Business video marketing: Technical specs
As usual for a Saturday, we look at an example of business video marketing and see what we can learn from it.
Online video watching is increasing as a share of internet time. As youtube’s self-congratulatory birthday light-on-data infographic alludes, more videos are uploaded every 60 days than the major US TV networks have broadcasted in the past 60 years.
- 73% of US retail now incorporate video as part of their e-commerce site.
- In March this year, 83.5% of US internet audience watched online videos (average duration 5.2 minutes).
- 66% of survey respondents in February said they watch more online video than last year and 48% think they will watch even more in 2011.
- 64% of survey respon dents watch videos before making a purchasing decision.
Despite these figures, measuring the value of online video marketing is still relatively new. Most small business do not use analytics on their websites and small business blogs generally, so looking at specific data on who is watching videos, how often they are visiting the site, and whether they are converting into customers is still relatively unexplored (and a topic we will come back to with future tutorials and blog posts).
However, research is being undertaken to measure the effectiveness of online ads. Most recently, MIT-offshoot Affectiva has used its facial sensor technology to measure viewer attention to online ads. They found that online video ads get 18.3% more attention than TV ads, while online video gets 8.5% more attention than TV content.
One of the types of video available in the business video marketing ‘genre’ is the tech report video. This is a little similar to a white paper or a technical specs type webpage where details are given to explain the why and how of a product or service. Affectiva have a technical specs/background type of video on their website:
The video ad good
Rosalind Picard is an engaging presence. Engaging video doesn’t always need to be state of the art. You can make use of available footage you may have from a presentation or other filmed event as the basis for your business video marketing effort: audiences can be forgiving if the information is useful and there’s a little bit of humor or personality. You do need an engaging presenter, no matter what.
The video has a clear intent. This video acts like a technical specifications or product background report rather than an advertisement or sales lead-in. While it explains the technology, it does so in a way that a non-engineering can understand.
The video ad ordinary
The muted opening. I am always in favor of making an impression when starting a video. Videos are meant to transport you into an alternate world, so even something really brief needs a clear setup. Music, credits, or an animation transition all can serve to take you into the video world’s realm. I unmderstand the importance of recognizing the rest of the research team with a lingering graphic of their faces, but it still felt like a long time and didn’t use the opportunity to say, okay, here’s what we cover in the next 8 minutes.
The technology itself. I like that the introduction to using the technology discusses ways to use it to understand one’s own emotions, rather than its use in the marketing research, or in an activity that could be used for surveillance or control of a population. Although, the need to make the technology accessible wasn’t really covered enough for my liking. This is a theme i will be exploring in my blog site citizense, being launched later this month.
The video ad bad
Ugly graphics. It’s kind-of bizarre that an enterprise sprung out of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology research lab should then have such limited access to someone who can jazz up their graphics. Even moreso, the presenter mentions the need to develop a better user interface for the actual technology product. This heightens the risk that the technology will become mystified and inaccessible to customers and citizens. A tech background video still needs to keep people at the center of using the product.
Producing small business video products
At present, I am involved in making a short promotional video, and another entertainment news video, with two tutorials recently completed. The idea of a technical specifications/product background video is an excellent genre within online videos, and one that I am keen to explore with a potential client next. Please contact me via the comments board below or at markboyd@mgboyd.com to discuss your business video marketing ideas.
Compete White Paper says business video marketing is a winner
Compete home page with product demo front and center
It doesn’t feel like Saturday without a little bit of business video marketing. This week, we look at the new Compete White Paper From Page Views to People and learn some video marketing insights from one of the higher-end search analytics products on the market.
I use a range of online tools when analyzing the strength of competition for any of my clients. But looking at my information sources, I find Compete data gets used a little more in my summary reports, as their data is embedded into other products and is increasingly seen as an industry standard.
For example, the incredibly powerful SEO Chrome extension (a daily tool that I rely on) uses Compete data for its monthly traffic data, and some of the other online analytics tools like Quantcast also use Compete data when drawing their little graphs of month-on-month site traffic estimates.
A list of some SEO tools I use to help clients build a strong online business presence
Compete’s blogsite is definitely a go-to online source for news on current internet marketing trends. I recently watched their webinar on shopper intelligence for businesses with an online retail commercial component, for example. For many small and medium sized businesses, the increasingly scientific basis behind search engine optimization is making it difficult to keep up with what works. While hiring an industry specialist is often the best route to go down, all the same, Compete’s website is one of those industry blogs that is worth bookmarking and scanning occasionally.
They also offer freebie reports like yesterday’s release of the Compete White Paper From Page Views to People. This paper documents their own site optimization analysis, and how they incorporated findings into an internet marketing strategy that led to increased sales conversions of potential customers.
And guess what? Business video marketing gets a guernsey. Compete’s method is one that will make sense to many small businesses wondering what is important to look at amongst the myriad of web analytics data options now available. Start with your customers first and track back what worked with those that bought up big from you. Web statistics are increasingly fine-grain and allow for a great depth of understanding about who is visiting your site and who is converting into a customer, where they came from, what pages they are reading before they spend money, and where they go afterwards.
In From Page Views to People, Compete describe that when they looked at what their new clients were doing before signing up, they saw the influence their video was having. As a result, they moved their product demo video to the front page and immediately started seeing a 28% increase in sales conversions from new traffic overall. That means 3 extra sales for every 10 they had been making, just from putting video front and centre.
Compete home page with product demo front and center
I was surprised to see that their first video is a fairly plain powerpoint-slide type deal. It is only when you click through to the screen captured films of the various product demos that you get a bit more visual interest. It seems viewers are willing to sit through a little bit of pedestrian to get to what excites them. I wonder if the lackluster introduction also makes the following product demo videos all the more dynamic?
Between their pricing policy and my current client pool, Compete is still on the desirable-but-not-essential list of subscriptions for me. After watching product demo videos like this, I can see that as I continue to work with growing businesses that want to maintain their industry leadership, access to Compete’s full suite of analytics products will become a crucial ‘value-add’ I can provide to help my clients.
For those looking for a quick read on internet marketing strategies, the Compete White Paper From Page Views to People is worth a download and a scan. Share with me what you think of their business video marketing in the comments below, or watch to see how I implement a similar approach in the coming few weeks.
Logistics and the Koyaanisqatsi effect
Yes, it’s the return of business video marketing Saturday. This is where we analyze a small business video ad that we have found online to see what we can learn from it in regards to improving our internet video marketing skills.
The need for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to use video marketing is growing in importance. Potential customers and collaborators will start seeing more video ads as apparently Microsoft intends to make more use of them in the newly-bought skype, and Google, Bing and Yahoo are all implementing new video advertising regimes. As i have mentioned in a previous post, a PRNewswire survey from the start of the year found that media outlets and internet publishers utilize press releases with video embeds more than they pick up the wordy ones.
So each week, we look at a video ad and discuss it from a business video marketing perspective. The idea isn’t to hang shit on any particular video-making attempt (although I am looking forward to coming across something truly awful some time when I am in a bad mood and need to vent), but to occasionally stand on the shoulders of giants and more frequently, to simply learn from those who have given it a go already.
After researching the use of wireless sensor technology in logistics this week, I thought it would be apt to drag you all into the world of supply chain management that is in my head. Let’s review this video from US sensor company, Crossbow Technology:
The video ad good
Great use of short films. I think the visuals for the most part really pull you along. The port (0:56), the aerial shots (2:01) and the ship cargo shot 2:32 are all great, yet simple. They have a bit of movement, connect to the logistics core theme, and aren’t too distracting from the intended message.
“And it’s blocking your lane.” The occasional ability of this video to personalize the impacts of supply chain inefficiencies helps to connect with the viewer. Copyblogger’s Influencer Project even kicks off 60 snippets of wisdom on their website with David Meerman Scott’s advice: “Stop talking about your products and services. People don’t care about products and services; they care about themselves.” Crossbow demonstrate this idea in practice with the lane-blocking reminder.
The length. Coming in at just under 3 minutes, the video ad is long enough to unpack the challenge and the solution while still remaining punchy.
The “What’s wrong with this picture?” montage. This is a great subliminal-esque device that helps the viewer summarize and hold the whole of the argument in their head while they wait for the forthcoming solution to be presented.
“Donate.” While the social and environmental benefits proposed were all known to me, I did like the additional idea that businesses could collaborate and donate excess goods that weren’t needed as part of their increasingly efficient supply chain systems. This seemed a slightly fresher angle to me, even after working in sustainability policy for the past 5-10 years.
The video ad obvious
The Koyaanisqatsi aesthetic. in a nod to the ‘life in a day’ genre made famous by Francis Ford Coppola’s epic visual meditation epic or the more hopeful Baraka, the video starts with the morning sun and ends with the view of earth from the moon, and also set to a tribal music soundtrack. It’s a style that was last seen being appropriated to death by Madonna for her Ray of Light music video. The style makes it slightly clichéd given that Crossbow’s video was only uploaded in 2010 and not 1991. OIn the other hand, the familiar format also allows the viewer to focus on the message as they know how to ‘read’ this set of visuals. The world music soundtrack starting with the ubiquitous “huh!” tribal grunts was a little too much (but overall I liked the choice of music, reflecting a good pace with the visuals).
The occasional clunky wordage. It would be great if business could contribute towards a more sustainable world rather than simply a more efficient one. And perishable goods could be prevented from being wasted rather than being stopped from perishing, since that is kind-of in their very nature to do, at some point.
The video ad bad
No visual presentation of data. I would have liked to have seen a few graphs to illustrate the point they were making and to lend a bit more authority to the ideas. For example, they could have shown a transparent map over the film (at 0:21) of US cities that had surpassed levels of recommended air pollutants, perhaps based on something like this:
Quantify the data. They could also have quantified their arguments a bit better in regards to the costs of logistics inefficiencies. For example, sending a truck off with only half a cargo load would add $USD105,000 to each trip. This total is based on the cost of 25 million gallons of oil at prices per gallon, and employment costs for an extra worker to drive around needlessly.
“This guy can’t remember what his kids look like.” I actually snickered at that point. Perahps a more effective image would be of a worker staring forlornly at a scrappy wallet-sized picture of his wife and kids.
The definition of forecasting was unclear to me. I didn’t really get how forecasting was resolved by sensor technology. The first use of the term forecasting is used when the wheat goes bad (2:32) but it is a bit unclear. The links between improved project planning and forecasting and using sensor technologies wasn’t really clear except in the video summary text on the youtibe home page.
Making internet videos for SMEs
But overall, I really like this as a business video ad and can see how this sort of internet video marketing could be useful to business. At the moment I am working with a video-maker on a short business video marketing piece that complements other website content I am writing. After that, I may well be looking around for a logistics internet video marketing opportunity.
