Most businesses know the value that a well structured SEO campaign can bring to their business, they like the idea of someone typing in their product name and their website appearing right up the top in front of everyone. One thing that is shocking is how hesitant these same businesses are to adopt an online video campaign. What’s even more shocking is some of the ridiculous misconceptions some of them hold when it comes to online video. It’s the social media theory, a lot of the big wigs who sign the cheques and make the decisions at these businesses think social media is what their teenagers spend all day playing and there’s no way it can help their business.
A couple of years ago I was working with a large computer company (obviously I can’t be too specific) and they couldn’t have been happier to engage in online video. They loved it and they did a good job with it, they filmed carefully thought out videos covering some really helpful topics, they were well edited and very smartly displayed. The problem was they were so protective over their videos and where they could appear it almost negated the point of shooting them in the first place. The thing I found most shocking from all this was their refusal to even consider YouTube as a viable marketing opportunity!
It was the social media theory again, some big cheese who made the ultimate decisions decided that YouTube was for kids, it was full of pop videos and silly teenagers doing silly things and of course the occasions cat doing something cute. As far as they were concerned it was not a channel for their serious B2B videos covering their serious B2B topics. Remember these were not spammy videos just trying to flog computers and software, they were genuinely informative videos offering constructive help from an unbiased view point and this companies name was big enough to demand instant respect in their industry.
A quick flick through the ‘most popular’ videos on YouTube and you’d probably think they might be onto something. You might find a story related to a current topic in the news but mostly it’s the latest videos on the verge of going truly viral, last nights TV shows and a couple of celebrities. I still think they’re wrong, I think anyone who has the foresight to actually care about their online presence and anyone who can find the budget to actually put some decent quality online video together is shooting themselves in the foot if they don’t consider YouTube as part of their marketing strategy.
About a month ago YouTube announced they’re serving over 200 million videos every day just to mobile devices alone, that’s 200 million without even counting all us guys sat at our desks at work! YouTube also claim they get over 35 hours of video uploaded every minute, that’s over 50,000 hours of video being uploaded every single day. We’re not stupid, the vast majority of this is going to be angst ridden teens reciting morbid poetry and yes more cats on more skateboards but with stats like this it’s truly baffling why YouTube is overlooked as a valid marketing tool. Around 18 months ago YouTube started getting more hits that Yahoo, this suddenly made it the second biggest search engine next to its parent Google.
Let’s dig some stats out to actually back some of this up. Comscore are the ‘go to guys’ when you want any stats for internet related stuff, according to them on an average day in December 2010, 88.6 million people watched some form of online video and they weren’t all watching a cat on a skateboard. With the number of smartphones jumping every month, iPhones, iPads and iPods also taking over the world, online video is becoming more and more popular. To be honest you can’t sneeze online these days without hitting some sort of stat staying how huge online video is, with over 4 billion searches in YouTube every month are you really that sure none of them are your next customer?
This is a guest post by Jessica, who works for JTX Fitness where you can find a wide selection of exercise equipment and coming soon some online video!
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