A Digital World
In our modern world of digital entertainment and online obsession, browsers possess a growing supply of knowledge and information, available night and day at the touch of a button, 'on demand'.
Businesses are now realizing that the best way to source new products and services is through digital media, as it's an instantaneous source of research. Recent research has suggested that we now use the world wide web to research products or services before commiting to buy for the vast majority of our purchases; in fact over 90%.
Online marketing spend has just tipped the scales and overtaken print. Something experts expected to happen but not quite this early, with the rise of online tools to make marketing your company quick and easy, and what is more important, cost effectively.
With this increase in online advertising brings competition. Competition in terms of companies dreaming up new and inventive ways to engage an audience, and with digital media, almost anything is possible. The Search Engines
Despite focusing a large amount of time into organic search algorithms, the online giants such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook are constantly developing their paid search products which see consistent growth. This growth in demand has lead to a growth in the 'cost per click' bids in many markets to above 5. This may not at first sight seem like much, but it can quickly become expensive if you are paying for lots of visits to your site but not seeing the necessary conversion of these visitors into sales or enquiries, resulting in a poor ROI.
So what else is available through digital media? Well, Apple have just launched a great service in the US called 'iAD', which enables an advertiser to promote their products and services directly to mobile technology, namely your iPhone or iPad, using the new HTML5 code. This code allows the browser to receive advertising in a number of exciting formats, from video through to animation. But, it's not available here yet and if we do not see some similar competition, prices to advertise will be very high.The YouTube Black Hole
Which leads me onto video. Video is often seen as expensive, time consuming and hard to get right. Most people wrongly assume that obtaining a promotional video will be as expensive as producing a TV Advert, and associate this activity with large corporate withs huge TV advertising budgets. But this is not the case. Video for web is growing at an extraordinary speed. Take YouTube for example. Statistics show that between 150,000 and 200,000 videos are added to YouTube every day. The UK being the 2nd highest at 6.9% of global uploads behind the US at 34.5%. It is an astonishing fact that it would take you over 400 years to view all the content on YouTube alone, but this proves a point, that video is the new boy in town.
But (and there's a huge 'but') this is not the case for businesses. Uploading a video to YouTube does not necessarily mean your video will get viewed and if it is viewed it will not necessarily be viewed by your target audience. We often have clients who ask us to produce them a video for the web, and when we ask what they intend to do with it other than place it on their website, they usually respond by saying that they will add it to YouTube. Just think about those figures above regarding uploads per day and it doesn't take a genius to work out that their video will get swallowed up with the other 150,000 or so others that were uploaded that day. In fact the most successful videos are associated with tags such as 'sexy', 'funny' and 'music'.
So the question you are all thinking is probably, "is YouTube good for business"? My answer is a resounding 'Yes' - but only if your video is highly creative and is able to capture an audience, preferably one that matches your target segments.Becoming Viral
That takes me forward onto 'viral'. Viral Video is a term that is often used very loosely, and many people just think of any video published online as a viral video. "We want a viral video" is something else we hear quite often. Now here's the thing, something has to BECOME viral. If somebody passes your content from one person to another by way of a digital device, or talks about your content via the web, your content has become viral. But creating a successful viral campaign relies on a number of factors, and most of which hang around 'hard work' or 'big budgets'.
Most of you probably have a Facebook or Linked in account. You no doubt have a number of friends or contacts, probably in the hundreds, on these social media networking platforms - and it seems these days that there is an unspoken competition going on for who has the most social network friends! How many of you have received an invite from someone you knew back at school, but you never spoke to them then, so why should you now, and after 20 years? But here's my point, your friends have 300 'friends', they all have 300 'friends' and so on. Soon you get into some pretty big numbers. Now, let's say you get a video produced and you ask your 300 'friends' to pass it on to their 300 'friends' and you start to get something viral, and all it's cost you is the production. This is great if you are selling most consumables, but what about 'business to business'. Well, here it gets a little harder.The Seed
There are companies out there that offer 'viral seeding'. This basically means that they will guarantee that your video for the web gets a certain amount of views. There are two types of seeding. Firstly, 'Natural Seeding', which is similar to what I described above using Facebook. The second is through 'Media Placement'. This you can do yourself or employ an agency or specialist in viral seeding.
Now here's where you need to be careful. Contracting an agency to do any kind of marketing can have it's risks. These are mainly based around an understanding of your offering and its target audience. Viral Seeding companies tend not to be industry specific and will therefore take on any job. This can be very costly and sometimes quite damaging to a brand. The third option is to contract a digital/advertising agency and make sure they have an understanding of you and your requirements. They will be able to offer you options one and two, but add to that a myriad of targeted media solutions that are quantifiable and results driven.
You can also view the following blog for further information : Viral Video Marketing
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