Guest post by: Shauna Stacy, Hummingbird Media, LLC
The latest AZIMA meeting featured a presentation titled “Lights, Camera, YouTube: Converting Video to Sales.” Presenter Rami Kalla, the owner of Tempe-based Point in Time Studios, offered an overview of the opportunities of using online video, shared a number of success stories from businesses who have chosen to capitalize on them, and spoke on the basics of the popular site YouTube.
To start, Rami shared a number of statistics regarding online video. One of the most impressive: Customers are 64 to 85% more likely to purchase a product or service after watching a video. Previous speaker, Jon Wolske of Zappos, indicated the same affect in March 2012 when he discussed the positive impact of adding videos of products on Zappos.com.
Video also appears in 70% of top online search returns. This means that creating video content for your product or service, and making it easy for prospects to find, could dramatically boost your online visibility and conversion if done well. Rami continued with a brief history of online video, emphasizing top video site YouTube. In addition to being the top video site, with 800 million unique monthly visitors, YouTube is a critical piece of the Google suite, and – ultimately – a big piece of the SEO puzzle.
Those planning to jump into online video were urged to do the following:
- Focus less on the elusive viral video and more on your audience. Where are they searching? What do they want to know?
- Focus on quality over quantity.
- Realize that quality does not always mean exorbitant cost, and vice versa.
- Start small and build from there.
The presentation also included a demonstration of the Will It Blend? and Swagger Wagon videos. They make for fun research, if you have a few minutes to spare. Finally, he dove more deeply into YouTube specifics, including earned versus paid media, keyword and SEO basics, Adwords for Video, and conversion analytics. Like other forms of online content, there is no magic, single step to creating success in online video. Once you build a baseline, and take the first step, you can continuously improve with evaluation and persistence. You just have to take the first step.