Video Marketing – Business Marketing Essentials – Tip 715

Video is here, now – and in the near distant future, everywhere.

This week news media sites and search engines everywhere have been screaming articles on video.  They’ve been finding their way to my email, and I’ve been finding them in random reads.  Video mergers, video acquisitions, video creations, video channels, major broadcast networks moving more into digital video.

Video is hot… and soon will combust into an “information inferno” burning everywhere.  That being said, video will be required if businesses are to keep their customers/prospects/interested onlookers/etc. informed and engaged with them.

Take a second.  Let that sit.  Yep, re-read that last paragraph.  Video… will be a marketing necessity for every business, and on a much larger scale than what they are using it for now.  If your business is using it a little now, over the next few years – you will grow your video output considerably more.  If you are not using it at all now, you will start.

Each day, each week, and each year – more applications and more devices are being designed and built, with a video screen in mind.  I remember reading an article not too long ago – an interview with the marketing director for P&G – he was asked about video, and his answer included “thinking in screens.”  He’s got it.  Thinking in screens.

For years, a marketing department’s only outlet for video was television – or cinema.  Marketers were limited to the :30 or :60 second commercial – or some Hollywood endeavor.  (Sound the Intel chimes) The Internet arrives – and YouTube is born.  Other sites soon follow; they set up their own platforms – each with separate niches – Vimeo, etc.  Today, smartphones have HD video capability, and streaming video is growing in popularity – Comcast is now offering streaming services because of the profitability of companies like Hulu, Netflix, and Roku.  Social media enables us to share video quickly and easily among friends and strangers – whether they are viewing on small screens, medium sized screens, large or extra large screens.  The web has also allowed us to sneak past the guards of “ad time” – and as such, a :42 second video or :57 second video is acceptable to create and distribute.

Businesses need traffic to survive.  They need customers.  They need to make sales.  Whether that “end sale” is from a retail, wholesale, professional, educational, entertainment (the list goes on) sector – customers are consumers.   We watch, we search, we share.  And that process repeats – weekly, daily, hourly – right now.  It’s like the music video for Van Halen – “Right now, someone is posting on social media” – “right now someone is sharing a video with a friend” – “right now, your mother wishes you’d write her more… letters, with a stamp, and written in cursive.”

Businesses will survive and thrive in this new marketing tech-o-sphere by being activein conversation.  It’s an ever increasing “consumer connected” world – where the opportunity to solve a problem, and make a sale – comes, and can go… in an instant.  Can you be found – recommended – referred – connected?  In an instant?  The more your business stays active in conversation – the more likely you will be “in the game.”  “In the game” means competing with other businesses in your category that will also be playing.

Video will keep you in the game as video is “searchable.”

Seek, and they shall find.  Keywords and key tags help… but that’s another conversation.