There is no denying the fact that video is the medium of choice if you want to get noticed. There are 323 days worth of YouTube videos watched on Facebook every minute and 6 billion hours of video watched on YouTube every month. And that’s just YouTube…that doesn’t include vimeo, home videos, gifs, etc. That’s a lot of people watching a lot of video.
So, the question for any business is, “how to get in front of all of these people and get included in their number of hours?”. In short, for most businesses, the answer is, “you don’t”. The first concept that a company has to realize when approaching video marketing is that there are 2 types of video: marketing and non-marketing. Marketing videos sell, describe/explain or promote a product, service, brand, etc. Non-marketing videos are everything else. Tutorials, fails, sports, news, or anything else that does not have the goal of promoting or selling a product, service, organization or business. Which leads us to the biggest and most important difference between marketing and non-marketing videos: the goal.
Non-marketing videos want views, likes and shares. Marketing videos want conversions of viewers into customers, either directly or indirectly. According to Carla Marshall, managing editor of ReelSEO, the 3 biggest roadblocks to video marketing success within a company’s culture are:
- “I want everyone to see it, make it viral!” – This approach screams a complete disregard for audience targeting and segmentation. It forces you to create content that “speaks to everyone” which ultimately leads to content that effectively engages no one.
- “More views, more likes!” – Vanity metrics are often a direct result of roadblock #1 and are more than likely keeping you away from quality content to meet the overwhelming needs for more video. Less quantity and more quality is a far more effective strategy.
- “Make sure they fully understand the value we’re offering” – Focusing exclusively on your company, regardless of how great the product or service is, is a fantastic way of isolating your audience. The customer doesn’t really care, they need to know what’s in it for them.
Read the full article, How to Smash the Corporate Barriers to Video Marketing Success, and be sure to check out the of video of Sourabh Kothari, Senior Manager of Rich Media Marketing at Cisco, and Peter Angus Medlock, Creative Strategist and Video & Media Manager at Grainger, at last month’s ReelSummit, where he gave attendees an insight into starting this cultural revolution within your company, in their closing keynote presentation; “Is Your Company’s Culture Killing your Video Marketing Potential?“.
