Gartner is bullish on video. In fact, the analyst company predicts large companies will stream more than 16 hours of video per worker, per month — by next year. Forrester Research is enthusiastic, too. In fact, an oft-quoted statistic that Forrester analyst James McQuivey made way back in 2008 suggests one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words.
As marketers, that latter number is real food for thought. What do you think is easier: getting a customer to read a million words or watch a one minute video?
Video marketing isn't new — it’s been a part of consumer life since the earliest television commercials were released. However, how that video is used as a marketing tool has drastically changed with the onset of social media and digital marketing, research shows. Today, marketers not only make videos to promote products, but also offer instructional videos. And some hold video chats with company officials or customer service representatives, all in the name of better customer experience.
Some 3 billion videos are played on YouTube every day and 100 hours of content are uploaded every minute. If you keep an HDMI cable stashed in your office drawer to connect your laptop to a big screen, then you're probably hooked — and understand the ease, convenience and value of video.
As McQuivey stated in his report, "Alexander Graham Bell famously doubted that the phone would be useful in the home except for calling doctors to emergencies. He was very wrong, failing to recognize that a technology that facilitates our human drive to communicate will spread rapidly. The phone did, as did email. Now it's video's turn because if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words."
But still, we had to ask. Is video marketing here to stay or a passing fad?
The Question
Is video the next big thing in digital marketing?
The Answers
Ashley Paris, Research Analyst at SiriusDecisions
As a member of SiriusDecision's Demand Creation Strategies service, Paris provides senior marketing management with operational intelligence on demand creation to support strategic and tactical lead development initiatives. Before joining SiriusDecisions, she was an account director and senior consultant at DemandGen, a company offering demand generation, lead management consulting and marketing automation advice, and lead the deployment and use of Oracle Eloqua’s marketing automation platform at the TD Garden, home of the Boston Bruins. Tweet to Ashley Paris.
The question isn’twhether or not video is the next big thing in digital marketing, butmore of an acknowledgement of video’s role in the shift to holistic,integrated approaches to content delivery as part of a digital marketingplan. This is indicated by video’s overwhelming increase inpervasiveness. Past hurdles, such as optimizing videos for search,cross-device compatibility and production time and cost are beinganswered with keyword tags, optimized file names, adaptive design anduser-generated content.
I credit the increase in popularity ofvideo with a growing sophistication in the ability to track and measurevideo’s effectiveness toward its objective for different audiencesegments. People differ in their content preferences — and the preferreddelivery mechanism for that content. For example, some people prefer towatch online videos for information, whereas others prefer to download abrochure or peruse an infographic. In addition, the preferreddelivery mechanism for content can change depending on the device that aperson is using to access the content.
Amid these complexities, marketers are gaining better understanding video’s role as it compares to their audience’scontent and tactic preferences. Through integrations with marketingautomation and other tools, marketing can better monetize video’s rolein creating and qualifying demand, and this leads to a business case forincorporating more video into the digital mix. Combine that withvideo’s ability to communicate ideas with emotion and personality, andyou have a delivery mechanism optimized for the moderninformation-seeking buyer who lives on multiple devices, who craves theability to share and interact with useful content that resonates on apersonal level.
Jim Dicso, President and Chief Revenue Officer at SundaySky
Learning Opportunities
Webinar
Mar
30
An Optimized Customer Contact Strategy Combines Transparency and Intelligence: The State of Outbound Communications
Learn from the Neustar-commissioned Forrester Consulting study on challenges and solutions for contact centers
Webinar
Apr
5
Adopt a Modern Digital-First Marketing Strategy
Learn how to use a composable DXP to your advantage
Webinar
Apr
13
Accelerating Content Velocity Across the Digital Supply Chain
Learn to integrate DAM with upstream tools to improve workflow efficiency.
Webinar
Apr
13
Composable Commerce The Future of Retail
The Adobe Commerce approach to composable and why it's best in class
Webinar
Apr
18
Drive Business Growth Through Customer Service and Support
Defining the future of technology. What is AI’s role in the future of customer service?
Webinar
Apr
26
Future-proofing Your Marketing Through Better Customer Understanding
Understanding your customers and how to reach them in real-time across all channels
Webinar
Mar
30
An Optimized Customer Contact Strategy Combines Transparency and Intelligence: The State of Outbound Communications
Learn from the Neustar-commissioned Forrester Consulting study on challenges and solutions for contact centers
Webinar
Apr
5
Adopt a Modern Digital-First Marketing Strategy
Learn how to use a composable DXP to your advantage
Dicso joined SundaySky, a company that delivers automated product video production, in 2011. As president and Chief Revenue Officer, he drives the company's go-to-market strategy, sales execution, business development and revenue growth. He was previously executive vice president of sales and services at LivePerson, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider of real time online customer engagement solutions and held multiple roles at both Witness Systems, Parametric Technology Corp. and Xerox. Tweet to Jim Dicso.
Video has alwaysbeen a compelling digital medium for connecting a story or idea to theworld through sight, sound and motion, whether it’s an individualsharing a personal video or a brand promoting its TV spot. This wasYouTube’s greatest accomplishment: enabling one person to tell a storyand touch the world through video.
As YouTube has evolved, so toohas the role of video. This storytelling medium has progressed fromone-to-the-world, to one-to-many, to now, one-to-one, making videostories both highly personalized, entertaining and effective. Brandmarketers are learning to understand, organize and connect theirfirst-party data sources with behavioral data to interact and engagewith customers in an individualized way, improving the overallexperience. And this is really the next big thing for video in digitalmarketing this year.
Adam Kustin, VP of Marketing at VMR Products
Kustin joined VMR, a maker of electronic cigarettes,to lead the development and execution of marketing and communication strategies on a global scale. He was previously with Shelton Group, a marketing communications firm, where he served as president, leading the client service, strategy, insight and creative functions. He has also held senior marketing positions at Sunbeam Corporation and Sensormatic, a division of ADT. Tweet to Adam Kustin.
Video is not thenext big thing. It is a big thing. For marketers, video has always been a compelling asset, given itsability to deliver equal measures of detail and authenticity. The onlydifference today is video’s ability to scale online, with mobile andsocial pushing the boundaries of what was once possible even three yearsago.
In any consumer marketing plan where the selling processrevolves around education, explanation or inspiration, video shouldplay a central role. Done well, video provides critical dimension andclarity where other mediums fall short. Done well, by the way, is in theeye of the beholder. The YouTube juggernaut is teeming with countlessproduct reviews. You may be surprised by which ones convert the best. Hint, it’s not always the slickly produced ones.
In markets thatare new or have many players, video can provide an edge and illuminatethe “why” behind a brand. Consider the market for fitness trackers. Itis overrun with old-line fitness brands like Nike, established techcompanies like Jawbone, early leaders like Fitbit and a host ofchallengers. Consumers can easily exhaust themselves just searching forthe right product. Now imagine a series of videos on how fitnesstrackers work, what features are most important and how to get the mostout of them. The company that produces this content benefits by becominga trusted resource and puts itself in a better position to converttraffic into buyers, which is at the heart of any marketing or salesoperation.
Title image by Asa Aarons Smith Photography / all rights reserved.
