Video marketing is a crucial weapon in your Internet marketing arsenal. Using video marketing, whether it is a simple voice over narration of slides, a photo montage set to music, or full video, is far more effective than any other means of marketing. Now that Google owns YouTube, Google searches routinely return video results, and Google users have the option of performing video-only searches. Most video searches are done within the YouTube platform itself, however, making it the #2 search engine.

Video has impact

How much more impact does one minute of video have, compared to a purely text blog or article? According to Forrester Research, you would have to write 1,800,000 words, or the average of 3,600 web pages, to achieve the same impact as a single minute of video. Now, imagine that you created 5, 10, 100 videos – how many millions of words would that be worth?

It does take longer to script, shoot, and edit a video  than it does to write a blog or article. But it does not take 3,600 times longer. So you are still achieving higher impact with less effort.

People watch video

Search engine statistics firm comScore estimates that over 45% of Internet users watch at least one video every month. This is similar to the publishing industry’s definition of a reader as someone who reads at least one book a year. It’s an estimate of the total market share, not a number that is helpful when planning your marketing impact.

To gauge the impact of your videos, consider comScore’s other number – that more than 100 million people watch at least one video every day. And these video views are not just the latest viral video of people doing painful or stupid things, adorable children or babies, or cute kittens. Instead, these are people who are looking to buy things. 90% of shoppers on major retail sites find video demonstrations of products to be helpful when making buying decisions.  Moreover, of those people who did watch a video demonstration of a product, about 65% more purchase the demonstrated product than when no video was seen.

Video marketing goes beyond product demonstrations. According to the Online Publishers Association, 80% of website visitors recall viewing video marketing within the last 30 days, with 46% taking action as a result of the ad, including 12% purchasing the item.

Video reaches businesses

If you’re marketing business-to-business rather than business-to-consumer, video is even more powerful. According to Forbes, 75% of executives watch at least one video a week, and 65% go on to visit the marketer’s website after watching a video. About half go on to make business purchases after viewing video ads. Moreover, 59% of senior executives prefer to watch a video as opposed to reading text.

Thanks!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Managing Director

The Internet Marketing Academy

http://internetmarketingacademy.com

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