Add Video to Your Marketing Mix Now: 10 Reasons Why

By Dave Wieneke | in Content strategy, Email Marketing & Abuse, Video | 9 Sep 2009 | 7 Comments

1. Audience Reach
According to research from the Pew Institute, the number of online users who have watched video in the last month has doubled from two years ago.  That audience is now larger than the base of social media users.  It’s three times larger than those who have listened to a podcast, and five times larger than those who use Twitter.

Now, most everyone likes to watch.

2. It’s Less Taxing to Consume
While the novel may be better, more people watch the movie. My video mantra, “reading is for suckers,” has a basis of truth. Unless an audience is motivated (thank you for coming!) most third paragraphs of marketing copy go unread.

3. Marketing Buzzword Bingo: Authenticity & Transparency
When big marketing words fail, consider putting people on video. It allows a mass audience to make a 1:1 connection with real people who represent companies. It can impart knowledge, and even trust, by demonstrating your expertise and outlining what people can expect to experience as your client or customer.

4. Emotional Canvas
The combination of video, music, and graphics does more to change a viewer’s emotional state than reading copy can. It’s a natural channel for telling a story.

5. It Complements What You’re Already Doing
Video can illustrate and validate what you’re already saying in text. So don’t just flop videos out on a YouTube island; use them to support ongoing communications.  Customer service resources, FAQs about your company, press releases, even product descriptions can be made richer with video.

6. Can Something Be Both Personal and Social?
Video allows the marketers to gracefully step to one side and show the expertise of your firm. If you want to promote thought leadership, showing the thought leader (i.e. letting your audience see a real person) is a great first step. And as video can be easily shared, embedded, or linked-to, it’s a natural for engaged customers to add to their own blogs and Facebook pages.

7. Repurposable
There are all kinds of derivative uses of video.  It can be played in your lobby, brought to tradeshows, even shown at user conferences.  It can be burned to a DVD or buzzcard, or edited into standard elements in other projects. Think of video as a Thanksgiving dinner: you get a meal out of it, and you can repurpose the rest of it for days afterward.

8. Memorable
Remember the Lexus ad with the marble on the car?  Picture it for a moment.  That was part of a campaign that also appeared  in print and on billboards. But it was the video ad that held Lexus in the market’s consciousness.  While all media works together, it’s video that, in my experience, has the highest recall rate.

9. Choice
Some people prefer to scan text; others want a visual representation.  I’m certainly not advocating abandoning all other media, but online video, with its current reach and functionality, should be a part of your marketing mix.

10. As a new medium, video helps cut through clutter and get you noticed!
Even though it has reach, video also still has a novelty effect.  Email click-through rates more than double when they contain links to video. And implementing this channel says something about your embrace of technology and transparency.