23rd Feb 2014

One Minute Video Marketing – 1,800,000 words.

Why do you need video marketing?

According to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research, the value of just one minute of video equals that of 1.8 million written words. With the massive amount of digital information being flung at every person on the planet, it has been proven that attention spans are getting shorter. People are hungry for information, but they don’t want to have to work too hard to get it. Knowledge of the written word, and the ability to digest and understand it, is now under question, so how do you reach your chosen demographic in a way that is easy to comprehend but extensive enough to educate? That, my friends, is the power of video. Let’s face it, if you were presented a 2 million word brochure (in three volumes) or a one minute video – which would you choose?

45.5% of internet users watch at least one, one minute video a month, with a massive 100 million people viewing online videos every day you have a large pool of potential customers to drink from. “The average user is exposed to an average of 32.2 videos in a month, increasing the chances that your marketing message will be seen,” writes Video Brewery. That’s more than one a day, and each day they watch a new video. The potential of video marketing is huge.

The Magic 10

The interesting thing about video marketing is that nearly all videos are watched for the first ten seconds, then the decision is made whether to watch further or not. In those ten seconds you can impart a huge amount of information. Make those ten seconds sleek, confident, enticing, and you’ll have them to the end. You need to connect with the customer quickly, speak to them fluently and draw them into your message. With a little research into your audience, a lot of knowledge about your subject and a talented videography team you can provide content that instantly catches the attention of your potential customers, and keeps them there.

The attention span of different users also makes interesting reading. “While desktop viewers tend to stick with videos for 2 minutes or less, mobile users seem to have a longer attention span. iPhone users tend to watch for about 2.4 minutes,’ reports Video Brewery, ‘Android users give a video three minutes to engage them and Symbian users stick around for just over 4 minutes. iPad users have the longest attention spans of all, sticking with a web video for an average of 5 minutes.” All these statistics in the right hands can be a powerful way of reaching into the lives of you clients, customers and potential clients, and becoming an integral part of their life. How many times have you had a great discussion that started out with, ‘Do you remember that commercial that …’.

Be Where Your Audience Is

Five tweets per second contain a Vine link. That’s hard to ignore. All of these statistics point to the one fact that for all marketers, the audience is already firmly entrenched in the video world, waiting to be sold to. With the rocketing growth rate of social media video enabled sites, they’re fast becoming the hottest seats in town and filling up quickly. Making yourself available in an easily digested form on these networks expands your reach and embraces a cross pollination of marketing. Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube are all instantly accessible and instantly shareable. Make something good enough – and your audience will come to you.

Appease the Bots of Google

Video marketing is about killing two birds, or more, with one stone. It’s not just your audience that will appreciate the implementation of video, Google will too. The number one search engine no longer favours static websites. Instead, it places more emphasis on sites that produce consistently fresh, quality content, particularly information rich content like video. The Google bots often give a preference to embedded video images rather than text rich pages and place them higher in the search results, mainly because video will catch the eye of the users and is more likely to be clicked through.

If increasing your business is your goal then the video marketing road will take you there. It reaches new audiences, produces easily understood and enjoyed, knowledge loaded information and romances the bots of the search engines to put your brand in an extremely strong position for being at the top of your industry. As a bi-product, it adds another dimension to your company image keeping your social media fresh, memorable and relevant – and that keeps your audience returning.

Great videography make great web content. It’s a wise investment in your product, your service and your company image. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s an expenditure – any well-made videography is versatile and multi-useable and will guide your audience where you want it to go. Go out and reach your demographic, influence them, entertain them, before someone else does.