Love it or hate it, television has revolutionized the business world. Many of PRMG’s television production clients are small businesses, non-profits or law firms with big dreams. Our clients have come to us to produce commercials, documentaries, direct marketing videos and web content to help achieve those dreams.
Television advertising is the cost-effective way to reach the most potential customers in the shortest time. The cost of production and airtime for a commercial is a wise investment and is surprisingly affordable, even for small businesses. Television advertising brings the message into customers’ homes and instantly brands the company as a leader in its field.
Direct marketing is another powerful use of PRMG’s Television Production service. A DVD illustrates all the lifestyle benefits the product or service provides, with more effectiveness than another brochure. Unlike most junk mail which ends up unread, people will watch a marketing DVD.
Many organizations have come to PRMG for a boost in fundraising efforts. An historical or issue-based documentary showing the organization’s goals and achievements can secure grants, donations and media attention more efficiently than traditional methods, at a lower cost.
Just as the web has revolutionized business, it has revolutionized how video is used to promote business or to gain attention to a cause.
Marketing Online with Video
Online video is one of the best venues to engage an audience — don’t even think about excluding it! This new medium allows the video creator to communicate a message on multiple levels — via visual imagery, the spoken word, music and visual text. It may sound like a commercial for a Montessori school, but this is the way people learn, and consequently, the way legendary brands are created. As a case in point, think of traditional Internet marketing; when was the last time that a paid search listing or banner ad raised your blood pressure or induced you to forward something to a friend? Get the point?
With online video, you can also reach a huge audience for a minimal investment, thus the ROI of online video marketing can be astounding. Consider that, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, more than 50% of the US population will watch video online next year. That’s 155.2 million people, and we’re just talking the US! Increasingly, people are watching a lot of video as well. According to comScore, Americans watched 9 billion online videos just in the month of July.
Like everything else, there is no “free lunch” — the video-sharing sites don’t charge to host your content, but getting your target audience to watch and forward your video is no easy feat. That’s where we come in.
“Secret Formula” — .50C + .15M + .20T + .15P = Success
Alright, we admit that an exact formula may be a bit over simplistic, but when it comes to deciding how to allocate time and resources on a video intended on marketing something virally, the weighting of these four components should follow closely to something like this: That’s it. Write down the formula above on a cocktail napkin and you have the code cracker for getting people to watch and forward your video. The formula above says that creating a video is a weighted function of four components:
50% C = Content and Production — this is storyline, style, lighting, production, etc.
15% M = Metadata — the text title, keywords, descriptions, and categories that help people find your video
20% T = Thumbnail — the packaging which draws people in when displayed on the page
15% P = Promotion — just good old fashioned marketing
These aspects help communicate your message far and wide in a way that makes an emotional connection with the viewers in a way that motivates them to pass it along to others.
Consider submitting your videos to other “Web 2.0” websites that employ voting systems to promote content. Some of the most popular sites are Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. As your video or article gains more votes, the video will attract even more attention and may even end up in a featured or “top 10” type category which can generate hundreds of thousands of views in a day.
Generally, deploying videos to multiple sites makes sense as different sites have different content niches and audiences. Essentially, each site represents a community opportunity that you can tap into. TubeMogul “Load and Track” is an easy tool to deploy to multiple sites at once. Here is a handy grid that provides some information on a few of the top video-sharing sites:
| Description | Demographics | Registration | Upload | Notes | |
| YouTube | No intro needed here | Evenly female/male audience, even age distribution, U.S. East and West coasts. | Easy | Fast review process, mainly automated | Experimenting with ad sharing |
| Yahoo! Video | An original video destination, but late to the game | Slightly more male viewers, slightly older, even US geographic distribution | Medium | Relatively slow and unpredictable review process | |
| MySpace | Primarily a social networking site, but video is still huge | High percentage of female and under-18 viewers | Easy | No review process. Videos go live immediately | Being rebranded as MySpaceTV |
| Metacafe | Popular worldwide, prides itself on community votes driving featured content sharing | Skews towards older, more educated, male viewers | Easy | Fast human review process | Offers ad sharing |
| Google Video | Increasingly becoming more of a video search engine | Slightly more male viewers, disproportionately more Hispanic audience | Medium | Limited review process. Unlimited content length and size | Integrates with other Google apps like Web Albums and Picasa |
| Revver | One of the first video sites to offer ad revenue sharing | Slightly older, white male crowd | Easy | Discriminating human review process | Ads inserted into all videos |
| DailyMotion | The YouTube of Europe | Overwhelmingly white male. Higher age and income than most | Easy | Fast and easy | Growing in the US |
| Blip.tv | Publisher-friendly video sharing and distribution site | Slightly more male, slightly higher income level than most video sites, even ethnic distribution | Easy | Easy | Publisher can choose to insert ads |
| Brightcove | Trying to bring TV to the Internet | Even split male and female. Few under-18 viewers | Easy | Easy | Ad share options available |
| Crackle | Focused on making people stars | Largely male, disproportionately African-American audience | Easy | Slick Flash upload tool allows many videos in one shot | Owned by Sony |
| Veoh | Focused on full-screen video programming for anyone with a broadband connection | Slightly more male viewers, predominantly Asian, distributed across all age categories | Medium | Easy | Investors include Michael Eisner and Time Warner |
Contact PRMG to learn how our digital video production and web design and promotion services can help expand your business or organization. For more information and a free consultation, fill out this form or contact our offices at (631) 207-1057.
