If you own a small business or are in business for yourself, there’s a lot of compelling evidence suggesting that online video marketing should be a major focus of your advertising and marketing budget.
According to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research, 1.8 million words is the value of one minute of video. Do you have the time and energy to write 1.8 million words?
When you look at it that way, online video marketing is the single most practical use for your marketing time and energy.
What Is the Market for Online Video
According to comScore, 45.4% is the percentage of Internet users who view at least one video online over the course of a month. The average user is exposed to an average of 32.2 videos in a month, increasing the chances that your marketing message will be seen. But what does that work out to in real numbers?
100 Million Internet users watch online video each day. Granted, a lot of those are watching the latest viral videos, but an awful lot of them are looking for advice on how to do something or how to make something work better. And a whole of them are looking to buy a service or product.
90% of online shoppers at a major retailer’s website said they find video helpful in making shopping and buying decisions. Retailers who provide online video to show off their products report that the products with video sell a lot more than products with no video.
75% of executives told Forbes that they watch work-related videos on business websites at least once a week.
50% watch business-related videos on YouTube
65% visit the marketer’s website after viewing a video
According to comScore, the average user spends 16 minutes and 49 seconds watching online video ads every month.
If you’re not using video marketing, you’re missing out on a huge market opportunity. It’s not just the number of people who are watching videos that’s important – it’s the reasons why they watch it. When you post an online marketing video to a business website, you’ve got a great chance of engaging with a busy executive who is specifically looking for your services but might not have reached out to schedule a meeting for a presentation.
What’s the Payoff for Online Marketing Video?
According to the Online Publishers Association, 80% of Internet users who recall watching a video ad on a website they visited in the past 30 days. It gets even better. Of that 80%, 46% took some action after viewing the ad.
26% looked for more information about the subject of the video
22% visited the website named in the ad
15% visited the company represented in the video ad
12% purchased the specific product featured in the ad
People are 64% more likely to buy a product on an online retail site after watching a video. In addition, visitors who view videos stay on the site an average of 2 minutes longer than those who don’t view videos, comScore says.
Online Video Marketing Is Not Just for Retailers
According to Forbes Insight, 59% of senior executives would rather watch a video than read text. About 65% of those who view a video click through to visit the vendor website, 50% look for more information and 45% report that they contacted a vendor after seeing an online video ad. About 50% of those who viewed an online marketing video went on to make a purchase for their business.
One online marketer reported a 51% increase in subscriber-to-lead conversion rates when video was included in an email marketing campaign.
Video marketing increases sales and leads. If you’re not using video marketing, you’re losing customers to those who do. Businesses that incorporate video marketing into their overall marketing strategy see higher engagement rates, higher click-through rates and higher conversion rate. Why would you leave all that value sitting on the table?
How to Make Video Marketing More Effective
According to research by Visible Measures, 20% of your viewers will click away from a video in 10 seconds or fewer. And it doesn’t get a lot better than that. You’ll lose about 1/3 of your viewers by 30 seconds, 45% of them by 1 minute and almost 60% by 2 minutes. And those numbers remain the same no matter how long the video is.
While desktop viewers tend to stick with videos for 2 minutes or less, mobile users seem to have a longer attention span. iPhone users tend to watch for about 2.4 minutes. Android users give a video three minutes to engage them and Symbian users stick around for just over 4 minutes. iPad users have the longest attention spans of all, sticking with a web video for an average of 5 minutes.
According to research conducted by Jun Group (2011), videos that are 15 seconds or shorter are shared 37 percent more often than those that last between 30 seconds and 1 minute. If you make your video longer, that stat goes down. Those shorties are only shared 18% more often than videos of longer than 1 minute.
