Online Video Marketing is drastically changing the way businesses are generating new leads and customers online. Until recently, businesses who used any form of online marketing, primarily relied on their websites and possibly posts to their social media sites to generate new customers. Savvy businesses hired an expert in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to get their sites ranked on page one of Google, where prospective customers would then find them based on targeted keyword searches.

However, as YouTube has become the second largest search engine on the web with over one billion registered users, the online video tide has changed the way consumers obtain information. The majority of consumers today have broadband Internet access and are used to watching entertainment content on demand through services such as Netflix and Hulu. As a result, a large percent of the content that consumers access online is now video based.

According to Cisco, online video currently accounts for over 75% of all Internet content and this number continues to grow. In an average week, 94% of consumers will view an online video, and when a sample group was surveyed, most agreed that by watching a product or service focused online video, it had a big influence on their purchasing decisions.

This is great news from a marketing perspective! Online video marketing allows businesses to provide the most compelling and persuasive information to their prospective customers in the shortest amount of time. It is also the most successful electronic medium to building relationships.

The brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than the time it takes to process text. Customer retention rates after viewing a website are only around the 10% range, while video provides a retention rate of greater than 50%.

In a study of 280 marketing, sales, and business professionals published in September 2015 by Ascend2, nearly all found that online video marketing was a successful medium for promoting their businesses. According to this group, one of the most cost effective videos to produce is the company profile video, which provides a short overview of what the business does and what it can offer to prospective customers.

Companies and service providers are starting to realize that by having a video profile, they can create a much higher level of credibility and trust for a prospective customer compared with anything that customer will read on their website. Businesses that utilize online video marketing, report sales increases of over 25%!

How Can Online Video Marketing Bring You More Customers?

You may have the most compelling profile video, but if you are not delivering it to a targeted audience at the point that they are searching for your product or service, it is like having a great billboard in the middle of the dessert with no traffic driving by to see it. Since most consumers today are viewing videos on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms, to successfully generate new business, your video needs to be on these platforms too. Instead of thinking that prospects will watch your video on your website, you need to understand that your video should be used as a lead magnet to generate traffic TO YOUR SITE.

Since Google owns YouTube, it gives preferential treatment to online videos that are optimized for relevant keywords on the Google search results page. Not only does this allow you to rank higher on the page, but a video result is also displayed with a video thumbnail, which generates over 42% more click-throughs than a regular webpage result.

Where most businesses fumble is when they get the click-through to their website or online video, they expect the consumer to immediately make a purchase or book an appointment. The reality is that when most consumers land on a Google search results page, they are there primarily for one thing — to do RESEARCH and not to make a purchase or appointment yet.

It takes an average of seven to ten times for a consumer to see a repeated message for them to make a purchasing decision. This is the reason why we see television ads over and over again, because eventually, those of us that are inclined to purchase the product will do so. Therefore, the primary objective of the profile video should be to generate a lead, not make a sale or get a new customer. Once you have the lead, then with a systematic approach over time, using an email or text marketing campaign, you can generate new business.

So, if you want to generate new customers on a monthly basis for your business, you need to incorporate a keyword optimized online video marketing campaign into your marketing mix. Do this and you’ll have the competitive advantage!

Laurence Nathanson is an Internet Marketing expert in San Francisco and runs Imagination
Media, an online video marketing and customer acquisition agency. To find out more, visit www.imagination.media or call/email as follows: 415-940-7500 / laurence@imagination.media