I read a really good article this evening about using video in your marketing on your eCommerce sites, blogs, and other online business endeavors.
What we need are tiny, specialized sites that obsess about specific industries. Is there a good video every day about how to do better real estate sales? If there isn’t, there soon will be. Or for heart surgeons? For every segment where there is currently a trade magazine, I believe there’s an opportunity to build a blog-like, woot-like, ad supported page that finds the good stuff.
What I get from this is that, in order to market our services and products most effectively online, we need to have a specific section of our website, possibly on the home page, that’s dedicated to video content. We are a “specialized site that obsesses about [put your mission statement here – what you are focused on doing with your business].” Here are some questions for thought:
“Is there a good video…about how to [make wall murals an important decoration in your home]?”
“Is there a good video…about how to [learn what are the best Japanese recipes and how to use them]?”
“Is there a good video…about how to [find the best cometic gaskets for your racecar engine]?”
“Is there a good video…about how to [keep clogging strong by selecting the right clogging shoes]”?
“Is there a good video…about how to [find the best used paperback books]”?
“Is there a good video…about how to [put your keyword phrase here]”?
The author of the blog post I read, Seth Godin, is a nationally famous public speaker and marketing genius. As I write this article, his ideas about video marketing make more and more sense to me.
How can you implement his ideas on your website?
5 replies on “Video Marketing, are you using it?”
I’ve got some ideas for the knitting site I’m doing–seen them on other sites and they’re really informative. Like having someone there right beside you teaching.
There are good uses for them (I’d love to see some close ups of dancing feet on the clogging site!). However, the ones that just start up when you visit a site are annoying. I’d like the option of hitting the play button first without some guy just starting to shout at me.
And I would soooo have had one of those little rockets back in my cubicle days.
With just about everyone being able to put up a website today, anything unique to grasp the attention of our audience can help set us apart from the rest.
Audio and Video in my opinion are great. Not everyone is doing it yet, it’s quick, informative, and easy to understand. With all of todays marketing hitting us in 30 and 60 second blasts, I know I am conditioned to a short attention span, or it could be Attention Deficet *smile*!!!
In any case, Verbal and Visual imagery lend additional credibility and penatrate the mind better.
If I were shopping for a soft drink and someone typed a page on how awesome it was, with the most excellent writing skills, it still would not tempt me as much as a 30 second video with no verbal dialog, just a sparkling cold looking beverage, picked up and sipped by a freindly face and then seeing the look of pure satisfaction.
The words were probably great but the video shoots right into the old bean.
I want them to say “Yeah that’s what I want” and click the buy it now button. As opposed to “it looks good, I’ll compare it around and come back later”. ( I still believe in good copywriting.)
I’m not sure if this was the type of comment you were looking for but I can surley see some big benefits.
I think Video and Audio is the big and oncoming craze on the web, I sure would like to learn more about using it, and any way that will make it “easy” to use.
Videos are obviously working for almost everything sold. We’re conditioned to watch them because that’s all we are doing when we’re watching TV — it’s all video, isn’t it? So we have a greater tolerance for videos than for pop-ups and pop-overs, float-ins and all those annoying things some insist on using to sell to us.
People are ready and willing to watch a video — if it appears to be in the right place in their mind for decision-making. That requires us to really do some hard thinking about the sales funnel and the selling process.
I’ve had experience — good and bad — of working with audio and visual sales tools — radio, TV and video presentations. I’ve operated an advertising agency for the past 25 years. And so I learned most of what I know the hard way. By Experience. A very unforgiving teacher. So what insights I have do stick to my brain — what’s left of it after 25 years.
Yet, I find myself in a quandary many times when I’m working on my own selling and product website marketing. It’s hard to apply my so-called “wisdom” when I’m so close to the trees that I can’t see the forest. A baffling thing about us humans.
I can imagine that my website could use several videos. A picture is worth a thousand words, if it’s the right picture. The videos most useful to me would be “see for yourself” videos. The viewer could watch a demonstration of the product actually changing the way an engine performs or the way friction is reduced by the product.
And then, I could put in a section on my site for some racing videos for the car and racing buffs. Some videos of some of my customers’ racing and drifting events would really be entertaining. These would develop some strong relationships and trust with one major segment of my market. And at the same time this would be subliminally selling the viewer on the product. People associate emotions with products. The association of driving and fun, entertaining sports driving will set-up an automatic emotional connection and motivator for my product.
On the other hand, I think videos are very misused by many who use them to fill-in for good informatively written content on their website. You know. We’ve all seen the talking heads droning on about their website or product. Boring. And generally unprofessional or stilted-looking in a misguided attempt to make it look natural and inviting.
So there must be a means for the viewer to control whether they want to watch a video or not. Or you lose him or her shortly after they find this to be either boring or arrogant (as some come across) or worse — not professional.
Just having yourself on-screen talking to your prospect is usually not a good idea unless you’re trained in this, as are actors and commentators. It’s as bad as the local retailers who insist on doing their own TV commercials. And we notice they are most always bad at it. Think how much more they could sell if they’d get their ego out of the way of their “creative” ideas. One should hire professionals if the personal spokesperson is the direction they wish to go. But don’t do it yourself. No matter how warm and sincere you believe you are, it’s not likely to come across that way unless you’re a very good actor.
Websites created by the average business person who is not known by their visitor, has no personal credibility with their visitor and aren’t professional actors tend to have an awkward, non-professional presentation. And this turns people off. There is still a big need for good copywriting that is read by the visitor-prospect.
Another negative of video, and one which turns me off fast, is the video that automatically comes on without the visitor asking for it. I don’t like going to a site and having a video tell me things I don’t know, and I’m not ready to hear because of the stage I’m at in the buying process, decision-making process. The prospect’s decision-making process must be handled in a way that is intuitive to him or her — a logical chain of information coming to an irrefutable conclusion. To buy. A video stuck in the middle of that process without understanding the buyer’s motivations and barriers is going to shock them out of their “mood” you’ve worked hard to create on your site.
This process can be enhanced or detracted from by the misuse of several techniques and technologies at our disposal. I have to constantly argue with myself about what to use and when to use it. It’s a tedious process and one that cannot be tossed off. Videos can be great or totally wrong for certain areas of the buying process. I have to be aware of this and be careful with these ideas all the time.
In my opinion, it’s better, in the short time we have to get the visitors’ attention, to allow the visitor to choose what he or she wants to know and to learn about.
Video is just like any other medium. It isn’t great just because it’s there. It’s only great if it’s used correctly. There are actually some applications where video is not suitable. I would be careful about making a generalization about using video arbitrarily and with abandon. But it definitely has a strong place in advertising and selling when it’s used correctly.
Video is a great tool we now have available to generate interest and information for our visitors. It belongs in the tool box with all our other tools we use for this. Just because U-Tube and others have sent video over the top, doesn’t mean it’s right for every need or application.
I always give all our tools a lot of consideration before using them. And it requires hard work to make them a positive experience for the visitor-prospect.
The two posts prior have a good grasp of the benefits and use of video. But I would caution care about ‘crazes” and “fads.”
I’ve created a whole new website/blog dedicated to video markwting or “Vlogging.” It’s called The Endorser. I basically create little online “commercials” for various products. It works great! Plus, since I use REVVER instead of YouTube I get paid for each video viewed!
Great article. In the near future I want to use video marketing for creating my own adds on some golf products which I sell on my Golf Retail Website