The word among marketers for quite awhile has been that online video represents a significant opportunity for brands to deliver content in a format that consumers actively seek. In other words, online video presents the opportunity to connect with consumers and engage them in branded experiences that they might not have access to elsewhere.
Still not sure if online video should be part of your brand’s marketing strategy? Consider the numbers for a moment by reviewing the chart from Nielsen below.
According to this chart, Google’s YouTube is by far the dominant player in the online video channel. In the United States alone, over 100 million unique viewers watched nearly 6 billion online video streams in February 2010. Clearly, people are watching online videos! However, YouTube is a crowded and cluttered site. How do you get noticed on YouTube against the viral sneezing kitten and Justin Bieber fan videos uploaded by teenage girls?
The key to getting noticed is not relying entirely on your online video destination to grow your video audience. Online video should be an integrated part of your broader social media marketing strategy. Yes, online video is an effective form of social media marketing when you create share-worthy videos and actually allow people to link to, embed, email and share your videos with their own audiences via blogs, Twitter, social networking, and so on. Even your offline marketing should be integrated with your social media marketing and online video efforts.
As an example, Samsung created a unique marketing initiative that tied into the 2009 Super Bowl — one of the biggest annual sporting events in the United States — where consumers were invited to create their own videos explaining how they enjoy watching the Big Game. The campaign leveraged traditional advertising as well as social media marketing with online videos, fan voting for the winning video, and more.
In other words, if you create an online video and publish it to YouTube, that doesn’t mean consumers will find it, watch it, or share it. Your job as a marketer is to drive the audience to your online videos by creating integrated marketing efforts and creating amazing content that people actually want to see.
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
