How To Allocate a Video Marketing Budget

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with Wayne Wall, Flimp Media’s CEO.  We were discussing how web video marketing is still in its infancy stages.  Many organizations want to use video for marketing purposes, but they have yet to take the time to create the content.
Wayne said he found it curious that many organizations will invest the time to create video – often spectacular video content – but they will not spend any time developing a distribution strategy.  Consequently, they may consider their foray into web video marketing to not be successful.  He finds this a less than optimal approach because audiovisual content can be an effective way to create Intelligent Digital Collateral.  
The first step of a web video marketing strategy is creating audiovisual content.  But content development alone does not facilitate a web video marketing campaign.  A true web video marketing campaign consists of three separate activities:

1. Creating video content
2. Distributing the content to reach your target audience viewers
3. Assessing the performance of the campaign through analytical data

Frankly, video content should be treated as other marketing collateral. When you print a brochure or create an ad, the job isn’t finished when the collateral piece has been created. You still determine how you’re going to hand out your brochures and where you’re going to run the ad.  Web video marketing is exactly the same.
If you’re going to take the time to develop video content, plan ahead and really think about how you’re going to distribute that content.  Will your campaign be completed just by integrating the content into your organization’s website?  By seeding to a video sharing site?  Based on the goals of your plan, these two activities might satisfy your web video marketing needs.  But why not really use the video content to its full ROI.  If you’re already running email marketing campaigns, consider how the video can be integrated into a video email campaign.  Are you using social media to reach your audience?  Then perhaps video is another content component you can share.  Do you actively purchase keyword ads?  Consider using the video in lieu of another digital ad format.
Here at Flimp, we’re enthusiastic proponents of video landing pages (VLP).  A video landing page is essentially a microsite – something that is portable; incorporates branding, calls to action and audiovisual content; and may be used for time-specific campaigns.  Two different articles I read this week both supported the merits of a microsite/VLP.
Research recently published by Dynanmic Logic found that microsites provide a “more immersive, interactive and engaging” experience to website visitors than display ads.  The Online Media Daily article also noted that microsites can require some investment to both create and deploy.  Yet, creating a microsite or video landing page could be a worthy activity.  A Razorfish survey of 1,000 “connected consumers” found that 64 percent made their first purchase from a company due to an interaction with a microsite/VLP.
While marketers debate the microsite/video landing page issue, some organizations have decided to forgo with the traditional corporate website.  Why such a radical approach?  According to Entrpreneur because they are finding it more effective to promote their business by creating microsites/video landing pages, using social media and developing ongoing email campaigns.  The cost of managing an optimized, frequently updated website compared to the cost of developing microsites is one factor.  For smaller businesses, the need to refresh their message and easily deploy that message to their audience is a key factor in the decision to forgo maintaining a traditional website.
Since I spend a lot of time working with Flimp clients on video campaigns, I understand the merits of the video landing page approach – in terms of easy content creation and impressive engagement results.  I can’t think of any other digital tool that enables marketers to easily create and distribute digital content that captures audience engagement.  Even if I was not employed by Flimp Media, I would still recommend the product and the approach to organizations.