Website video is rapidly increasing in popularity as a major online advertising medium. Any online business needs to invest time and money into creating an effective advertising campaign. In the early days of the Internet there were so few websites that advertising seemed laughable as an idea. Today people are certainly not laughing when it comes to promoting a product or service amongst the many millions of other web sites businesses competing with you. There are many different ways in which this promotion can take place, the newest and most exciting of all being the concept of website video embedded into your online presence.
A website video is not going to miraculously turn around an almost invisible online presence within a few days, but as with any form of advertising it should be used as part of a planned marketing campaign which helps draw on all of the different strengths from the various forms of advertising which you choose to use.
The first challenge is simply to ensure that people discover your website. There are ways in which this can be encouraged through advertising in the real world, for example, through the publicity of your website address on television, radio, posters and so forth. If, like so many other businesses with an online presence, you are solely and entirely a virtual business, whose presence is completely within the bounds of the Internet and the World Wide Web, then it is important to consider how you are going to encourage potential customers to arrive at your website, so that they have a chance to view your website video.
Almost certainly one of the techniques you will use will be to maximize the relevance and popularity of your website, so that it rises up through the ranks of Google’s search results pages, hopefully appearing on the first page. It is a fairly widely known fact that of all people who search using Google, 97% of people never look beyond the first page of results. There is no point spending a great amount of time and effort creating a fabulous website video that can’t fail to convert a visit into a sale, if nobody ever discovers your website exists because you’re on page two, or worse, of Google’s lists.
Using hundreds or thousands of words to maximize the relevance of your website will help you achieve first page ranking with Google, but words alone are unlikely to convince many visitors to purchase your product or service. Website visitors are often referred to as surfers, and since those surfers who enjoy their watersports rarely find themselves staying motionless in one place for very long at a time, so Internet surfers tend to be extremely fickle, with short attention spans, and itchy fingers ready to click on to the next website.
It is said that a picture can paint a thousand words, and almost certainly your website will include images, photographs, diagrams and even graphs to show the value that your product or service can offer. Similarly you may also use images as part of your advertising campaign, having graphical and even animated banner advertisements published on various other web sites and blogs. Visual adverts may well help to encourage visitors to view your site, and once they have arrived at your website, a few well-placed images can make a great deal of difference.
But it is impossible to escape the fact that even two or three very clear images cannot convey everything that you want to say to your potential customers, and you will have to accept that a great deal of significant information will be left out from these images. Relying on your visitors to read all of the text provided on the page may well be unwise. This is why having a website video can make the difference between a sale, and surfer riding the next wave all the way to your competitor’s website.
A website video is able to actively engage with the visitor in a way which no textual image can possibly achieve. An online video is able to cram into 30 seconds, or a minute, far more than your potential customer would have taken on board in five minutes left to browse your website on their own. Additionally, having your own website video allows you to put a real face to your product or service, which helps to create a sense of trust and honesty that is more likely to result in a sale.
Of course there are many ways in which a website video or online marketing campaign can shoot itself in the foot, most particularly by you publishing a 10 or 15 minute video which takes them an hour and a half to download if they don’t have broadband, and is likely to bore them to tears and frustration. Your marketing video needs to be short, snappy and above all relevant and exciting.
