% of blended search results on Google.” This makes sense especially since Google owns YouTube and wants people to use the YouTube channels there. “ Videos in universal search results have a 41% higher click through rate” (this statistic came from a survey done by ReelSEO.) So it makes sense to try to have one of your videos come up in the search results for certain keywords that you know bring valuable visitors to your website. Another statistic by Forrester shows that “Video increases the chance of a front-page Google result by 53 times!” So how do you get your videos to show up in search results? You need them to be viewed more than your competitor’s videos. There are several ways to accomplish this.
You can use adwords on YouTube pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns to link your ads to your videos so that your videos are displayed in sponsored listings at the top right corner of search results on YouTube. You can also get them to show in the video stream of other people’s videos as an advertisement. You can also put the video on the adwords display network as a click to play video ad. For a few dollars a day, you can quickly increase the views that your videos receive and they will then begin showing up in search results.
There are many statistics to back up the invaluable use of videos on social media. A recent study by Adobe found that video is three times more likely to be shared on Twitter than any other type of content, and that video has a viral reach of 77% on Facebook, where incidentally, 75% of all videos are shared. “76% of marketers plan to add video to their sites, making it a higher priority than Facebook, Twitter, and blog integration” according to Social Media Examiner. With this in mind, you can write a blog post about each of your videos and Tweet this post, as well as share it on Google Plus, Facebook and other social sites. You can share the video blog post in LinkedIn groups or use it to comment on forum questions that the video answers. If you use social media to promote your videos, you should first make the commitment in resources to monitor any comments that result.
LinkedIn also offers sponsored ads that will reach the inboxes of your target audience and can quickly promote your videos.
3. Video ROI: Create videos that result in customers making purchases.
The videos you add to your site should be quality videos that you are proud to display. Informational (rather than promotional) videos work well on service and product pages to quickly inform your potential clients. Many manufacturers supply videos about their products, and these are certainly helpful on product pages, but some of the most popular product videos are done by retailers in the form of reviews and comparisons to help customers decide on which product will meet their needs. Some recent statistics back up the notion of adding video to your product and services pages. For instance, Internet Retailer recently reported that 52% of consumers feel watching an online product video makes them more confident in their purchase, and Website Magazine reported that 60% of consumers will watch product videos when they find them and that 52% of consumers say they are less likely to return a product after viewing a product video on a brand website or YouTube.
These videos should be short, because a survey by Marketing Charts has found that three out of five consumers will watch a product educational video for about two minutes before they make a purchase. If you have time to add video to your product and service pages, conversion can increase by 46% according to Treepodia, which seems like a good return on your investment.
Business to Business companies can also capitalize on the popularity and usefulness of video. In fact, according to Marketing Profs, 70% of Business to Business companies use video marketing. Forbes recently reported that“60% of people prefer watching video over reading text,” and a survey by Wharton Business showed that people remember 50% more content after watching a video compared to 22% remembered after reading written content. So on each B to B landing page, it makes sense to add a short video designed for busy business people to quickly understand the concept described on the page. A study by Search EngineWatch has shown that these videos result in up to seven times better response rates than pages without video.
Video also boosts email marketing click through rates as much as 96%, as shown in a study by Flimp. Incorporate your videos into your email campaigns for better return on investment. A well-marketed email campaign should include a video, specific landing page, and well-written information along with a compelling subject line.
4. Tracking: Measure and track video followers is still difficult.
There are many tools including Google Analytics, YouTube Analytics, Instagram Analytics, and many more that allow companies to track activity and fan engagement on their videos. However, combining all this information to make informed video content and distribution decisions can be daunting, and often impossible with the tools at hand. Advertisers can measure engagement by looking at server analytics metrics to determine the number of views, and they can also measure the effectiveness of their videos by having viewers respond to surveys. However, advertisers really want to know the effectiveness of their videos. They want to know if their videos are engaging, sharable and prompt people to become customers. To determine the level of engagement, advertisers need to find out where a viewer goes next after watching a video.
Companies want to know if their videos are shared or commented on as well. Google Analytics can show video engagement, but does not tell the whole story.
YouTube analytics gives a bit more information, but still doesn’t tell the whole story because you cannot see what the viewer does next after watching the video. Right now there is no way to add a UTM code on the URL of the video to track exactly which video brings the most visitors to your website.
5. Mobile: How to get mobile device users to watch and share videos
Since almost all mobile device users share videos with others, and they spend more an hour per week watching mobile videos, business owners are more and more concerned about how to get mobile device users to watch their videos. The Business2Community blog lists several interesting statistics and trends that can help business owners answer this question.
- One statistic suggests that adding a video to your mobile app will improve engagement because 55% of videos are watched on mobile apps.
- Make it easy to share your videos because 33% of mobile phone users share video weekly and 16% share it daily.
- Use funny, short videos because these are most likely to be shared (66%).
- Make sure to test your videos on mobile devices and tablets because these shoppers are three times more likely to view a video than PC shoppers.
- The most popular use for mobile action codes, such as QR and bar codes is linking to mobile video: 40% of codes link to video content, including product demos.
In summary, it makes sense for companies to begin redistributing their marketing budgets and making video production a larger portion of their marketing spend. These five steps will hopefully spark a discussion that enables your marketing department to make optimal use of video marketing. I’d love to hear your comments about the information in this post. If you have other video marketing tips and techniques I welcome them.