Marketing Via Video

Marketing via Video...



Using streaming videos in the internet as a form of marketing is a relatively new approach. Currently, most marketing brochures and newsletters are using text and pictures in combination to attract a consumer’s attention. Some pictures are a combination of still and animated objects to better the chances of attracting a prospective customer. But, if there is anything advertisers and consumers have learned about marketing, television advertisements are still the best way to attract attention for a product and keep it in the consumer’s memory.

To fully understand why internet streaming videos are the next step in online marketing, we need to be able to grasp the objective of advertisers and the effects of the different methods of advertising.

To begin with, online advertising began mainly with newsletters in the form of emails or pop-up screens containing pure text and some inanimate pictures. As internet users became more and more accustomed to surfing the WWW, these newsletters and pop-up advertisements gradually turned into annoyances. Marketing newsletters started to look like junk mail and pop-up screens became similar to billboard advertisements that you see everyday. Also, pop-up screens disturbs the rhythm of internet surfing. There you are browsing away when you see a link or article which you decide to follow or read. Just as you are about to click on it or just as you are in the middle of reading it, the pop-up appears and displaces your current browser window behind it.

In short, these common forms of advertising soon became major annoyances in most cases that anti virus software developers soon added anti pop-up features in their products thereby drastically reducing the number of consumers that these pop-ups were able to reach. To add emphasis to the drive against pop-up advertising windows, Mozilla developed a built-in anti-pop up utility into their web browser, Firefox. Just as the pop-window is about to open, Firefox immediately denies the opening of this new browser window. Nowadays, I rarely see pop-up screens on my computer when I browse the WWW.

As far as email newsletters and advertisements are concerned, a similar phenomenon is occurring where they have suddenly evolved into what is known as junk mail or spam mail in internet language. Again, anti-virus protection software creators incorporated spam mail protection within their software while numerous sites in the internet make available free, downloadable anti-spam software. The biggest blow to spam mail marketing was when e-mail providers decided to add anti-spam or spam blocking utilities in their website. As a result of these measures against pop-ups and spam messaging, an avenue in internet marketing is about to close.

This is where streaming video comes in. It is undisputed that television commercials are still the best way to attract attention. The advertiser needs to make the product look good in TV, but their primary objective is to attract the consumer’s attention. Their second goal is to make the video memorable enough so that the customer remembers the brand name when they have need of the product. The most famous brand names like Marlboro succeeded in their advertising campaign videos so much so that people still remember the Marlboro man. In this advertisement, the first thing you see are wild horses running. This is quite an attention drawer since lots of people like horses even when they haven’t seen one in person.

The main advantage of videos is their ability to instill curiosity in a person. An apt demonstration of this ability is when people are seen stopping at display windows of stores that have television displays in them. When you see a moving picture, you are immediately interested in what it is all about and what will happen next. Even if you don’t stop in front of the display, you will spare a glance or two. The uncanny part is this, in the instant that you see people gathered in front of something you haven’t seen yet, you will take time to look to satisfy your curiosity. However, if that display happens to be in your own neighborhood, you will gradually get accustomed to it and begin to ignore it.

This is the strength of internet marketing through streaming videos. It immediately grabs attention. The only thing that you as an advertiser have to do is to make the video interesting enough that it maintains or improves on that initial level of interest. When the video is old enough to become common place, you replace it with a new one. Unlike pop-ups or spam messages or newsletters, they cannot become an annoyance because the first thing it does is to grab the consumer’s attention and curiosity.

With the use of videos, the consumer gets a clear picture of what your product or idea is all about. This is an added bonus to the attention grabbing feature of using videos for your marketing or advertising campaigns. When a consumer knows what you and your product are all about, they can begin to trust you. After all, having the trust of your customer’s is better than the bottom line. A trusting customer is one who will patronize all your product lines. As good as your advertising video is, it is still the quality of your product that matters in the end.

To your success, Michael Thomas

P.S. To make a video interesting enough, try to place some humor and social relevance into them. You also need to make your customers feel a need or craving for your product. This is especially true for entrepreneurs who wish to create a niche for their product line. A good video advertisement will pull in people more than newsletters, pop-up windows or spam messages will.