Marketing with Video and Rich Media Blog » video production

10 Reasons Why Your Marketing Video Isn’t Working?

Jimm Fox — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 04:45:58 +0000

You just spent $2,000, $20,000 or $200,000 on your most recent corporate video project and it didn’t move the dial. What happened?

The creation of your corporate video should follow a structured development process. When it doesn’t your chance of success is low. Here are ten common mistakes made by companies developing marketing videos:

1. Poorly defined objectives.
Can you easily fill in the following blanks?: This video will help ___{this audience}____ understand that our product or service solves ___{this problem}___ and provides ____ {these benefits)____ . We will measure the success of this video by ___{this rating mechanism}____.
If you can’t clearly and succinctly fill in the first three blanks chances are your video will fail to achieve any measurable results. If you can’t fill in the last blank you’ll never know what was achieved.

2. No clear message(s).
“Expertocom is a world leader in the provisioning of leading edge solutions and robust, mission critical systems to it’s global client base.” Uh-huh. Even if you have a well defined audience, problem statement and benefit, you still need to communicate in clear and convincing manner. Some common mistakes:
- The video is all about you. No one cares about you, they only care about how you can solve their problem.
- B2N (Business to No one) If your message is so general that it applies to everyone it probably won’t resonate with anyone. Be specific. Pick one audience and deliver one really strong, concise message tailored to that specific audience’s needs.
- Jargon-loading. If you “utilize leading-edge best practices to incentivize and leverage your best-of-breed base through groundbreaking, synergistic and outside-the-box thinking” then… no one will understand you.
- Saying too much. “I’m sorry I wrote you such a long letter but I didn’t have time to write a short one” – Mark Twain. It’s really difficult to be succinct. It also seems risky. Script-by-committee is death to most video projects. In video, shorter is almost always better.

3. Your video doesn’t resonate with your audience.
The best messages work on a visceral level. They make you think, even better, they make you feel something. If your video is dull (i.e. a talking head) and if you don’t use video effectively (show me, don’t tell me!) then you will quickly lose your audience. Facts are important but a good story is better. While it may be interesting to note that your lubricant is 27% more viscous than any other on the market it may be more interesting to show that your product is the one that your local fire department depends on. Translating the key benefits you are trying to illustrate into ideas and building that into a compelling visual story is done before any crew show up to start shooting. This is the most important part of the video development process and it’s also the hardest to get right, yet it’s usually the piece that gets the least attention. How do you find a company with this type of experience? Look at their previous work. If it’s not engaging, yours won’t be either.

4. Loose, or no processes at all to develop and promote the video.
The most important part of the video production process is pre-production. Chances are that if you are either surprised or disappointed by the results of your video it is because the planning process was flawed. A well defined storyboard should tell everyone involved exactly what is being said and what visuals are being shown to support those messages. A shotlist tells you exactly what needs to be shot, with whom and when. When the video is shot and edited a marketing plan tells you exactly what the video is supposed to accomplish, how you are going to get your video in front of your intended audience (…who may or may not ever show up at your website) and how the results of the video should be measured. Again, all of this happens before anyone shows up with a camera. If your video production company tells you what your video should look like with little or no input from you – it probably won’t help your business.

5. You started with creative.
“Our President has this really cool idea!” Just like graphic design is the last step in the pre-development phase of a website (often it is first), ’creative’ is the last step in the development of a video script and storyboard. Again… too often it is first. Creativity is an essential part of the video production process but it should never be be the tail wagging the dog. Sure, if you have a budget to create a whack of branded entertainment, that’s a different story – but for most corporate video projects, branded entertainment is not the goal.

6. Your video doesn’t support your brand.
Too often, videos are created in isolation. Your brand is the sum total of all of the experiences people have with your company, that includes video. Your video has to support and complement the tone and key messages that you want associated with your brand. {Warning: Wacky viral videos often do more harm than good.) Video production is not an isolated activity. Your video production company has to understand how you are marketing your business and has to be keen to engage with your marketing department and /or the marketing agency that is helping guide your brand.

7. Budget isn’t large enough.
“We took a couple thousand out of our cleaning budget to do this video.” “Yep, that’s all we’ve got, but we still want it to look like Avatar.” “My cousin Eddy said it would only cost him $400 to make the same video.” The cost of video production has decreased dramatically over the last five years. That said, there is little point in developing a video if you haven’t allocated a reasonable budget for the project. What does a video cost: Here are 25 factors and their prices that go into the cost of developing a corporate video.

8. Wrong type of video.
There are many different styles, structures and purposes for corporate video. Here are 51 different types of video you can develop to promote your business. A thirty second pre-roll promotion video is probably too long and a one minute recruitment video is probably too short. Hiring actors to speak to a technical audience isn’t a good idea. Putting your President on camera may (or may not be) a good idea. A talking head is often a waste of time. A detailed technical video won’t resonate with people in the awareness phase of the sales cycle but can work very well for people in the consideration phase. What type of video you develop and what structure you use for the video is just as important as what messages you chose.

9. No call to action.
What do you want people to do after they have watched your video? If you don’t know, your viewer won’t either.

10. No distribution, SEO or promotion plan.
Even if your video is great, if no one sees it you’ve wasted your money. Are you optimizing a webpage with keywords to help promote the video? Are you promoting the video on industry portals or other related sites where you intended audience might be? Have you developed an email campaign to promote the video to key audiences? Do you have a process to move prospective viewers through your sales cycle once they have viewed the video? Have you tested the video before widely launching it to make sure it accomplishes what you want it to? Do you have any budget for changes or do you assume that you’ll get it exactly right the first time through? Do you have a social media campaign, a PR campaign, a media campaign or some other promotional activity to build interest and awareness for the video?

The video production piece (shooting and editing) represents about 1/3 of the total value in the video development process. Planning (building the right messages for your audience) and promotion (making sure the video is seen) are both equally important.

—–

{Note: regarding ‘Jargon -Loading’, thanks to Lindsey McCaffrey for inspiration on ‘Words and phrases I don’t want to see in your copy‘}

51 ways to use web video to help your business grow

Jimm Fox — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 20:11:38 +0000

As bandwidth increases and video production costs continue to decrease businesses are beginning to adopt video as a primary method of communicating with their customers and prospects. In-house or outsourced, video is quickly becoming a marketer’s media tool of choice for two reasons: video is engaging and, more importantly, video is persuasive. Here are some of the ways that businesses are using video to help improve their bottom line:

Customer Reference Videos

1. Customer Testimonials (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Nothing is more compelling than seeing and hearing your customer (ideally in their own environment) extol the virtues of your products and services or explaining how your company helped them to achieve their business goals. These videos usually run from fifteen second snippets to a minute and are typically combined with or used to support other marketing material.

2. Success Stories (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Similar to a customer testimonial these videos run between one and two minutes and follow an interview format where the person on screen answers questions posed by an interviewer just off-camera. These videos are usually delivered as stand-alone marketing support materials and are often grouped with other customer success stories.

3. Video Case Study (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
A video case study combines customer testimonials with more a more in-depth explanation of how your company’s products and services helped your customer be successful. These case studies usually incorporate two voices – a narrator and the voice of your customer and can run anywhere from two to five minutes. The video structure follows the same “Problem, Solution, Benefit” format found in a printed case study and usually include b-roll or other supporting text and video.

4. Man-in-the-street Interviews (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
These videos are typically done to promote events and to build buzz around coming events but can also be employed to capture ‘spontaneous’ responses to targeted questions that help promote your product or service or to help differentiate the benefits of your brand compared to the real or imagined problems associated with your competitors. Consumer focused companies such as soft drink manufacturers, phone companies and fast food companies often use this video format in advertising but you are starting to see this type of video appear as a stand-alone promotion on business websites or YouTube business channels. Sometimes these videos are genuine. Sometimes they are completely staged. ‘Authenticity’ is, in some sense, becoming a style…

5. Customer Presentations. (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Low)
If one of your customers is presenting at a conference, trade show or event or even in your offices and is talking about your products or services either directly with you or indirectly as part of a larger discussion this may be a perfect opportunity to capture the presentation of video (with permission, of course) to re-purpose on your website and intranet.

Product and Service Promotion

6. Product Presentations (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Product (or service) presentation videos are typically employed early in the buying cycle. Product or service presentations focus on benefits and talk from your customer’s perspective. They should speak clearly to how your product solves a specific business, personal or economic problem that your prospect is experiencing. They are used to help your customers and prospects differentiate between the benefits of your products and services to those of your competitors.

7. Product Demonstrations (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Product demos show how your product works and highlight the features that differentiate it from that of your competitors. Software screen captures, a 3D cut-away, or a high impact demo by a presenter are all excellent ways of showing how your product or service works. These videos are typically used to influence a prospect who is relatively far along in the sales cycle. In technology marketing these videos would be targeted at the technical approvers who need to understand how something works. In consumer marketing these would be targeted at the economic buyers of larger ticket items who may be further along the sales process.

8. Product Reviews (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
The best product reviews are trusted third party reviews. Video reviews can be found anywhere from YouTube to various business portals. To the extent they are positive and promote your brand, they should be referenced. You can also partner with trusted third parties to create product reviews for your own products.

9. Visual Stories (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Quickly rising in popularity, visual stories employ illustrations, animations and motion graphics with a voice-over to explain complex products or services in a simple and compelling manner. These are sometime referred to as ‘explainers’ and are usually between one and three minutes in length. A new version of this tool, used primarily for entertainment, are websites that offer predefined characters and backgrounds that you can both animate and add an automated voice to (sort of like building your own Second Life commercials). You will begin to see many new hosted services offering customizable cloud-based animation modeling options – some good and some quite awful.

Corporate Video

10. Corporate Overview (Popularity: High | Growth Potential: moderate)
These videos are the video equivalent of the ‘company brochure’ for small companies – intended to give new visitors to a website a better idea of the company. Corporate overview videos typically company history, key products, executives/owners and other top level business info. As the cost of video production continues to decrease and the popularity of video increases you will start to see these videos being replaced by multiple, more targeted video.

11. Executive Presentations (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Whether you are preparing for a quarterly update, responding to a major event in your industry or making a regularly scheduled presentation there is great value in presenting the “face” and “voice” of your leadership team to all of your constituents.

12. Staff Presentations (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Social media and other Web 2.0 trends have caused companies to reconsider how they communicate with external audiences. Your senior leadership team should not be the first and only consideration to represent your company. It is becoming more imperative to consider showcasing the people that drive the day-to-day operations of your company. Customer service representatives, technical experts and legacy workers are all valuable considerations for this new category of corporate video. Surveys show that there is more trust associated with these employees than with senior management. When you are selling to influencers in organizations (versus economic buyers or decision makers) it is especially important you represent your company with people that your customers and prospects can relate to.

13. Corporate facilities or equipment tour (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Low)
Ten years ago corporate facility videos and equipment tours were popular. Down-sizing, off-shoring, outsourcing, a couple of recessions and a hollowing out of North America’s manufacturing base has change the priorities placed on these videos. Uniqueness is key to success here. That said, it’s really not about you and your stuff any more – it’s about how you can solve your customers problems.

14. Annual Report / Review (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Low)
Public companies are legally obliged to create annual and quarterly reviews. As well, larger privately held companies also create their own quarterly and annual reviews. As print continues to fall out of favor video will either supplement or replace these materials.

15. Video Signature and Video Introduction (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook are just starting to enter into the corporate culture even though they have been part of the social culture for years. Other social sites like web-based dating services are now commonplace. Video is becoming a key component in how you ‘sell’ yourself, in your private life… and in business. A video signature is a video (either embedded or direct link to video) that is in the signature portion of your email. Introductory videos serve the same purpose – to give people who don’t know you a better idea about who your are.

Training

16. Training (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Corporate video first gained prominence with training (service, support, sales, personal development etc.) and continues to be one of the best uses of video. Online Video is a cost effective substitute for in-class training. You can also easily integrate video into online training management tools.

17. Overnight expert videos (Sales Support) (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
If you serve a large geographic area or sell through channels then it is well worth the effort to put together short ‘overnight expert’ sales support videos that highlight the key selling points, features, benefits, objection handling and follow-up issues to consider by your direct or channel sales force.

18. Just-in-time learning (‘How-to’ Videos) (Popularity:Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Contextual training videos are becoming very popular on the web. ‘How-to’ videos, video manuals, on-site video reference, quick assembly demos, and other types of video are being used to supplement or replace traditional training. Mobile video will increase the popularity of this type of video.

Customer Support

19. Post sale support and maintenance videos (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
No one reads manuals. You can save thousands of dollars of post sale support by creating informative assembly, installation and maintenance videos for your products and services.

20. Website FAQ Video (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
In certain formats video can be a suitable replacement for text where an authoritative voice, support materials or other visual references are required. A list of FAQ’s answered by a company expert is an example.

21. Live, two-way video (i.e. Apple’s FaceTime or Skype)
I believe an interesting application for mobile computing and video is going to evolve around the ability to incorporate live and recorded video into the customer support process. Imagine being able to show someone the problem you are having with their product rather than trying to describe it or send them a photo. Showing someone the problem is just the beginning. Getting a step-by-step video response with someone talking you through the solution – live… that’s the holy grail of customer support. Most companies will dismiss this as too expensive. Other companies, like Apple, will integrate these types of services into their entire brand experience.

Internal Communications

22. Internal Communications (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
In larger companies few people have the time or interest to understand what other groups or functions within the company do or even why they exist. Internal videos that highlight business plans, new business activities and achievements can improve knowledge transfer and lead to more effective communications. They are also a great way to show off your local heroes. These videos can be either live or recorded and are typically used in larger more geographically dispersed companies. As employees continue to work from home these videos will become more important.

23. Event/Conference and Trade Show Communications. (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Low)
Most companies spend a disproportionate amount of their marketing budget on attending and participating in a variety of industry events and yet only a very small percentage of employees ever benefit from these activities. Share the knowledge gained at these events by capturing the presentations, demos, interviews, commentaries etc. on video.

24. Employee orientation (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Once your new recruits are on board employee orientation videos are a great way to get new staff up to speed. Company history, structure, procedures, policies and codes of behavior can all be communicated effectively with video.

25. Health, Legal & Safety (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
The cost of dealing with health and safety related issues within organizations continues to grow. Video is one of the most effective means of minimizing these costs.

Advertising , Marketing and Promotion

26. Commercials (Popularity: High | Growth Potential: High)
While advertisers are becoming more selective in how they chose to spend their promotional dollars with broadcast television, other venues for commercials such as online video pre-roll, online sponsorships, in-game advertising, event sponsorships and in-theatre advertising are starting to take the place of broadcast / cable commercials. A proliferation of video screens cropping up on every building, device and structure will create an even more diverse set of advertising opportunities. The challenge will be to create specialized content targeted to ever- shrinking niche audiences.

27. Viral Video (Popularity: High | Growth Potential: High)
A video is viral if it is so compelling that people want to share it. (Calling a video ‘Viral’ doesn’t make it so). Viral videos have to be extremely engaging, entertaining, shocking or meaningful to be successful. Unfortunately some of the most successful viral videos have little connection (and therefore value) to any brand. Everyone references ‘Will it Blend’ but very few viral videos are remotely this successful in actually driving sales. Viral video is very difficult to do well.

28. Email Video (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Testing has shown that open rates can double if you include video in your email marketing activities. To be effective the video should be purpose-built to elicit a specific conversion activity such as requesting a demo, more info, etc. E-mail is seeing a resurgence with marketers and embedded video in emails (like gmail supports) or links to video in email is becoming very popular.

29. Infomercials (Popularity: High | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Infomercials have been around forever. While they continue to be the primary focus of web-based parody videos they have remained remarkably resilient over time. The shopping channel is, in effect, a 24 hour infomercial. If done well, Infomercials can be very effective at selling certain consumer products.

30. Content Marketing (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Huge)
This is a broad category that will become very important over the next months and years. Much of the content (video or otherwise) being created today by companies is focused on selling and focused on the brand. Focusing on solving your customers problems first and then associating your brand with those solutions will be increasingly more important and effective. (i.e. Home Depot has developed branded ‘how-to’ series that sits on their website and shows their customers how-to fix various things around the house. ) What knowledge do you have that can help your customers and prospects. People don’t go to your website to see your sales pitch. They go to see if you can solve their problem.

31. Landing pages and micro sites (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Video is beginning to replace or supplement text and graphics as a content element on many corporate websites. Landing pages can offer a more compelling call to action with video. Some micro sites on larger web properties are self contained, purpose-built conversion machines that have the singular purpose of generating a conversion activity (sign-up for more info, attend event, order something etc.). Video is becoming an important part of the conversion process.

32. Interactive Video (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: High)
The promise of interactive video has been around for years but we’re just starting to see companies build in interactivity into their videos. You can build in calls to action, form fields, multiple scenarios and any number of engaging content that get people to not just passively watch your video but actually gets them to start to interact with your video. Technology will play a huge role in interactive video over the next few years. You can already see the foundations of this with YouTube allowing you to add annotations and links to videos.

33. Branded Entertainment and Sponsored Video (Popularity:Moderate | Growth Potential:Moderate)
Viral Video in many ways is just branded entertainment. There are many ways companies can benefit from having their names attached to content. In the ’50 the ‘soaps’ were a great way for P&G and other consumer companies to promote their brand. Everyday there is a new format for sponsored video being created for delivery on the web. Many will fail but some will become hugely popular. Associating your brand with the right entertainment and informational content on the web is a very interesting opportunity.

PR Support and Community Relations

34. Video Press Releases (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: High)
The standard four paragraph press release is now being supplemented with video and rich media to tell a more engaging story. Video is now being purpose-built to directly support the important company announcements. The new challenge for press releases is to change the focus from the company to the customer.

35. PR Support Materials (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)

Make it easy for networks, bloggers, news gathers and others to promote your business and also to talk about your industry. Smart companies are developing video support catalogs of company and industry related materials (b-roll, industry footage, sound bites etc) and offering them to news and business portals. The demand for video is everywhere. If a news agency (online or broadcast) is looking for stock footage to use in a story it might as well be yours. (assuming the story is positive, of course)

36. Community Relations Video (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
If your company is out working in the community, being good corporate citizens, helping the environment or contributing to important causes you should be capturing those efforts on video. Show the world what you are doing, don’t just talk about it.

37. Corporate Talk Show / Interviews (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Weekly newsletters require a lot of effort and the ‘open’ rate on most of these is quite low. Companies of all sizes are now starting to develop talk-show format video where a host interviews various people (either internal or external to their company) to discuss things that are important to your audience. Think of it as the long tail of interviews where very specific interviews are being delivered to very specific audiences.

38. EPK (electronic press kit) (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
While EPK’s are still being delivered on DVD, web based video and text are quickly replacing this electronic version of the press kit which became popular in the mid 90′s.

Event Video

39. Event Presentation video (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Events represent a unique confluence of expertise and opportunity – often under-leveraged. Trade Shows, meeting and conferences are usually attended by your top sales people, your corporate executives, industry experts and other influential business people. If you are speaking at an event or someone is referencing your company you should be capturing this valuable content on video.

40. Round table Sessions (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Take the opportunity at an event to corral four to six of your best customers and other industry experts, put them in room and video tape them talking about industry trends, business issues and the future of your industry. This content will be the most valuable content you could ever capture.

41. Q&A Expert sessions. (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
There are many opportunities to take specific event participants to the side and take them through informal Q&A sessions on various topics that matter to your customers. This content is valuable lead generation content.

Idea2Delivery – A web series about starting a business

Jimm Fox — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 04:23:28 +0000

“Show me, don’t tell me” – is the guiding philosophy that local businesswoman Wendy Mayhew from Launch it Right employed when she came up with the idea for Idea2Delivery – a web-based video series to help would-be entrepreneurs understand what is involved in starting and running a new business.

Wendy has developed a series that follows two entrepreneurs through the various stages of building a business. The development challenge for this web series is balancing the need to inform (provide useful and practical information) with the need to entertain (getting two guys to have hissy fits and melt downs every show might get tired after a while.)

This video production was shot in Ottawa. It’s been a lot of fun working with Wendy on the series. Budgets are, of course, tight but Wendy’s tenacity, determination and unique personality always seems to win the day. If we had the funds we could probably shoot a simultaneous second series called “Can they really get away with that?” which looks at what a very small film crew tries to get away with while shooting on a tight budget.

Below are some production shots and the video for the first episode entitled ‘The Dreaded Business Plan.”

7 things you won’t hear from your video production company (even if you should).

Jimm Fox — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 02:57:54 +0000

All video production is the same right?

Video production is growing in it’s importance as part of the overall corporate marketing mix. With that growth comes specialization, complexity and a host of issues that many video production customers may or may not be aware of.

Here are 7 things that you wouldn’t want to hear from your video production company:

1. “We don’t have general liability or errors and omissions insurance.”
What could possibly go wrong? One of the crew drives over a customer, they forget to get a permission form signed, they use licensed material that you don’t have a license for, a light falls on someone… etc. Chances are things won’t go wrong, but if they do you had better be working with a company that is well insured. Standard insurance coverage for a video production company is $2,000,000 for errors and omissions and general liability.

2. “We do a bit of everything – websites, PR, SEO, graphic design, print, advertising… and video.”
The market will always support a range of generalists and specialists that service the same business audience. That said, a good rule of thumb is that if the number of services offered by a company is greater than the number of employees you might want to consider getting a second quote.

3. “We don’t really understand the web, or social media, or marketing .”
The vast majority of corporate video today is being delivered either exclusively or predominantly on the web. Creating video for the web is not the same as creating video for broadcast, or for entertainment, or for presentation at an event. Viewing behaviors are very different online. You also have to consider delivery platforms, hosting options, interactivity, conversion techniques, social media aspects of your video and many other factors that are unique to the web.

4. “We just do corporate video to pay the bills, we’d much rather be doing television.”
Very few people go into video because they want to help businesses sell more products or services (marketing and sales stuff). Film or television is usually the goal, doing corporate work is just what pays the bills. While there are a number of great companies that do both very well, unless your video production company is working under the direction of an ad agency or marketing firm, or they specialize in marketing video you shouldn’t be surprised if your video is wonderfully irrelevant.

5. “We didn’t really focus on business results per se, but we think this video might win an award.”
Creative work is wonderful if it serves a business objective. If it doesn’t you’ve wasted your money. Very few industry awards consider business results in their selection criteria – which is unfortunate because business results are the only thing that matter.

6. “There will be many different people working on your video project.”
You met the president of the company and his senior team. Are they all going to be working on your project? Every services organization operates with some form of distributed work model. It’s up to you as a client to ensure you get the best people working directly on your video project. If you’re not sure, ask.

7. “We’ve been using the same equipment for the last five years.”
Considering that video technology (hardware, software, delivery systems) is changing literally every month it’s hard to imagine any company not taking advantage of so many cost saving and output quality advances in video production.

5 Reasons You Should Post Your Marketing Video on YouTube

Jimm Fox — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:11:24 +0000

Happy Birthday YouTube.

The LA times just posted a recent article that highlights YouTube’s meteoric rise over the last five years. Google’s $ 1.6 billion purchase of the site in 2006 is still being debated but few people are betting against Google eventually turning YouTube into yet another money making machine.

All hype and controversy aside, YouTube’s numbers are impressive:

85% online video market share in the US
#4 site globally in terms of overall traffic
#2 site globally for search
20 hours of video uploaded every minute
5 Billion video streams a month
#2 time suck behind network television
…etc.

The folks at ReelSEO posted a great article in the fall that compared the options of ‘Hosting’ your video versus ‘Posting’ (placing it on a free hosting site like YouTube) and considered nineteen variables that should influence your decision. Their conclusion: “Unless your business is dependent on monetization of content (you are Hulu), chances are that the odds will be in favour of posting video.”

The biggest complaint about YouTube is that it is a big messy sandbox where you can’t control how your video is being presented. That’s true, but it’s important to remember that YouTube is more than just a place to post your video for free – it’s also a marketing platform. Here are five reasons why you should place your marketing video on YouTube (regardless of whether you also host them on your own site):

1. Sharing
Yes, you do lose some control over how your video is presented on YouTube, that’s the down-side of social media – the single biggest issue for companies deciding if and how to engage the great social media experiment. The upside however is huge. YouTube was built for the express purpose of sharing. The reality is that your website isn’t as important as it used to be – it’s no longer the exclusive or final ‘destination’ for all things about your products and your brand. More than ever people are discovering content wherever they happen to be (physically or virtually). You need to create content that is intended to be shared and consumed in many different ways and YouTube is the world’s biggest content bizarre – open 24/7.

2. SEO
Google is prioritizing video in it’s universal search algorithm. Every SEO article I read tells me that Google is explicitly looking for video content. Does Google have a bias toward video on it’s own website? It’s hard to say but you know that Google is certainly aware of it’s own video and is reading the meta data that you have tagged on your YouTube channel. Ideally, if you have a video sitemap on your website with proper mRSS feed Google should be able to find and promote your video as well. Why not do both? As well, you benefit from metatagging your video content on YouTube and linking back to your own website to help improve your site’s pagerank.

3. Content marketing and getting noticed
Content marketing will have the greatest potential to influence your brand in the future. Traditional marketers will argue that it’s a waste of time to place their videos on YouTube because no one is looking for them and no one is going to find them. That’s true. No one is looking for your traditional marketing video because it talks about you and your products and no one cares much about you or your products. If instead, you post a really informative video that solves a specific problem that your customers are facing your video will not only get found, it will get shared. ‘Yes, but we can’t just give stuff away,” you might respond. If you don’t someone else is going to.

4. Reach.
The long tail gets longer every day. YouTube has the greatest reach in the world (thanks to Google). Your audience may be huge or it may be very, very small. It doesn’t matter. There is no more cost effective way to reach your potential audience than on YouTube. Sure, the person typing in “Lolcats” into YouTube is not your customer, but the person typing in “North East Bolivian Pitted Kumquat Ripple Delight” just may be. Your customer may not frequent YouTube but I would bet that someone who knows and is trusted by your customer does.

5. It’s free.
Chris Anderson explains in his new book ‘Free – The Future of a Radical Price’ (a great read btw) that free is the inevitable price for many things online – you just have to figure out something else to charge for. Free doesn’t necessarily mean cheap either. YouTube continues to upgrade it’s service every month with things like better support for HD video, interactivity, metrics, mobile integration (i.e. the only easy way to get video on an iPhone at the moment) etc.

GM strikes out on YouTube

Jimm Fox — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:19:29 +0000

What is the marketing brain-trust at Government Motors thinking?

You’ve survived bankruptcy by taking in billions of taxpayers dollars and you are facing the lingering effects of one of the worst recessions in our lifetime – one that could potentially hollow out a huge portion of this continent’s middle class (the folks that buy most of your cars). You’ve been building mediocre automobiles for years and there is little to show for your investments in innovation. You are now pinning a great deal of your credibility {insert sarcastic comment here} on a (partly) electric car called the Volt. You need to hit this one waaaaaaay out of the park. What do you do?

Amongst other things you pen a feeble song, you stage a 1960′s style showroom dance promotion, you capture them both on cheaply produced video and throw them up on the YouTube channel you have specifically created to promote your new game-changing car to the masses.

Ouch.

(Kudos to GM for allowing comments on the Volt YouTube channel – that was rather brave)

42 ways to use video to grow your business

Jimm Fox — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:47:26 +0000

New visual languages, graphic interfaces, rich media content, lower video production costs and shrinking attention spans are changing how businesses communicate. In-house or outsourced, video is becoming a standard delivery medium for marketing and communications activities. Here are some examples:

Customer Reference Videos

1. Video Customer Testimonials (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Nothing is more compelling than seeing and hearing your customer (ideally in their own environment) extol the virtues of your products and services or explaining how you helped them achieve their business goals. These videos usually run from fifteen second snippets to a minute and are typically combined with or used to support other marketing material.

2. Video Success Stories (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Similar to a customer testimonial these videos run between one and two minutes and follow an interview format where the person on screen answers questions posed by an interviewer just off-camera. These videos are usually delivered as stand-alone marketing support materials and are often grouped with other customer success stories.

4. Man-in-the-street Interviews (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
These videos are typically done to promote events and to build buzz around coming events but can also be employed to capture ‘spontaneous’ responses to targeted questions that help promote your product or service or to help differentiate the benefits of your brand compared to the real or imagined problems associated with your competitors. Soft drink companies, phone companies, fast food companies often use this format in advertising. Sometimes they are genuine. Sometimes they are completely staged. ‘Authenticity’ is becoming a style…

Product and Service Promotion

6. Product Presentations (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Product (or service) presentation videos are typically employed early in the buying cycle. Product or service presentations focus on benefits and talk from more from your customer’s perspective. They should speak clearly to how your product solves a specific business, personal or economic problem that your prospect is experiencing. They are used to help your customers and prospects differentiate between the benefits of your products and services to those of your competitors.

7. Product Demonstrations (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Product demos show how your product works and highlight the features that differentiate it from that of your competitors. Software screen captures, a 3D cut-away, or a high impact demo by a presenter are all excellent ways of showing how your product or service works. These videos are typically used to influence a prospect who is relatively far along in the sales cycle. In technology marketing these videos would be targeted at the technical approvers who need to understand how something works. In consumer marketing these would be targeted at buyers of larger ticket items who are further along the sales cycle.

8. Product Reviews (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
The best product reviews are trusted third party reviews. Video reviews can be found anywhere from YouTube to various business portals. To the extent they help you, they should be referenced. You can also partner with trusted third parties to create product reviews for your own products.

Corporate Video

Training and support video

14. Training (Popularity: High | Growth Potential: High)
Corporate video first gained prominence with training (service, support, sales, personal development etc.) and continues to be one of the best uses of video. Online Video is a cost effective substitute for in-class training. You can also easily integrate video into online training management tools.

15. Overnight expert videos (Sales Support) (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
If you serve a large geographic area or sell through channels then it is well worth the effort to put together short ‘overnight expert’ sales support videos that highlight the key selling points, features, benefits, objection handling and follow-up issues to consider by your direct or channel sales force.

16. Just-in-time learning (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: High)
Contextual training videos are becoming very popular on the web. ‘How-to’ videos, video manuals, on-site video reference, quick assembly demos, and other types of video are being used to supplement or replace traditional training. Mobile video will increase the popularity of this type of video.

17. Post sale support and maintenance videos (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
No one reads manuals. You can save thousands of dollars of post sale support by creating informative assembly, installation and maintenance videos for your products and services.

Internal Communications

18. Internal Communications (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
In larger companies few people have the time or interest to understand what other groups or functions within the company do or even why they exist. Internal videos that highlight business plans, new business activities and achievements can improve knowledge transfer and lead to more effective communications. They are also a great way to show off your local hero’s.

19. Event/Conference and Trade Show Communications. (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Most companies spend a disproportionate amount of their marketing budget on attending and participating in a variety of industry events and yet only a very small percentage of employees ever benefit from these activities. Share the knowledge gained at these events by capturing the presentation, demos, interviews, commentaries etc. on video.

20. Employee orientation (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Once your new recruits are on board employee orientation videos are a great way to get new staff up to speed. Company history, structure, procedures, policies and codes of behavior can all be communicated effectively with video.

21. Health, Legal & Safety (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: High)
The cost of dealing with health and safety related issues within organizations continues to grow. Video is one of the most effective means of minimizing these costs.

Advertising , marketing and promotion

22. Commercials (Popularity: High | Growth Potential: High)
While advertisers are becoming more selective in how they chose to spend their promotional dollars with broadcast television, other venues for commercials such as online video pre-roll, online sponsorships, in-game advertising, event sponsorships and in-theatre advertising are starting to take the place of broadcast / cable commercials. A proliferation of video screens cropping up on every building, device and structure will create an even more diverse set of advertising opportunities. The challenge will be to create specialized content targeted to an ever shrinking niche audience.

23. Viral Video (Popularity: High | Growth Potential: High)
A video is viral if it is so compelling that people want to share it. (Calling a video ‘Viral’ doesn’t make it so). Viral videos have to be extremely engaging, entertaining, shocking or meaningful to be successful. Unfortunately some of the most successful viral videos have little connection (and therefore value) to any brand. (Everyone references ‘Will it Blend’ but very few viral videos are remotely this successful in actually driving sales.)

24. Email Video (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Testing has shown that open rates can double if you include video in your email marketing activities. To be effective the video should be purpose-built to elicit a specific conversion activity such as requesting a demo, more info etc.

25. Infomercials (Popularity: High | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Infomercials have been around forever. While they continue to be the primary focus of web-based parody videos they have remained remarkably resilient over time. The shopping channel is, in effect, a 24 hour infomercial. If done well, Infomercials can be very effective at selling certain consumer products.

26. Content Marketing (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Huge)
This is a broad category that will become very important over the next months and years. Much of the content (video or otherwise) being creating today by companies is focused on selling. Focusing on solving your customers problems first and then associating your brand with those solutions will be increasingly more important and effective. (i.e. Home Depot could create a branded ‘how-to’ series that sits on their website and shows their customers how-to fix anything. They would, or course, reference tools and supplies available in their store but more importantly, they would generate tremendous value for their customers and prospects – value that would accrue to them over time.)

27. Landing pages and micro sites (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential: High)
Video is beginning to replace or supplement text and graphics as a content element on many corporate websites. Landing pages can offer a more compelling call to action with video. Some micro sites on larger web properties are self contained, purpose-built conversion machines that have the singular purpose of generating a conversion activity (sign-up for more info, attend event, order something etc.). Video is becoming an important part of the conversion process.

PR Support and Community Relations

28. Video Press Releases (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: High)
The standard four paragraph press release is now being supplemented with video and rich media to tell a more engaging story. Video is now being purpose-built to directly support the important company announcements. The new challenge for press releases is to change the focus from the company to the customer.

29. PR Support Materials (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)

Make it easy for networks, bloggers, news gathers and others to promote your business and also to talk about your industry. Smart companies are developing video support catalogues of company and industry related materials (b-roll, industry footage, sound bites etc) and offering them to news and business portals. The demand for video is everywhere. If a news agency (online or broadcast) is looking for stock footage to use in a story it might as well be yours. (assuming the story is positive, of course)

30. Community Relations Video (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: High)
If your company is out working in the community, being good corporate citizens, helping the environment or contributing to important causes you should be capturing those efforts on video. Show the world what you are doing, don’t just talk about it.

Event Video

31. Event Presentation video (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: High)
Events represent a unique confluence of expertise and opportunity – often under-leveraged. Trade Shows, meeting and conferences are usually attended by your top sales people, your corporate executives, industry experts and other influential business people. If you are speaking at an event or someone is referencing your company you should be capturing this valuable content on video.

32. Round table Sessions (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: High)
Take the opportunity at an event to corral four to six of your best customers and other industry experts, put them in room and video tape them talking about industry trends, business issues and the future of your industry. This content will be the most valuable content you could ever capture.

33. Q&A Expert sessions. (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
There are many opportunities to take specific event participants to the side and take them through informal Q&A sessions on various topics that matter to your customers. This content is valuable lead generation content.

Other Uses of Video

34. Recruitment Videos (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Finding the best employees is the single most important function of any company and yet comparatively small amounts of time and money are allocated to this critical task. Recruitment videos that feature company employees, highlight corporate culture and promote the direction of the company can be very influential.

35. VLOG (Popularity: Moderate | Growth Potential:Moderate)
There are many levels and types of Vloggers today but for the sake of brevity I will identify two: 1. Pro Vloggers who have engaging styles, rich content and a growing list of followers who promote their vlog on their site and through various syndicated channels and 2. Regular Vloggers who have chosen, for whatever reason, to speak into a camera instead of typing on a keyboard. The problem today is that, unlike onscreen text, you can’t scan a vlog – you sort have to watch the whole thing to see whether it is worth your time. The other problem is that most people just aren’t that compelling on camera so there is little, to no value of a talking head – and often it’s a distraction. Of course everyone references Gary Vaynerchuck (from Wine Library TV) as the rule (rather than the exception) for video blogging in the same way that everyone references the success of Will It Blend as being what to expect when you launch your first viral video project. For individuals looking to gain notoriety from their passions vlogging can be a good option if you have a good on-camera presence and great content.

36. In Store Video (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: High)
Wal-Mart has its own profitable in-store TV network that makes shoppers aware of new promotions. LCD screens are ubiquitous. In store LCD’s will be networked and customizable offering you the ability to promote your own goods and services or make money by promoting other complimentary services.

37. Company Lobby / Waiting Room Video (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
HD video screens are popping up everywhere – why not in your lobby or reception where you can get a jump start on first impressions and also take advantage of a captive audience.

38. Mobile Video (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Huge)
Yep, ‘there’s and Ap for that’. Mobile video will soon be the largest video category outside of broadcast. In the short-run, mobile video will consist of hastily re-purposed video made to fit on a mobile device. It will quickly evolve into a much more specific format – five to fifteen second hyper targeted messages that are part of geo-located and micro-niched promotions.

39. Market research, focus groups and polling (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
Market research firms are now capturing the anecdotal feedback along with the raw statistics of their research. If a picture is worth a thousand words then a video of your customer describing her likes and dislikes of your new product is priceless. Go to YouTube to see how people are describing your products and services.

40. Website FAQ Video (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Moderate)
In certain formats video can be a suitable replacement for text where an authoritative voice, support materials or other visual references are required. A list of FAQ’s answered by a company expert is an example.

41. Video White paper (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Low)
Video white papers have evolved over the last years from basically a person reading a white paper on camera (what’s the point) to a professional delivery that is accompanied by charts, graphs and other visual references to make the presentation more valuable.

42. Video Magazine (Popularity: Low | Growth Potential: Low)
Some video production companies specialize in helping companies deliver serialized video content to their customers. Like the name implies video content is created on a regular basis (usually monthly) that customers and prospects can view through a subscription service.

Have I left any out? Let me know.

Web Video – a powerful way to make a point

Jimm Fox — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 04:47:58 +0000

“If I put the real price I don’t get any customer.” Ha! Ouch.

Wind Mobile is in the process (pending CRTC approval) of launching a new mobile service in Canada. One of their key differentiators will be not locking people into ridiculously long service contracts. (I believe the good people at Bell, Rogers and Telus have currently all agreed to handcuff users for three year terms.)

Wind is pre-launching with promotions that go after the ‘mobile services indignation niche’ – that’s a big market in Canada.

Here is what Wind didn’t do:

1.They didn’t hire some Windbag to get in front of the camera and try to convince you that Wind will have the “best combination of mobile features in the country”.

2. They didn’t associate themselves with cute or exotic animals.

3. They didn’t clutter up their promotion with excessive information or complexity.

What they did do is present a single scenario that everyone can relate to and they associate that scenario with the frustration and absurdity of the current moderately competitive (at best) mobile landscape that we all have come to accept as the status quo.

Simply telling your audience that things are out of whack and that Wind has a better way would have had limited value. Showing your audience your key differentiator by means of a simple, but powerful example is a far more effective method of soliciting a visceral reaction (and also a great way to highlight the key benefit of using the new Wind service.)

The video also benefits from being fun to watch. A great example of ’show me, don’t tell me.’

When Starbucks marketers drink the non-fat, mochachino kool-aid .

Jimm Fox — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:34:15 +0000

Q. What’s the difference between a salesman and a marketer?
A. Salesmen know when they are lying.

{Full disclosure: I love Starbucks, I go there quite often. I just find it silly when people take themselves too seriously.}

Caleb Hannon wrote a recent article in the Daily Weekly that concluded with directions on how to “cleanse yourself of the stench of Pfeiffer’s corporate-speak.” I’m not sure if the self-important proclamations he refers to are quite this egregious but you have to admit that Pfeiffer and many other marketers do tend to take themselves a bit too seriously.

Starbucks is opening new custom designed stores that attempt to blend in with their local environments. That’s it. Unfortunately that sound bite would only last for a few seconds so Tim Pfeiffer, Starbucks VP of Global Magnificence felt he needed to fill that void with over three minutes of Starbucks marketing dribble.

The following is a guide to help you better understand what Starbucks is trying to say in this video:

“Cafe Presence” – A store.
“Open the Throat” – I believe he is either referring to an in-store tracheotomy procedure or perhaps this is a euphemism for increasing cut throat business practices… not sure which.
“Major Coffee Theatre” – A clear indication that everything he and the company does and says is an act, they don’t really mean any of it.
“Elevate the offering” – The religious connotations are self-evident here.
“More bespoke and one-off” - ‘Mcdonald’s started building customized/localized stores a while back so we thought we’d copy that idea.’
“Availability of the interaction of the Barrista” … I got nothing here. It’s English (and he’s a marketer), so he was probably trying to make a point about something.
“The go-forward” - All marketing men of action are legally required to include ‘go-forward’ at least once in a conversation.
“Great coffee messaging” - Ads.
“Our coffee authority” – Starbucks will continue to crush all competition (in an environmentally responsible fashion.)

So Tim, keep up the good work… but get over yourself, it’s just coffee.

Absolutely stunning video production shot on digital camera

Jimm Fox — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:52:16 +0000

The worlds of still photography and video are beautifully colliding.

Up until recently still photography and videography have occupied very different spaces. Simply put, there are a lot more moving parts in video, sound being one of them and time (shooting a sequence of images over time) being another. Advancements in DSL camera technology are beginning to bridge this gap.

Tom Lowe from Timescapes.org filmed these incredible sequences in California’s White Mountains and in Yosemite National Park all on the Canon 5D2. (The Canon 5d2 is a digital SLR camera than can also capture HD video footage.) He used a special automated dolly rig that he built to capture the time lapse shots with tracking motion.

Another great example of this convergence is a video (not time lapse or a sequence of stills) commissioned by Canon and shot entirely on a Canon 5D2 called Reverie. This was shot almost a year ago when the camera was being introduced to show the camera’s capabilities beyond still images. Interestingly the video received either praise or derision depending on what image capture camp you hailed from. The photog’s loved it claiming it clearly showed the evolution of the trade and the videographers hated it claiming the story was thin and pointless – which really missed the point. The shots were amazing considering they came from a $2500 still camera. (In fairness the shooter probably used another $10,000 worth of lenses, not to mention a helicopter and a whack of other pricey equipment and services.) Whatever. The point of the video was to show what you can do with the new DSLR camera camera and anyone with an open mind had to be impressed.

Ultimately, having great equipment helps, no question, but both of these examples also show that equipment is only part of the equation.

Web Video Production will have a profound effect on how businesses evolve

Jimm Fox — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:48:13 +0000

We tend to take most things in life on face value. The earth is round, the universe is expanding, the internet is slow, but improving. This slow progression and acceptance of our ‘realities’ also tends to stop us from seeing what’s just around the corner. An example:

Imagine if television in the 1950′s evolved the same way that the internet has. What if TV in its infancy was little more than radio with text – much like the early stages of the web. What if television started with many, many channels but they all offered slow text, perhaps a few graphics. Over time, maybe ten years or more the television broadcast networks evolved to allow some blinking graphics, then motion graphics via flash files that allowed you to see moving images accompanied with text. How powerful a medium would TV have been up to that point. Would it have consumed our lives the way it has? Would it become the focal point of our entertainment, our advertising, our news consumption?

With the Internet today we are close (but not quite there) to where television started over fifty years ago. Video is widely viewable today online around the world but the experience varies considerably. That will change over the next few years as good or great quality video will be delivered to any screen you want it on (tv, computer, mobile devise). When that happens this will have a profound effect on how business communicate and evolve. Like the frog in the slowly warming pot of water, many businesses won’t even notice the change.

What makes the impact that much more significant is that all of the televisions are connected, everyone is creating their own television shows and you can watch what you want, wherever and whenever you want. Context is everything and the companies that win in this game will be the companies that can produce contextually relevant video products for their audiences. Content that has real value (not commercials), content that people want to share and content that changes how people see and do things.

No, text isn’t going away (in spite of the recent pain in the print industry) in our lifetime but we are entering a time where new visual languages, graphic interfaces and video content will change how businesses communicate.

Are corporate websites dead? No, but some may require life support.

Jimm Fox — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:34:27 +0000

Websites don’t matter. The content on them and the content that gets consumed and shared (wherever) is what matters.

I recently responded to a blog article that posed the question “are corporate websites dead?” My take was that the purpose and function of corporate websites is changing – they will still serve as a repository for corporate information but the days of websites being a ‘destination’ for information about the things you do are long gone. An Example:

Recent changes to driving laws where I live now make it illegal to hold/use a cell phone while driving. I needed to pick up a good quality Bluetooth headset. While scanning some recent tweets I noticed a comment about a new Plantronics Bluetooth headset. I followed the link to a YouTube video. It sounded interesting but I wasn’t convinced. I then viewed a number of related reviews on YouTube that seemed more credible and decided that this was indeed the device that suited my needs. I Googled to find the best price and ordered the product online. I never went to the Plantronics website – there was no reason to. I know the company and have purchased products from them before so there were no credibility issues to investigate.

The user generated videos I viewed provided good general information but ultimately the more professionally created videos sold me. The whole process took ten minutes and at the end of it I felt very informed and very comfortable making a purchase decision. Would I have been as confident if I just went to the Plantronics site and consumed their literature? No way. Would I have been as comfortable if I went to my local electronics store and waited to listen to an inexperienced sales clerk sell me on equipment he may or may not have a lot of real experience with? No.

We are moving from the ‘text web’ to the ‘next web’ ( or ‘web something dot something’) and many companies still don’t see it coming. I’d rather watch a video review or video product demo than read product literature because video and other rich media content show me things that a document cannot. It’s also easier to make value judgments about the presenter and the content.

There is huge value in showing your product/service being used, showing people talking about their experiences with the product and showing how it clearly benefits the potential buyer.

It’s the content (and where that content is seen) that matters, not the website and the implications of this reach far beyond simple consumer products. All companies have to take into account how social media, rich media, mobile engagement, word of mouth, and especially the creation of truly valuable content is going to affect their brand and their business. Even companies with long sales cycles that involve complex buying decisions need to consider how they are going to engage the ‘next web.’