Web Video Marketing News You Can Use

My head is literally swilling. It seemed like yesterday there was literally one article after another about how different businesses are using online video for marketing purposes. Web video marketing if you would prefer. Between people retweeting articles on Twitter, daily media newsletters and RSS feeds, video news was swirling about.
As an avid follower of the web video marketing vertical for the past few years, I’m relishing in how the focus has shifted from paid online video ads to using video as part of a mar-comm strategy.  If I had to classify the past few years, ’07 was the year of User Generated Content (UCG), ’08 was about the pre-roll vs. post-roll ad unit and ’09 really has been about web video marketing.  It is nice to see this tactic being embraced and discussed!
In particular, three articles I read yesterday really resonated wth me.
The day started off with Advertising Age’s 3 Minute Ad Age for October 28, 2009.  This informative series encapsulates news and trends in a nice three-minute media clip.  The October 28th segment focused on how DuPont has used online video to engage with young professionals.  Back in 2007, DuPont created five web stories.  DuPont wanted to increase brand awareness and leveraged social channels to distribute the video.  Each video was 2 to 3 minutes in length, but the average view was 8 minutes.  People are still viewing this content today. 
My take-away on this piece: video has a long shelf life. While DuPont created the web series over two years ago, they are still seeing engagement from the content in 2009.  Keep that in mind when you consider video. Even if the upfront costs seem steep compared to other mediums, the investment really pays off.  Really – can you honestly say that you get 2+ years use out of brochures, white papers or web content?
The DuPont series was not new to me. In 2007 the Web Video Marketing Council profiled “Science Stories” in its Popular and Unusual Web Video Marketing Campaigns. Below is what the WVMC had to say about DuPont’s series:

Next, a piece on online video ROI in BtoB Magazine really hit home:
Engagement – classified as any action ranging from viewing the video to linking to a web page or downloading content – was consistently listed as a key factor in ascertaining video’s ROI. I was seriously giddy after reading this piece because one of the FLIMP Platform’s most valuable components is enabling marketers to easily understand their flimp campaign’s ROI.
Lastly, I finally got around to reading a MarketingSherpa “How To” published on October 21, 2009. “Reformat, Reuse, Recycle:  5 Strategies to Stretch your Marketing Content” focused on strategies shared by B2B marketers on re-purposing content.  Strategy #5 said it all:  “Turn boring-but-necessary documents into video.” I absolutely agree.  The team at MarketingSherpa recognizes that some content is essential to the buying cycle, but it can be pretty bland to read (and not very exciting to create).  The recommendation is to turn dry content, including training manuals, technical specifications and sales sheets into video content.
The article cited how Brian Ellefritz, Sr. Manager/Customer Relationship Marketing at Cicsco Systems used video in a B2B capacity. How? By filming product managers guiding prospects through Cisco’s product data sheets. The results:  within six months, the videos accounted for 21% of all product data downloads.
I’m swooning from the excitement!

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