Stop for a moment to think about the dream marketing vehicle for your organization.
In your mind’s eye, this medium would deliver engaging, interactive content. It would be cheap to produce, easy to target and offer ample ways to measure impact on business performance.
That description just happens to match the profile of online video. Lurking as a business communications venue for more than a decade, Web video is gaining momentum as a viable alternative for organizations looking to deliver messages to outside partners, customers and prospects in engaging ways.
Certainly, online video is gaining more and more credibility as a viable marketing tool. In a survey of 1,002 executives conducted last year by Interactive Media Strategies, 64 percent of respondents said that their organization would expand the use of video on their corporate Web sites through the year. And the biggest gain in corporate adoption for specific applications can is uses of video in external communications applications, such as marketing presentations.
So, chances are good that – if your organization is not already experimenting with how to you online video in outbound communications – then you are already behind.
That’s because incorporating video in corporate marketing is not a simple matter of posting a television commercial to YouTube. Rather, gaining competitive advantage requires an understanding of the varied ways that online video can be effectively leveraged in external communications. And you can’t understand the possible uses of online video in marketing if you don’t develop an understanding of the varied types of software applications that are being developed to optimize the implementation of video in external Web communications.
This is an area of the business video market that is moving at light speed. Advances in content management, viewership analytics, social media and other areas are transforming how and why companies are leveraging online video to develop an edge on their rivals.
Organizations like AT&T and Office Depot, for instance, are leveraging emerging tools that automate the process of creating videos by pulling information from product databases to create video animations that deliver customer information in an engaging way. Long-time video pioneers like Oracle, meanwhile are leveraging online video to deliver relevant marketing content to key target audiences.
The issue of online video in marketing communications will be a key theme addressed at the Business Video Expo to be held at the Miami Beach Convention Center February 1 to February 3. At the conference, industry leaders will be discussing trends in automated video development, social media integration and key trends in online video adoption. For more information on the conference and the marketing-oriented panels that will be part of the show, please visit the Business Video Expo 2012 site at business-video.tmcnet.com
Steven Vonder Haar is Research Director of Interactive Media Strategies and can be reached at Svonder@InteractiveMediaStrategies.com
