Jason Cronkhite’s Blog

5 Reasons Why Your Company Needs Video Marketing

// June 16th, 2009 // Comments // Video Marketing

For years you have heard about the online video craze.  You have also heard for decades that Television is the most powerful medium for advertising your product or service and generating leads.  Further, you know how expensive buying TV media can be.  Well, I am about to share with you 5 reasons why your company needs to use online video as a marketing tactic.

1. Online Video Is Searchable & Historical

After you spend thousands of dollars producing a TV commercial you have to go out and buy your media placement right?  And, to do this you need to have thousands if not millions depending upon how far and wide you want to distribute the message.

Also consider that after you have spent thousands if not millions on your TV campaign you then have a duration by which your TV spot runs and expires.  Oh, not to mention you have to pay more money if you want to run the commercial again.  Oops, I also forgot to mention that in order to measure the effectiveness of your TV spot you’ll be depending on an archaic metric system — Nielsen Ratings — that really produces a large failure rate yet when you look at the success criteria.  Is the most effective and most expensive of all the traditional marketing media really that effective in terms of ROI?

In contrast, with online video you could spend thousands of dollars on producing your commercial and a few thousand for premium placement on high traffic websites but, you don’t have to!  You also don’t have to pay for media placement when you want to run a spot.  Of the biggest advantages of online video, when you publish it online it becomes a piece of internet history!

Your video is now searchable and on the internet historically.  You no longer have to pay someone to have your spot run in market X for Y number of days - isn’t that cool?

2. Online Video Is Selective Upon Demand

Since your video is now part of the internet forever and searchable when someone is looking for relative content, your video is available to be played on-demand.  This is really important, specifically for the fact that demand driven or opt-in marketing has been invited by the individual - you’re not interrupting the person.  They have given your company permission to market to them.

Since you have been given permission to market, you are more likely to actually sell your product/service to this person.  Or, you could go the traditional route and cast a very expensive net in hopes of getting a few people to respond to your very expensive message.  What sounds more intelligent to you?

3.  Online Video Is Shareable

Ok, so now your prospect or customer wants to tell others about your product or service.  Do you think they can send them a TV commercial via email from the 65″ Plasma?  Well, they could if they watch your video spot on a Web TV and had a shareable video player option. Then, so would their friends, their friends friends and so on.

Customers who become promoters of your product or service, which you want, are  the most powerful marketing medium you could deploy.  And, with online video to go along with their product recommendation you have a very effective marketing strategy in the works.

4.  Online Video Is Immediately Global

Did I mention that once you publish your video online you now are able to reach a global audience?  I just did.

You cannot buy a global TV spot, period.  Ah, but you can produce a global online video spot for FREE if you want and it could be highly effective.

Check out this video commercial on the new iPhone 3G-S:

5.  Online Video Is Measurable & Actionable

Thanks to analytical software offered by companies like Ominture & online services like TubeMogul you can get detailed analysis on who watched the video, where, when, on what type of a computer, type of browser, screen resolution and more.  Most importantly, you can track the user coming to your site or web property to take action that you offered in the video.  Can you do that with TV, direct mail, news paper - no?  I didn’t think so but, if something has changed let me know.

* BONUS * — Your Video is Now Viewable on A Mobile!

With mobile video subscriber expectations to top 534 million by 2014, you have enough time to figure out how to better market your products and services online so you have a better chance at success.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Despite rise in streaming, 99% of all video watched on a TV (arstechnica.com)
• Online Marketing, Internet and the InfoEdge story presented by Hitesh Oberoi (Director & Chief Operating Officer Info Edge (India) Ltd) (slideshare.net)
• YouTube Brands: 5 Outstanding Leaders in YouTube Marketing (mashable.com)
• Viral is really just earned media (sharemarketing.wordpress.com)
• Monetizing YouTube and the Viral Effect (danreich.com)

Video Marketing Is Powerful but How Important Is It?

// May 18th, 2009 // Comments // Video Marketing

Video Marketing Expo

Last week I attended the 1st Video Marketing Expo in Austin, TX which was put on by a couple of good friends and savvy entrepreneurs, Chris Justice & Kelly Shores.  If you are a business that wants to learn and stay on the cutting edge of how to use video marketing I highly recommend that you attend next year.

So, how powerful is video marketing?  Well, you know how powerful TV advertising has been over the years and you know that online video is exploding but why?

With 57% of internet users consuming online video and growing, there is actually a scientific reason why TV and online video commands our attention as consumers.  Backed up by Forrester, Ominture and other scientific sources; video stimulates over 40% of the brains cortex thus commanding in depth attention.  Since video stimulates the human brain so much it is why we love our action-thriller movies, sports on TV and other genres of video based entertainment.  We just can’t get enough video and it’s why video based marketing is one of the most important ways to market.

Wanna see how powerful it is? Watch this commercial for Grasshopper, a telecommunication system for small business owners. Then find out how they could have spread this message further using a unique video syndication system!

Spread Video Far & Wide Online

Grasshopper has done a fabulous job with this video commercial and has done a great job using social media to enable the opportunity for people to spread their message on their website.  How could this message have been spread even further?

If Grasshopper wanted, it could have used TubeMogul to spread their video to several of the most popular video websites.  TubeMogul provides you a single point of distribution by allowing you to upload and distribute your content to some of the most popular video sites.  Here is Brett Wilson, Co-founder and CEO explaining how TubeMogul works.

With that, how important do you think video marketing is now for your business?  I’d love to hear from you.

Video Marketing Expo 2009 - Look out here we come!

// May 12th, 2009 // Comments // Video Marketing

Video Marketing Expo 2009

Yep, I’m headed to the Video Marketing Expo to learn, network and help out my friend Christopher Justice.  Chris is the CEO & Founder of Sparksight and he’s running the whole gig.

VMX should prove to be a show you won’t want to miss.  If you want to connect with me at VMX09 just Tweet Me  @jasoncronkhite or call/text me @ 210.259.3242.

Be sure to watch what not to do below and I’ll see you there.

Churches Overcome Swine Flu With Web Technology

// May 3rd, 2009 // Comments // Video Marketing

Updated Video From Fox 7 Austin

Today I am working with Kulabyte and three local New Braunfels, TX churches broadcast their worship service live online.  Due to local authorities mandating that public schools and community gathering places cancel activities because of the Swine Flu pandemic, Grace Memorial, Oakwood Baptist and Tree of Life churches are able to offer their members service today because of Kulabyte’s innovative live video streaming technology.

I will be posting a recap update about the technology that was used and everything that was involved to put this together but, I have to do some testing right now before the broadcast.

Update:

Ok, so the webcasts went off without a hitch.  The primary webcast I helped produce today was Grace Memorial’s.  The church band and pastors did an amazing job today and the message was very moving.  Pastor Carse talked about the need for greater communication, communication, communication in times like these and valuing what is really important in life.  Since you are reading this now and probably missed the live webcast, I would be happy to get you a DVD of it if you’ll just drop me a note.

We were able to get the Fox affilate from Austin, Fox 7, out to report on the story of how Kulabyte stepped up to help the churches and community in a time of need.  As of this evening, the story has run on the Austin and San Antonio Fox affiliates and a few other stations.

The Technology & Opportunity

To broadcast the event today we used one of Kulabyte’s mobile laptop encoding and streaming machines called a Voyager.  Out to the right you see an image of how the technical workflow goes.  However, what you don’t see by this image is that there were 4 different SD cameras used to capture the service.  The footage was then pushed through the Canopus box and the Voyager, which housed the streaming and encoding software, took the signal and pushed it out to the CDN (Content Distribution Network), which delivered the feed to everyone’s flash players on computers at home.   If you really want more specific technical information feel free to follow this link to Kulabyte’s product page.

Now I know this is not an amazing technological feat as people have been doing live webcasts for years.  What I do think is important here for the context of this blog is that this type of technology and opportunity is available for small and medium size businesses that have a need to communicate a special message and can do so in a unique way that can bring a special kind of awareness to your company.  Further, what you do after such an event can open up some interesting opportunities.  Ok, like what?

Looking Forward

During this broadcast my wife was texting and telling me about friends she was connecting with on Facebook from New Orleans, where she went to high school.  Her dad, Pastor Carse, was about to give a message that many of his previous students would be able to hear live online that would normally never have the ability to attend Grace Memorial church.  The case is the same for Oakwood & Tree of Life, I’ve heard from many members of our church and talking with the other churches how many members families were able to participate in the services.

Let’s also consider that after the event footage from these webcasts are post produced, edited and will be available on YouTube (video to come - check back soon).  Then the messages will get spread throughout the social media sphere to people that have a real interest in receiving and watching the content.

So, if churches can overcome obstacles to get their word out - I’m sure there are opportunities for small businesses to do so as well.

What thoughts, questions or input do you have?