Web Video: The Hottest Marketing Tool for Your Company

By Joe Cunningham, Internet Marketing Manager

11/14/2012

Imagine you are in charge of selling beer for one of the largest breweries in the world. Your choices: write loads of tomfoolery on your website or get James Bond to endorse you in an action video ad.

What would you do?

Heineken got it right with their latest Skyfall ads but it’s surprising how many companies get it wrong. The moral of the story: video works better.

Everybody’s Got a Favorite

Whether it’s the Geico® spokesman introducing Abraham Lincoln, a young Darth Vader using the force to start his Dad’s Volkswagen®, the clever antics of the “goin’-on-forty” E*TRADE® babies, or the awe-inspiring U. S. Marines in the making – everybody’s got a favorite video advertisement (those were mine). Hey, be honest – don’t you watch the Super Bowl at least a little bit because the ads are so cool? (Check out & follow our Pinterest board “Great TV commercials” for more.)

Today, it’s not just about what’s on T.V. On World Wide Web, more than 100 million people watch web video every day and share, tweet, like, comment on, and pin these all over the place, creating viral content. This is exactly what companies want – a buzz about their video, product, and business.

The Buzz

The stats are clear: web video catches attention faster & longer than anything else online and sells more. Period. (Queue the jaw-dropping stats.)

Executives: 75% of executives told Forbes they’d rather watch business videos than read the same info. 65% of them visit the marketer’s website after watching the video.
Online shopping:

90% of online shoppers said video helps them chose products. Retailers report products with video sell a lot more.
64% of web visitors are more likely to buy after watching the video.

Real estate listings with video receive an average of 400% more inquiries!
Business emails with video are opened 200% more, reports Forrester Marketing Group.

Talk about results! We recently built a microsite for People Systems – www.pscostcontrol.com – featuring a cool video entitled “Let’s Talk Numbers” showcasing their incredible tax saving business product. Their email campaign featuring this video has a near 20% open rate and 2.5% click through rate with several recipients actually signing up for more info! Now try doing the same with snail mail (paper planes anyone?) or regular spammy (can you say virus?) text email (delete!).

Get the picture?

SEO and Web Video

In terms of SEO, a website with video also engages visitors for 2 minutes longer. Google likes that and will rank you higher on search results as opposed to sites where most people “bounce” after just a few boring seconds glancing at your 1970-somethin’ homepage (of course when I say “your,” I mean “their”).

Videos also load faster than animated Flash sites (a very popular poor design choice). I mean, come on – when was the last time you enjoyed waiting 17 seconds for a website to load. Try 2 seconds or less. Or lose business.

“They’re Goanna Put Me in the Movies…”

So what are you waiting for? Don’t be left out. Cowley has the premiere Syracuse video production studio and has a wide array of web video types to choose from. Check out our VideoKix! (our famous trademark video brand) portfolio and get in touch.

And break a leg. (We don’t really mean that… well, you know what we mean.)

Information taken from videobrewery.com.