Web Video: A Low-Cost Marketing--Not Advertising--Tool
By David Rogers
Web video can be a powerful marketing tool for businesses of all kinds and sizes. For starters, video is where your customers are giving their attention. Americans watched over 5 billion online videos in December 2010, at an average of 14.6 hours per viewer, according to a recent study. YouTube's video search bar is now the #2 search engine on the web, outstripping Yahoo and Bing.
Video content clearly drives customer purchases as well. A study by L2 found that company websites that display video convert 30% more visitors to buying customers, and increase the average amount spent by 13%.
With free platforms like YouTube and Vimeo available for hosting video, the price is extremely low as well. This is why online video is being used by everyone from big brands (Unilever's Old Spice) to small businesses (BBQGuys.com of Baton Rouge), and the countless other channels on YouTube for brands of every kind (even I have one).
But the medium is often misunderstood by marketers. Online video is NOT an advertising channel, and putting up your standard advertising on YouTube will likely be a waste of time and resources. Today's networked customers are awash in content. As they navigate the infinite choices of the Web, customers are not looking for advertising. They are seeking and sharing content that is entertaining, relevant, and helpful to them. Effective online video turns the old model of broadcast advertising on its head. Instead of interrupting content customers do want (e.g. a TV show) with content they don't (e.g. a 30 second ad), marketers need to be creating video content that customers will seek out.
Here are four ideas for making online video an effective part of your digital marketing toolkit:
1. Keep the brand in the background A two-minute video on YouTube to promote the new film "Limitless" went viral this week, shooting to over a million views in the 72 hours between being posted Monday and featured in the New York Times on Thursday. But the video was far from a movie trailer. Instead, the mysterious short, filmed on a handheld camera, showed an average guy on the street performing an inexplicable stunt whereby his smartphone appeared to take over a series of outdoor screens in Times Square. The stunt was a beguiling hoax, which tied into the super powers of the main character in the movie, and sparked the curiosity of customers online. But viewers had to watch carefully for clues to even decipher who was behind the video (a trailer for "Limitless" appears briefly on one screen, as a hint).
Similarly, when Old Spice's "response" videos went viral last summer, there were no Old Spice products or pitching on screen, just hilarious short sketches featuring the Old Spice Guy brand character.
"The thing about all these things that go viral on the Web," digital marketer Stephen Voltz told me, "is that the brand is very small. It's there, but sort of down in the corner. It's not trying to push you with any hard sell to buy." Stephen should know. He was the customer who, along with Fritz Grobe, created a set of videos in the woods of Maine showing how to turn Diet Coke and Mentos candies bottles into exploding fountains. Their videos have been seen more than forty million times and spurred millions of dollars of additional sales for Mentos and Diet Coke.
2. Be helpful Home Depot has attracted nearly 7 million views to its YouTube channel. But instead of selling products, it offers help to its customers, with 191 videos offering "step-by-step instructions and advice for a variety of home improvement projects that help you do more and save more." After Louisana's BBQguys.com made the move from retail only to online sales, they started posting online videos to offer customers cooking advice, from how to smoke a beef brisket to grill a pizza. With 1.4 million viewers to date, they've found that video watchers are twice as likely to buy as other visitors to their website. DirectFix.com, which sells electronic parts and accessories to customers to repair their own gadgets, has saved 40% on its customer service budget by developing web videos that demonstrate product repairs in step-by-step detail.
3. Show, don't sell If you have a great product that really stands out from the competition, one of the best uses of web video is to simply show your product in action. Apple has been a master of product-demo-instead-of-advertising, such as the videos released at the launch of the iPad and this year's iPad 2. For customers, getting a chance to see the product demonstrated in detail via video is the next best thing to holding it in their hands to incite interest. Smaller brands can use this approach too. GoPro aptly uses videos on its website to demonstrate its wearable digital camera, made for sports enthusiasts. Business has been growing 300% a year.
4. Keep it casual Most videos that go viral have a low-end production quality. This may be because the Youtube aesthetic has taught customers to expect that do-it-yourself videos are more authentic and genuine than a slick television ad they watch during the SuperBowl. The video stunt for the movie "Limitless" was shot with an intentionally homemade look. The Old Spice interactive videos, although produced by an award-winning ad agency, were all filmed in a hotel bathroom with only limited props.
In some cases, brands can benefit by letting their customers shoot the video for them, as GoPro does with many of its product demos filmed by customers as they drive, surf, and ski.
In the digital age, video can be a powerful tool for marketers to attract new customers, to convert interest into purchase, and to deepen their ties with existing customers. Just remember, it's not an advertisement, it's content.
How have you used video for marketing? What rules would you add--or take off from my list?