eTown Videos Blog

Archive for the ‘Web Video Marketing’ Category

Social Media Examiner, an online guide to the social media industry just released their annual report entitled “State of Social Media Marketing Industry”. The report covered the most popular social media marketing channels, however, I will focus this blog post and my review on how online marketers will use online video in combination with social media in 2011. The analysis of the current state of social media included more than 3300 marketers.

The report highlights the increasing importance of online video for businesses, in fact, 77% of marketers have plans to increase their video marketing in 2011. This percentage increases to 82% for businesses with 1000 employees or more. Another top area of focus for businesses in 2011 in social media – a remarkable 92% of marketers use Facebook and 72% of them plan on increasing their activity. In a 2009 study, only 77% of businesses were using Facebook – the increase over the past two years is probably attributable to Facebook’s effort to becoming friendlier to business marketers. LinkedIn has also become an increasingly important marketing channel for business as well, 61% will increase their use of LinkedIn (71% of B2B vs. 51% of B2C). Incidentally, MySpace appears to be out of the race as 81% of respondents do not have any plans to use that social media platform for business marketing.
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Most SEO companies do not offer video marketing for their clients

As I observe the video marketing landscape, I have come across some very talented web marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) companies. My chats and meetings with them have been filled with thought provoking ideas and strategies. However,  most do not offer video marketing or video SEO.

Video SEO and marketing can be quite beneficial to clients who just invested in an online video production. When video SEO is applied, even on a basic level, and the videos begin to show up in Google search results, these videos tend to get a much better CTR (click through rate) then text search results with higher rankings. Once people see a video icon in their search results their behavior changes and the cursor moves to the video thumb, provided of course the video is in fact related to their search query. Some studies suggest that the CTR for video thumbs  is 40% better than text based search results. That’s a huge and big opportunity.

Simply uploading a video to YouTube or to your company website is unfortunately not enough if you want to rank your video for specific search terms or phrases. While eTown Videos is not an SEO company we do provide clients with Video SEO assistance and we have found that traffic and conversion rates have increased for our clients, in some cases, quite significantly.

Therefore, if your company uses web videos and you are about to hire a marketing agency, you may want to inquire about their experience with Video SEO.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please click the “Like” button, thank you.

Let’s take a look at return on investment (ROI) and online video

Most of us accept the notion that online video has an engaging and persuasive  effect on its viewer audience. In fact, I blogged about viewing habits of senior executives a few days ago. In that blog post I reviewed a study by Forbes Insights and Google, and how business related web videos effect the purchasing decisions of senior executives. However, we do get asked by business managers how ROI on web video should be measured.

Establish your goals and objectives

What do you want your online video marketing campaign to achieve? Who is your target audience and what message do you need to deliver? Read the rest of this entry »

Should we get a promotional web video?

Frankly, I think the question of whether or not you should get a promotional web video for your small business or corporate needs has already been answered. Back in 2006, we spent a significant amount of time explaining the benefits of web video and why businesses should post them to their websites. Today, web visitors are consuming online video in record amounts and numbers are rising. There is plenty of research and data available on the Internet about online business video uses and the results web video productions can produce.

The question really should be:  How effectively can corporate videos and promotional web videos communicate your message or business mission? How successful is web video when it is used by your marketing and sales department to persuade clients to consider your products and services? Read the rest of this entry »

Using customer centric videos as effective internet marketing solutions for automotive dealers

Does web video lead to more customer conversions for automotive dealers?

According to Larry Pryg, National Marketing Manager for GM’s certified-used auto business “Video is exploding,” and that when it comes to used cars, dealer websites that have video are 2X more likely to generate phone calls or emails from prospective shoppers vs. websites without video.

The above quote is from an interview which Larry Pryg participated in a few years ago – and of course, video has exploded and web visitors will click away from your site if no videos are included to show them your cars. Online videos drive sales, and web visitors that consume video convert at a significantly higher rate than consumers that do not watch online video.

However, in the age of social media, as an automotive dealer you want your customers to tell the story about their cars and doing business with your dealership.  Here are some strategies: Read the rest of this entry »

How To Sell Professional Services In A Web Video World

The technology and the rules of marketing have changed – for good. However, the fundamental need for relationship building is as important as it ever was.

In 1958, McGraw Hill created a classic ad entitled “The Man In The Chair“. The ad delivered a powerful message which is as true today as it was then. In this ad, a stern looking old man in a suit and a bow tie, sits in a chair, leans slightly forward and says:

“I don’t know who you are.
I don’t know your company.
I don’t know your company’s product.
I don’t know what your company stands for.
I don’t know your company’s customers.
I don’t know your company’s records.
I don’t know your company’s reputation.
Now – what was it you wanted to sell me?”

What is the take away from this ad which still applies today? Read the rest of this entry »

Understanding what your business video audience wants from your web video commercial

Few business managers and decision makers will watch an 8-10 minute video about your company. How do we know? Well, we learned early on through slightly painful experiences that videos which are 5-10 minutes long will lose a large share of the viewing audience on the internet after a couple of minutes. Plenty of research confirms our own experience. The videos which have been most effective for our clients were generally 1-3 minutes in length. Secondly, your target audience requires relevant information which will quickly Read the rest of this entry »

Case Study: Fuel Services, Inc. uses web video to highlight customer service and technical support

From time to time, I thought it might be helpful to post case studies of customers who have hired eTown Videos to produce promotional web videos for them. The case studies highlight examples how these businesses use video to engage customers, generate sales leads, and retain customers. Read the rest of this entry »

How could online video help my business?

It is 10pm on a Tuesday night. Your boss put you in charge of  researching new providers for that new phone system which your company needs in order improve their communications. So you begin your research for a phone system online by entering a few search terms into Google, Yahoo, and YouTube, or whatever your favorite search engine might be.  The search results display providers to choose from,  so you click on a few links which send you to websites with photos of the latest models, price comparisons, and charts; pages and pages of information to read! It appears slightly overwhelming as most sites appear similar in their marketing and sales approach, lots of text, some photos, part numbers, awards they have won, and more text descriptions. Most of the offerings are from companies you have never heard of.  You are almost ready to turn off your computer and forget about it until tomorrow…. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are missing online – then nobody will be missing you! Marketing budgets continue to shift from old media to new media.

As eTown Videos celebrates its fifth business anniversary it is interesting  to observe the significant marketing shift over the past five years.

During 2006, businesses were certainly apprehensive about adding video to their web sites and they found it challenging to envision a benefit. We had much fewer examples of effective web video marketing  to point to in those days than we do today.

Today many web visitors prefer video over text based websites. Dave DelVecchio, President of Innovative Business Systems (IBS) in Easthampton, MA, explained the effectiveness of web video well when he told eTown  that what takes IBS 90 seconds to explain in a well produced video may take a web visitor 20 minutes to read while clicking through various web pages.

Of course many companies still use text as well as photo images on their web sites, but for many visitors it’s the video which is the draw. In fact, most of the conversations about marketing budgets we have with businesses these days focus on the shift from old media (TV, print, and radio) to new media (online video, social media, and search engine optimization or SEO), and the shift is accelerating.

Web video: Inbound marketing instead of interruption based marketing

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