3 great ways a web video can help with marketing

Posted: Jul 11, 2011
Author: WordJack Media

I always tell people how that it’s important to have a short video if you are promoting your business online, but perhaps I don’t always fully explain how it will help with marketing your business (over, say, communication alternatives like articles and diagrams).

1. A quick video makes it easy to absorb the information!

Take this video below from Commoncraft, who do a great job in making simple videos that explain a concept. Consider that it fairly clearly explains how the US presidential voting system works (on a basic level), and that it only takes 3min to watch, and you end up being pretty well versed on the concept they’re explaining while retaining most of it. Now consider if you were trying to gain that knowledge by reading text. Would you read that much information if you weren’t truly into it? And it would take you longer than 3mins, right? Now translate that logic into communicating a few things about your business to a semi-engaged viewer, and you can clearly see how well it can help with marketing

2. There is no call-to-action quite like the video “play” button!

In my own experience, visiting a website and seeing a “find out about us” video will encourage me to stay and learn in a way that a full page of text will never do. According to DoubleClick Inc, users click a video “Play” button more than they click on image ads. Video ads generate about three times the replay rate as image ads generate clicks through to advertisers’ sites (DoubleClick.com). So imagine the way a short explanatory video can help with marketing, even if it could only help 10% more of your site visitors become more engaged and interested in your message.

3. Opportunity to reach a broader audience

By pure virtue of being viewable in another form of media, a video can reach audiences that pure text based content cannot. You gain additional opportunities to share your message with people on their cellphones. Even if you just consider the opportunity on cellphones and youtube:

–        youtube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world

–        25% of americans say they have watched a short video on their phone in the last month  

….and where did I get those last 2 stats? On a video…