vzaar blog, November 17, 2009
We invited Kris Drey of video comparison site VidCompare to pen his thoughts on the dilemmas facing small businesses when considering online video as a means of marketing.
Small businesses today are struggling to be seen, to be heard, to garner traction in a highly competitive and economically suffocating environment. Funding from angel investors and venture capitalists has slowed to a trickle, marketing budgets have been slashed, and the economy is not picking up fast enough.
Where do businesses turn to build their brand, increase traffic, and generate incremental revenue during these rough times? The answer is online video. There’s no questioning the power of online video today; broadband adoption is nearly ubiquitous in the US, 25 billion videos are streamed on a monthly basis, video advertising is the fastest growing segment in the Internet advertising market according to the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), and search engines are incorporating video into their blended search results at a break-neck pace.
Where do I start?
Getting started with online video may seem like a daunting task. The questions I hear most often are, “How am I going to find or create video content?”, “Will I need a team of 10 engineers to implement it?”, and “Will it absorb the majority of my already diminishing marketing budget?”.
The first thing to do is to take a step back, relax, and get organized. Most businesses go into the process unsure of their goals and lacking an online video strategy and as a result become confused by all the options, and nuances of online video.
Producing video yourself is a viable option today. YouTube has numbed us to the issue of poor quality video so grab your Flip camera or your iPhone 3GS and shoot a few practice videos. Be sure you have good lighting, and hold the camera steady; you may want to invest in a tripod. Don’t worry too much about sound quality or a fluid shoot at first, you can edit these things with free software after you’ve captured your content. If you don’t feel confident in your shooting and editing prowess then find yourself a high-quality and affordable production company like TurnHere. They offer professional online video production services including video capture, editing, and scripting.
Once you’ve created your content, find a place to store and manage it. An Online Video Platform (OVP) provider, like vzaar, is a great place to start. OVPs simplify the entire process by offering top-to-bottom services including ingestion, encoding, storage, management, analytics, monetization, and playback of your videos. After settling into an OVP you’re only a copy/paste away from adding video to your web site. Put your video front and center on your home page and other high traffic pages. Be sure to tie page content to the video content, not only to maintain consistent messaging but also to enhance search engine optimization (SEO). The copy on the page around your video and the metadata (title, description, tags) stored within the video will help propel your content to the top of the search engine ranks.
Video SEO is a powerful weapon today for online marketers allowing them to push their content to the web with a few simple clicks (see TubeMogul if your OVP doesn’t have proper syndication services), capable of garnering first page and often #1 rankings within natural search on the engines.
Video solutions are in abundance today, with over 60 OVPs out there offering a wide range of services. Furthermore, video is highly affordable and dead-easy to implement. Online Video Platforms often offer free trials or a free solution, with limited streams and uploads, allowing you to get started in video with little to no overhead.
2010 will be a defining year for the online video space as it creeps out of infancy into toddlerhood. Businesses of all sizes with an online presence either already have video on their site or are evaluating solutions and setting aside marketing dollars to engage their customers with OV.
