The Value of Investing In Video For Online Marketing

There are business owners and online marketers who’ve long been convinced that video is a worthwhile online marketing investment.

However, there are still many who hesitate to invest in video primarily because of the expense it entails. Video creation can also be very time-consuming, something that can definitely make a small business think twice about prioritizing it over other marketing investments. What makes it even more difficult to convince businesses of the value of video marketing is the fact that it can be difficult to quantify or predict the returns on this particular investment.

The Real Value of Video for Online Marketing

Many people (online marketers and business owners alike) believe the value of video lies primarily in branding, virality, and the possibility of increasing conversion rates. The truth, however, is that video can do so much more for your business. For one thing, it can help you secure high-quality links for your company website. Other than that, video can be one of the most effective ways of connecting with your online community and earning their loyalty. Think about it: Everyone who uses the Internet on a daily basis is likely to view at least one video clip per day.

Leveraging Video for Online Marketing

There are several ways in which you can effectively use video to augment your online marketing efforts. By varying your use of video, you increase your chances of getting significant returns on your investment. Here are some of the ways you can leverage video effectively:

1. Video as interactive Content

In this case, you need to treat video as a medium for delivering your message rather than a type of content in and of itself. This means you shouldn’t even begin to think about making videos unless you already have excellent content on hand. Once you have your content prepared, you should then decide on the style you want your video to have. Should it be slick and professional or edgy and fun? The style of your video should always go hand-in-hand with the message you’re delivering.

2. Video as Link-building Tool

You may think of link building as something only SEO experts should focus on, but hey, whatever gets more traffic to your site is good for your business, right? When you post well-crafted videos with excellent content, bloggers and other online users are likely to embed them on their site or share them on their social networking accounts. This effectively gets your video out there and helps you achieve your video marketing goals. For this purpose, you need to create videos that are targeted towards a specific demographic. Additionally, you have to make sure your videos are relevant, informative, and entertaining.

3.Video for Enhancing Pages

Experts have proven that people are more likely to check out commercially-focused web pages when relevant and interesting videos are incorporated therein. For this purpose, you’d do well to create videos that provide useful information about a certain product or service that you offer. Since your web page is already promotional in nature, the videos should be a bit more informal. Rather than trying to promote the product or service, each video should strive to address questions and concerns your target market is likely to have regarding the product or service being featured.

Another way to enhance your videos and the pages where they’ll be posted is to provide a summary of its content or a brief background on how the video was created. You may even want to provide a link to other videos on your site or related sites. This gives people more reason to click on your links, watch your videos, and come back for more. It also helps you establish a reputation as an authority in your niche and your website as an excellent resource people can turn to whenever they want.

4.Video for Social Media

Let’s say your business has a Facebook page (like most businesses do). Your audience will likely appreciate if you posted a series of videos covering a specific theme on a regular basis. When you create such videos, it’s important to make sure they aren’t promotional in nature. Viewers hate it when they’re forced to watch product advertisements cloaked as relevant content. If you’re in the health supplement business, you could perhaps create a video series that talks about the benefits offered by the ingredients you use in your supplements. For example, the first video could talk about fish oil, the next about Vitamin E, and so on. You can post your videos not only on Facebook, but across multiple social media platforms.

5.Video for PR

Like many other businesses, you probably send out press releases from time to time. Why not augment these releases with a video news release? You could create the video such that it offers supporting information and provides context to the story covered in the press release. One of the biggest advantages of video releases in this case is that it can get your press release right to the top of a journalist’s report pile. With a video release, you’re practically doing half of a journalist’s work and this is sure to be appreciated.

Benefits of Video Marketing

More than half of online users watch videos every day. The video-sharing site YouTube alone sees over 4 billion views every single day, leading to it being recognized as the world’s second-largest search engine. This fact alone should convince you that video needs to be an integral part of your online marketing strategy. You need to start finding out what type of videos as well as what video styles and format your target audience are likely to appreciate and then you need to start making those videos.

Another huge advantage of video is the fact that it’s very easy to search and share. In fact, videos are shared very frequently by online users, particularly by social media users. According to Marketing Week, almost 70% of Google’s 2012 top 100 search listing is comprised by videos. This is a very important piece of information, considering that when people search for the kind of products and services you offer, they’re likely to do it via online search. Consider further that video-sharing is very popular on social media and you’ll understand why it needs to be an integral part of your online marketing campaign.

Here’s another important benefit video marketing has to offer that may not have crossed your mind: people love commenting on videos. What does this mean for your brand? Simple. It gives you the opportunity to learn a lot more about your target market–their interests, their needs, and the issues that concern them the most. You could even create videos where viewers are mentioned by name and their questions or concerns are directly addressed. Such videos will be sure to make them feel special and help you earn their loyalty to your brand.

Producing effective marketing videos isn’t cheap, but if you take the right approach to video marketing, you will be sure to reap excellent benefits from your investment. There’s a good chance your competitors are already using video to their advantage and there’s really no good reason why you shouldn’t do the same. 

Emma-Julie Fox writes for Pitstop Media Inc, a Vancouver company that provides SEO services to businesses across North America. To invite the author to write for your blog/website please visit www.pitstopmedia.com.