Video is really the way of the future online.
Video has been taking the Internet by storm in recent years, making the use of video for marketing, promotion, news and PR online an essential component for building a successful online business. This has revolutionized the sales process, and provides internet marketers with a way to communicate effectively about their product, profile and benefits within the shortest possible time.
The Internet is full of information and the average attention span of a web user today is measured in seconds. When web users search for their information using a search engine, they will get thousands of search results. Should they visit your website, they may only spend a few seconds and a very little effort to scan through what you are offering or selling and decide whether your content, style, look and approach are a good fit for what they were actually looking for. These first few seconds are crucial and if you can deliver a clear and targeted message by offering a fast, highly visual way to grab their attention and engage their interest, then… bingo! First part of your mission accomplished, and you are in with a chance.
Obviously, it will be the quality and content of your video that will now make the difference as to the next step your visitor takes, so it is also crucial to become educated on the best way to present the information that you are wanting to get accross to prompt them to the action you would like them to take.
In order to make sure your video effectively markets your products or services online and conveys your the key traits and characteristics within a very short amount of time in a unique, memorable way there are some key points to keep in mind.
1. Get Your Video Seen
If you want your video to be an effective marketing tool, then depending on your objectives, it might be best to have it be seen by as many web users as possible. Hence, don’t just put it on your own site, instead utilize some of the video sharing sites that are available. Sites such as YouTube and Google video are excellent resources, where others can watch and talk about your content, and perhaps visit your site. They can also redistribute it by publishing it directly on their own sites.
2. Keep Your Files So They Will Load Fast
Statistics show that average web users spend their time waiting for a page to load is about 7 seconds. If a web page takes longer than 7 seconds to load, then it is likely that the visitor will click away and go elsewhere. Hence, you need to make sure your video file is small enough, ideally less than 1 megabyte and load almost in real time to keep the interest your visitors. SWF or FLV formats are the most commonly used as you can keep the size of the file reasonable and still maintain a decent quality. AVI is usually too big and not recommended for uploading. You will need a conversion software tool, but there are a number of these available if you go and search.
3. Let Them Know It’s A Short Video
If you have the video on your own site, as is sometimes most appropriate such as for giving away a free product for an opt in, then make sure you give them some indication that they need to click to play (if that is the case), as well as an approximate idea of how long the video is. Also try to keep it short and to the point. The best way is to make sure it looks like a video is to have a player that has a visible play and stop button where the web users can click to play the video and stop it whenever they want to stop it.
For some types of video presentation you may not want the visitor to be able to stop the video. In this case the video will be quick loading and set to auto-play.
Visitors will be less likley to have a problem with this if you let them know it is a short video. The more to the point, and entertaining you can make it the better chance you will have of your video presentation producing the desired response from your visitors.
To Finish Up…
There is a lot more involved in marketing with video, than just throwing up some footage on your site and then counting the money as it rolls in! Even though there is some education required, it need not be as difficult as you might think.
There are some excellent resources out there now, and one that I particularly like is a new course by Shannon Lueck, Video Cash Explosion. Keep a look out for the next post as I am going to feature a review on this brand new course in the next couple of days.
I can only say, if you are trying to set up a system online to replace your current income, then this is one course you don’t want to miss.
