At a recent event with Business Wire and MediaMobz, panelist Joe Chernov, Global Director of Communications & Social Media at Eloqua, spoke about recent trends deemphasizing viral video.

When online video was initially gaining popularity among businesses, companies spent a lot of time, money, and effort in hopes of making their video(s) viral. Although this success is great for spreading the company’s name, it doesn’t leave much of a measurable, long-term impact when you look past the thousands or millions of views. An earlier survey of the audience at the event indicated that companies today are using online video as a tool for many additional purposes, including sales, PR, and even support. This switch from a viral focus to more practical applications in the business world is refreshing to see. Online video can be adapted and manipulated for purposes far beyond a YouTube trend; the faster companies realize this and take advantage of its versatility, the better.

Video is penetrating B2B at increasingly faster rates; annual video adoption statistics suggest a 20 percent increase each year. At a recent event with Business Wire and MediaMobz we asked audience members some quick questions on how many people use online video from casual viewing to PR, sales and support. Watch this video to see how they responded…

As you saw, we asked the 120 audience members about their experience watching video and 85% of them have recently watched a video as part of evaluating a product or service for purchase.  Following that, we heard about % of video usage by function including Marketing, PR, Sales, and Support.  Check out the %’s in the video…

If you thought the growth in video usage is a fluke, check out the following chart from Forrester:

As you can see, 49% of B2B Marketers expect to use more video within their digital marketing tactics in 2010.  Other statistics in the powerpoint available here support similar trends in increased budget spend on video spend as well.

What do you think about these findings? Agree/disagree? Have an experience to share?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/newsbiepix/ / CC BY 2.0

If you were not among the standing-room-only crowd in Waltham yesterday, you missed a great panel discussion with Tim Bradbury, American City Business Journals; Joe Chernov, Eloqua; Judy Gern, Constant Contact; David Meerman Scott, best-selling author; and Dave Toole of MEDIAmobz.  Our own Cliff Pollan moderated the session.

The event, sponsored by VisibleGains, Business Wire and MEDIAmobz, and graciously hosted by Constant Contact, generated many insights about the use of video. In fact, there was so much valuable content that we’ll likely explore topics in more detail in upcoming blog posts.  For now, however, we wanted to recap some of the important observations from the event in the hopes that it will spark ongoing dialogue.

Here are seven things you’ll want to know right away:

Video is no longer a novelty; it’s a necessity. 100% of those in attendance have watched a business-related video. If you’re trying to sell to any of the more than 100 attendees who were in the room (or companies like them), video would be a great tool.

Video is the new literacy.  According to Dave Toole from MEDIAmobz, “we’re just seeing the beginning” of video storytelling. Brands are using it for new product introductions, customer testimonials and to capture real people using their products.

Video has proven power down the marketing funnel. David Meerman Scott underscored the ability for video to drive higher conversion numbers. It’s not just an awareness-builder, it’s a lead generator and sales closer.

Prospects who consume video convert at higher rates. Judy Gern from Constant Contact shared her company’s experience with video, revealing that prospects who consume video become customers at a much higher rate.

A company of authors is a boon for SEO. Joe Chernov from Eloqua said companies should encourage more content contribution, especially optimized video. More authors, including video subjects, within your company means stronger search performance.

Soon everyone will be video “talent.” Cliff Pollan predicts that someday soon “we’ll all be talent.” At one point we all learned Powerpoint to communicate.  Soon we’ll all learn to communicate better through video.

Video is key to the future of news distribution. Tim Bradbury and his team at American City Business Journals encourage businesses to add video to news they distribute. Joe Chernov agreed, providing the staggering metric that companies that embed video into their press releases get a whopping 500% more views.

There you have it, seven nuggets to ponder right away. We knew this panel would be interesting, but we had no idea how eager marketers are to incorporate video into the mix and how successfully many are already doing so.

To see more of the commentary during and after the event, please check out this hashtag on Twitter: #bwvidevent.

Yes, this is a plug, but it’s an important one. Yesterday we announced an important partnership for our growing company. While we continue to preach how easily and cost-effectively you can produce video, we realize that some companies could still benefit from professional guidance and/or extra arms and legs, at least early on.

As of today, our clients in the U.S., Europe and Asia can outsource the production of their video-enabled marketing apps, including event promotion, customer testimonials and product/service demos, to MEDIAmobz, a marketplace for creative services, particularly video production. Once you contact us (or them) you’ll immediately be matched with a team from their global network of video producers and you’ll be off and running. Video in less than 24 hours has never been easier.

To learn more about our partnership with MEDIAmobz and discover why they are such a strong global partner, please see the press release we jointly issued yesterday

Also, please don’t’ forget our upcoming Business Wire event on April 27 in Boston where MEDIAmobz will provide examples of how video-enabled marketing apps can be beneficial to your business. You can learn more about that event here.

Did we hit our top three messages hard enough? Did we include enough mentions of our brand and/or product name? These are often among the first few questions marketers ask as they review a near-finished video.  But are they THE most important criteria for judging the conversion potential for video? We don’t think so.

If you want your video to convert, it must first engage, at least long enough for the prospect to receive your call to action or offer. And the more personal a video feels to the prospect, the greater the likelihood of engagement. So, does this mean your messages and brand/product mentions aren’t important.  Certainly not, but it does mean that if you fail to create a personal connection and engagement, those messages and mentions will likely go in one ear and out the other.

So how do you make a video more personal and engaging? After all, you’re only shooting one video, right?  Wrong, you should think about shooting multiple videos (very short segments) that, when stitched together, create a branching experience that will appeal to (feel personal to) multiple personas.  This doesn’t have to be highly complex or technical and can often be accomplished with some thoughtful up-front scripting and shot planning.

To get you started, here are three tips for creating more personal and engaging video:

Speak directly to your buyers – all of them. When you’re on a sales call, you don’t talk about IT infrastructure to the non-technical end user. Instead, you appeal to them by discussing their problem and how, in simple terms, your solution can solve it. When you shoot your video, create an inventory of short video segments that appeal to as many of the key constituents in an organization you’re hoping to convert.

Let the user control the experience. Once you’ve built an inventory of segments that will appeal to various viewer types, make it easy for them to control the experience. Non-linear branching, enabled by simple on-screen interactivity, accepts user input and gives the viewer a much more personal experience.

Create a social experience. Today, buyers are learning the ways of social media, which means they are accustomed to engaging with your brand and your employees in multiple ways. It’s how they validate their potential decision. So give them clickable elements on and around the video that allow them to fully engage. This could include links to supporting content online and links to social media profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. The more they connect with you and the person in the video the more personal the experience will feel to them.

In the end, messages are important, but meaning (to each potential online prospect) is even more important. By creating a more personal, interactive experience – one that mirrors a conversation instead of a mass market commercial – you’ll turn you video into a powerful conversion engine that pulls prospects all the way through to your offer and, ultimately, the sale.

To read about other tips for using video to convert online visitors to leads, please download our eBook, Best Practices for Using Video to Convert Visitors to Leads, here.

And be sure to come back to our blog for more tips and tricks.

Click here for a video intro to the event

Can online video turn press releases into SEO gold? We don’t have an answer to that question. At least not yet. But with your help – and an esteemed group of experts – we’re hoping to get closer to understanding the role that video will play in the press release of the future.

On April 27, we’re hosting an event with Business Wire and MediaMobz entitled Combining SEO and Video to Drive Awareness and Lead Generation Online. You can watch a video intro for the event or learn more here and, if you’re in Boston, we encourage you to attend. At its core, the event is designed for marketing and communications professionals who are looking for innovative ways to generate new business leads. If that sounds like you, please come.

If you can’t attend, we’d still like to represent you at the event. Cliff Pollan, our CEO, is moderating the panel, and he’d welcome your questions, concerns and opinions in advance. What would you ask Tim Bradbury about his print media enterprise or David Meerman Scott about his recent book? How about asking Judy Gern from Constant Contact about ways video plays into their strategy or Joe Chernov from Eloqua about ways to link all this to marketing automation?

If you’d like Cliff to pose a question or broach a particular topic, please add it as a comment to this post.

As the event invite explains, unique content such as video has tremendous power to attract and convert new leads online. Because video is SEO-friendly and dynamic, many companies are using it to help generate and convert leads. But many companies still have questions that range from concerns about cost to the real conversion value. The event will address some of these questions and provide best practices for effectively using video and SEO in the press releases you distribute, whether it’s via a wire or in some other way.

We hope you’ll join us on April 27 or that you’ll send along some questions and insights for Cliff.

One question we often get is “why do I need anything besides You Tube for my video?”  With the phenomenal success of You Tube, this is a natural reaction.  As with most marketing questions, however, the right answer really depends on your specific goals.

Digital marketers generally have three high-level goals  – create awareness, engage prospects and convert visitors to leads.  The good news is that video can dramatically increase your results in all three areas.

You Tube is a great channel for achieving the first goal – it’s built for generating awareness.  Millions of people go to You Tube to look for relevant videos. Posting your videos to You Tube is an easy, inexpensive way to be discovered.

But engaging and converting prospects requires a more considered approach. Digital marketers typically spend a great deal of time and money to attract visitors to their websites, as well as optimizing that experience for conversion. To maximize your investment, you want your video content to be a vital part of that overall experience and conversion process.  Keeping prospects engaged on your site gives you more time and opportunity to convert them.

If, on the other hand, you send those hard-earned prospects off to You Tube, you may risk degrading their experience and lose everything you’ve already gained.  Yes, they see your video, but they’re no longer on your site, and you have lost control of their experience.  The prospect is now open to presentation of irrelevant content or, even worse, to content from competitors.

Once a prospect reaches your site, your goal should be to give them an experience that is tuned to their needs and enables them to easily take action that converts them from a suspect to a lead.   At a basic level, this requires interactivity and integrated calls to action.

Finally, whenever you do engage prospects on your site, you want to measure those interactions so you can constantly tune your efforts and programs to maximize conversion. Leading marketers are now successfully integrating their overall tracking and individual user actions within marketing automation (e.g., Eloqua, Unica, HubSpot, Marketo) and sales automation (Salesforce.com) systems. This ensures that the process of creating awareness, engaging prospects and converting visitors is properly executed and measured from start to finish.

Conversion is Key!

MediaPost’s Jack Loechner reported yesterday that 64% of respondents in the GetResponse “2010 Email Marketing Trends Study” didn’t use video emails last year, but plan to use in 2010. Wow, that’s quite a swing. Many will attribute this to general popularity of video, including the continue explosion of YouTube, but the real reason for such a dramatic shift is that video converts. More than 65% of marketers in the GetResponse study believe that video email marketing can have a moderate to significant impact on conversion. That’s impressive.

So how will marketers use video? What stuck out to us was practical application of video for product demos, customer testimonials and product offers. As we’ve been building what we call “video-enabled marketing apps” alongside our customers, we’ve repeatedly seen specific applications like this – what we call “apps,” emerging as important conversion drivers that are being added on to traditional marketing campaigns. Along these lines, we’re also seeing demand for apps that promote events (such as webinars), new content (such as white papers) and new products.

Interest in using video to improve conversion through traditional digital marketing tactics – as well as exploring new frontiers – is why we’re working to create pre-configured apps that step customers through the process of shooting video, adding interactivity (which the GetResponse study doesn’t mention, but we see as critical) and getting the app ready for email distribution and/or uploading to a landing page.

The GetResponse study comes as no surprise to us, but we love seeing metrics that support the value of video for business.

Everyday I get to engage with marketers discussing how to best create apps for use on their websites to convert more site visitors.  In our case those apps leverage video.  In general they are all intrigued by the opportunity but terrified at the prospect of creating (or being in) video content and potential cost.

Their concerns are based on their perception and experience in producing traditional business formal video content.  Those were the corporate videos that cost ten of thousands of dollars to produce, requiring outside crews and very expensive equipment.

 All content must be authentic and engaging.  That is what converts visitors.  Business formal content is like going to the office in a suit.  Most places moved to business casual in the 90’s and it is time for video content to do the same.  This business casual content is easily produced on small high definition capable cameras (Cisco Flip, Kodak Zi8) that are simple to use and cost $150 to purchase.  The quality is terrific.

Here is an example of business casual video content from a recent webinar promotion – http://www.visiblegains.com/steve-garfield

Yes, the first time you are on camera can be a source of anxiety.  But it is like riding a bike or learning to give your first presentation to a room of people.  Pretty quickly you get comfortable.

Today, when visitors see this business casual content they find it genuine and engaging.  The results are excellent. It becomes easy to produce and clients establish their own rhythm.

So, make the investment of $150 in a camera and try it. You may also want to get a copy of Steve Garfield’s book - www.stevegarfield.com/getseen.            

I’m always looking out for great uses of video at B2B companies that help to create awareness, showcase company culture, educate prospects and customers, or generate leads. When you see a great video experience that really feels right, there always seems to be a person or two inside the organization that gets it. The “it” I’m referring to is not just the basics of shooting, editing and producing video, but the creative ways that video can enhance the branding, marketing, and culture of a company.

After discovering the “Awareness, Inc. 2010 Kickoff Video”, I found their internal video champion in Marketing & Communications Manager, Christine Major. I had the pleasure of chatting with Christine to see what she’s doing to create a video culture at the company.

Matt: How long have you been creating video and how did you get started?
Christine: I’ve only been working with video for a year now since 2009 SXSW. I was inspired by Steve Garfield’s video montage “27 People, One Question“, so I thought it would be fun to capture attendee’s thoughts about the show in just two words (Watch the video). I brought my Kodak Zi6 camera with me and just started filming. The people at SXSW saw the video I produced and liked it so much, they wanted to use it on their blog.

Matt: Did you have any video training? Where do you go for help?
Christine: I had no formal training. I’m just doing it by trial and error. I look to Steve Garfield as my mentor. He’s given me some great advice on choosing a good camera to start with, shooting the right way, lighting, sound, and editing techniques.

Matt: Did you think a year ago that you would be doing so much with video in your job?
Christine: No, not at all. It’s been a lot of fun to be able to do it for work now. I’m learning more as I go. Everyone likes video, it’s that rich content that everyone is interested in. It’s always more effective than a 500 word blog post. Personally, I get more out of watching a short video than reading about it.

Matt: What are you doing to get video ingrained in the Awareness culture?
Christine: I bring my camera with me everywhere I go, as there are so many opportunities to capture some great footage with employees, customers and partners. If I shoot a video Q&A with someone, I then write a blog post around it, with my take on the discussion. I’m editing a video testimonial right now that I recently shot.

Matt: What have others in your organization said about your video work?
Christine: I’ve gotten kudos from our founder who’s hearing a lot of comments from people saying that Awareness looks like a fun place to work.

Matt: How much time do you usually spend on producing a video?
Christine: The Awareness 2010 Kickoff video took about 4 hours of time to produce. I’m kind of picky and I had to find and upload a lot of the pictures, so collecting content was time consuming. I was thinking about using Animoto, but because I was incorporating video, I ended up using iMovie.

Matt: How do you get people to watch the videos?
Christine: They go on my blog. What’s great about that is that it feeds right into the Awareness blog. I’ll throw it out on Twitter and get people to see it. I typically put it on YouTube, but since it can’t take anything more than 10 minutes, I opened up an account with BlipTV. I haven’t yet used something like TubeMogul to distribute it widely, but the more channels we can get it out to, the greater the benefit.

Matt: As a marketer, what would you like to see related to video usage?
Christine: For us it’s more of an awareness thing and we can’t see where people drop off. I always like to see what I’m doing wrong. It would also be beneficial to see how many leads were drawn from the video and how much buzz it’s generating.

Matt: Looking out a year from now, what improvements do you hope to make with your B2B video initiatives?
Christine: I hope to have a really streamlined process for creating, editing and distributing video. One other initiative is to do a live web show. We do live webinars every other week and would like to supplement those with a live show with guests. Tracking video views to leads would be fantastic. It’s all about driving traffic and leads to our site.