Online video marketing is drastically changing the way
businesses are generating new leads and customers online. Until recently, local
businesses and medical practices who used any form of online marketing
primarily relied on their websites and possibly posts to their social media
sites to generate new customers and patients. Savvy businesses hired an expert
in search engine optimization, or SEO, to get their sites ranked on page one of
Google, where prospective customers would then find them based on targeted
keyword searches.
However, as YouTube has become the second largest search
engine on the web with over 1 billion registered users, the online video tide
has changed the way consumers obtain information. The majority of consumers
today has broadband Internet access and are used to watching entertainment
content on demand through services such as Netflix and Hulu. As a result, a
large percent of the content that consumers access online is now video based.
Online video currently accounts for over 75 percent of all
Internet content and this number is continuing to grow. In just the past week
alone, 94 percent of consumers viewed an online video, and when a sample group
was surveyed, most agreed that by watching a product or service focused online
video, it had a big influence on their purchasing decisions.
This is great news from a marketing perspective. Online
video marketing allows businesses to provide the most compelling and persuasive
information to their prospective customers in the shortest amount of time. It
is also the most successful electronic medium to building relationships.
The brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster
than the time it takes to process text. Customer retention rates after viewing
a website are only around the 10 percent range, while video provides a retention
rate of greater than 50 percent.
In a study of 280 marketing, sales, and business
professionals published in September 2015 by Ascend2, nearly all found that
online video marketing was a successful medium to promoting their businesses.
According to this group, one of the most cost effective videos to produce is
the company profile video, which provides a short overview of what the business
does and what it can offer to prospective customers or patients.
Companies and service providers are starting to realize that
by having a video profile, they can create a much higher level of credibility
and trust for a prospective customer compared with anything that customer will
read on their website. Businesses that utilize online video marketing report
sales increases of over 25 percent
How can online video marketing bring you more customers?
You may have the most compelling profile video, but if you
are not delivering it to a targeted audience at the point that they are
searching for your product or service, it is like having a great billboard in
the middle of the desert with no traffic driving by to see it. Since most
consumers today are viewing videos on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other
social media platforms, to successfully generate new business, your video needs
to be on these platforms too. Instead of thinking that prospects will watch
your video on your website, you need to understand that your video should be
used as a lead magnet to generate traffic to your site, and not the other way
around.
Since Google owns YouTube, it gives preferential treatment
to online videos that are optimized for relevant keywords on the Google search
results page. Not only does this allow you to rank higher on the page, but a
video result is also displayed with a video thumbnail, which generates over 42
percent more click-throughs than a regular webpage result.
Where most businesses fumble is that once they get the click-through
to their website or online video, they expect the consumer to immediately make
a purchase or book an appointment. The reality is that when most consumers land
on a Google search results page, they are there primarily for one thing –
to do research and not yet to make a purchase or get an appointment.
It takes on average of seven to 10 times for a consumer to
see a repeated message for them to make a purchasing decision. This is the
reason why we see television ads over and over again, because eventually, those
of us that are inclined to purchase the product will do so. Therefore, the
primary objective of the profile video should be to generate a lead, not make a
sale or get a new customer or patient. Once you have the lead, then with a
systematic approach over time, using an email or text marketing campaign, you
can generate new business.
So, if you want to generate new customers on a monthly basis
for your local business or medical practice, you need to incorporate a keyword
optimized online video marketing campaign into your marketing mix. By doing
this, you will be several steps ahead of your competition.
Laurence Nathanson is an internet marketing expert in San
Francisco and runs Imagination Media, a video production and digital marketing
agency that incorporates online video marketing along with several other
customer acquisition strategies. Imagination Media produces high-impact,
keyword-focused videos for businesses and medical practices seeking local
customers, and then uses video search engine optimization (video SEO) to get
the videos ranked on page one of Google.
The company utilizes several other customer acquisition
strategies including: YouTube advertising, email marketing, text marketing, Facebook
advertising, and other social media marketing techniques to convert leads into
paying customers for its clients. For info, visit www.imigination.media
Contact Imagination Media today and mention this column for a
free business review video when you initiate an online video marketing campaign
for your business. Call (415) 940-7500 or email laurence@imagination.media.