The population of mobile video viewers in the US will grow nearly 30% in 2010 to reach 23.9 million, according to eMarketer’s forecasts. The still represents a reach of only 7.7% of the total population and less than 10% of mobile phone users, but those numbers are set to double by 2013 and increase still further in 2014.

The number of mobile video viewers, which includes people of any age who watch video content on mobile phones through mobile browser, subscriptions, downloads or applications at least once per month, will continue growing in the double digits for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.8% from 2009 through 2014.

“Video is in many ways the most fragmented of the three primary mobile content categories,” said Noah Elkin, eMarketer senior analyst. “Video consumption on mobile phones can take place through various channels, including paid and free applications, mobile websites, pay-per-view downloads and subscriptions through mobile carriers.”

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In October 2009, Eyeblaster reported that creative was the key to more engaging rich media ads. Based on the research firm’s “Online Video Advertising: Doubles Engagement, Boosts ROI” bulletin, video grabs attention and has a lasting impact.

Rich media ads with video had a higher dwell rate than those without, and almost double the dwell time.

This translates to fewer impressions needed for the same results. For example, Eyeblaster found that two exposures to a video ad campaign produced the same dwell rate as three exposures to nonvideo rich media ads.

Unsurprisingly, in-stream banners were most likely to be fully played. They far outpaced the start rate and fully played rate of all other video ad formats.

Other creative decisions also influenced effectiveness. Video ads initiated on rollover performed best, followed by auto-initiated ads. Ads that only began playing when a user clicked did worst.

The performance of video ads also varies according to the content it appears with. Video ads did best when placed next to e-mail, news, finance, sports and music, but fell behind in social network and gaming environments.

The post How Engaging Is Online Video? VERY appeared first on StoryFirst Media Website.

Product Demos

Replacing the initial in-person demo or online meeting presentation keeps your salesforce more available to focus on ripe opportunities. Giving your prospects the opportunity to watch product demos whenever they want, allows them to become better informed more quickly. There’s no need to schedule a time to walk through the same canned demo; prospective customers can watch just what interests them. The result is that prospects will already understand your product during initial sales calls, resulting in more meaningful questions being answered earlier in the process.

Customer Testimonials

Giving a prospect access to a happy customer is one of the most effective ways to gain trust and ultimately close deals, and yet one of the most difficult things to scale. Your customers may love your product but they’ve still go their own job to do and life to live. Interviewing your customers for testimonials on video can help you to harness one of the most effective (and underutilized) marketing and sales techniques.

Cold Calling

Cold calling is a polarizing issue. It draws “w00ts” from those seeing success and “@%!#’s” from almost everybody else. Many companies still use cold calling effectively but it’s at the expense of the 90% of people who never wanted to hear from them in the first place.

Fortunately we’re seeing a positive shift… turning cold calling scripts into video. Taking your message and putting it into a video format allows you to improve the quality of the message, annoy less people, and focus on communicating with those people that are actually interested. The goal of most cold calling is to gauge interest and qualify potential leads. Letting people receive your message when it is convenient for them lowers barriers and makes it easier for the person to demonstrate interest. By tracking what a potential lead watches you can spend more time following up with meaningful conversations and less time playing phone tag.

In Person Training

Keeping your customers, employees, and prospects well educated about your company and products is crucial to keep your business moving forward. When there weren’t technological options, it was common to ask people to fly in from around the country and spend an afternoon learning about all the new whizbang products and services your company has been cooking up. Today, we’re seeing people in the same company, sometimes even the same office opting to educate each other using video instead of meeting in person. Using online video to educate means that there’s no travel to schedule, venue to book, or documents to print out. It allows people to learn on their own time when it fits into their schedule. Just as you knew how many people came to your event, you can track how many (and which) people watched the video to get a sense for the impact.

Help & Support

Providing a solid line of defense for customer support is key to keeping customers happy and prospects engaged. Some customers will tweet questions @you, others while be satisfied with a FAQ or forum, but others want more in-depth explanations. As expectations have shifted we’ve found an increasing number of people expect that they can find the solution to their problem without having to pick up a phone or send an email. This is great, but it puts the onus on you to make sure that you can help answer even the most complex solution to problems on-demand. We’re seeing more and more businesses embracing video to get this job done right. Over time every business will include videos to explain many of their complex processes.

What’s next?

While even a few years ago it would have been a pipe dream to use online video to make all of the above business processes more efficient and scalable, today it’s a reality. As technology advances and high quality video becomes easier and cheaper to produce, what will be the next generation of things in your business to be replaced with video?

Thanks to WISTIA.

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More and more businesses are using video as part of their overall marketing strategies. Once a high barrier to entry due to the sheer expense of video creation, production and marketing, businesses can now launch effective video tactics with just a few thousand dollars.

This also creates a problem. Because it is now so easy to create a video, and the proliferation of video sharing sites such as YouTube (among others) is ever increasing, there are more bad videos available than ever before.

What’s happened is that businesses are continuing to focus on the “technology” and not the core reason why videos are successful – great content and storytelling targeted to a specific customer segment.

If you are considering video as part of your integrated marketing strategy, here are the success factors.

Tell the Story, Not Your Story
Like any valuable, relevant and compelling content you create, a video is not about you, it’s about your customers. This is the biggest challenge for a business to overcome. So many times businesses want to talk about their products and services, or position one of their executives as an expert. That’s all fine and good, but if the video does not meet the informational needs of the individual watching it, it won’t be watched.

The solution is simple. Develop a keen understanding of the customer or prospect group you are targeting. What are their key challenges? What do they need to know to be more productive at work, or live better lives? Why is your message important in the first place?

Once that is established, you can then weave in your marketing objectives into the video content without selling to them. Remember, your goal is not to sell them, but to help develop a conversation with them. Without valuable content, there is no possibility of a conversation.

Forget the One-Timers and Think “Series”
Like any other successful communications program, consistency is the key. Many businesses create video in hopes of that viral one-hit wonder. Really successful business videos build upon each other. Sites like willitblend.com or askaninja.com didn’t just produce one video and sit back. They planned for ongoing and consistent videos with a content plan focused on their target customers.

Share It, Don’t Own It
Just like your brand doesn’t belong to you anymore (it belongs to your customers), treat your videos the same way. Don’t just expect your customers and prospects to only go to your website to view the video. Populate it wherever your customers may be, whether YouTube, Facebook or probably most fitting, the industry media sites and portals in your particular niche. Your goal is for your video to be watched, so that you can change or maintain a behavior. Knowing where your customers are prone to “engage” in your content is key.

Focus on Content over Production Value
The days of six-figure videos are over. Today’s consumers are very accepting of “YouTube quality” video, which are sometimes viewed as more credible and “real” to certain consumer groups. What are your current customers viewing habits? That question will save you a ton in production expenses.

Get Outside Help
When a business owner or sales and marketing department produces video without outside help, there is an uncontrollable urge to actively sell in it. Hire a on-line video content specialist or journalist to give you a third-party view that will help remove the rose-colored glasses.

Video lets customers view, see and hear things not possible with other formats. The technology is great, but it’s the targeted storytelling that will define your success and bring out the “human” side of your company.

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1. Branding and Awareness

2. Interest and Consideration
Prospects at this stage desire more information, including features and benefits that can be demonstrated effectively via on-demand product tours plus customer testimonials and product feature shorts distributed throughout your product Web site. An advantage of the on-demand product tour is the ability to incorporate analytics that tell you which parts of the video get viewed the most-or sped through-so you can see what selling aspects are most and least captivating to the audience.

3. Evaluation
To support prospects at the evaluation stage, marketers can provide longer-form videos that showcase more in-depth product information, again using demonstrations to bring the product to life. Brightcove also finds that case studies presented in video form can be more persuasive in moving prospects along in the purchase process, humanizing the examples in a way that emphasizes the real-world applicability of your product.

The post 3 Ways to Support the B-to-B Sales Cycle With Video appeared first on StoryFirst Media Website.

51% growth expected for online video in next 12 months!

(Note: the study requires name and email to download and the 20-page eBook can be downloaded here).

Here are the highlights from the 189 marketing professionals that took the study:

Beliefs about Content Marketing

* 93% of marketing professionals create or plan to create content marketing as part of their overall programs in the next year. The take: We are all publishers now.
* Almost 67% of marketers believe that the content they produce can have the same or more value than a traditional media company. 8 out of 10 believe they can create content as engaging as media companies. The take: Brands have access to some of the best writing talent in their industries today versus years’ past, so this makes sense (although the number is a bit higher than we expected. Marketers we’ve talked with on this don’t really “believe” they can do this without proper coaxing.)

Measurement

* Marketers believe content marketing is 18 times more effective in actually determining ROI than traditional advertising (74% to 4%). The take: Wow! But, this makes more sense when you look further at their marketing objectives. Since most are heavily relying on lead generation, this seems right since content drives lead generation programs. Still, amazingly high number.
* 70% of marketers are spending more on content marketing over the last three years. The take: this is consistent with our findings last December that found a 56% increase in content marketing spending in 2009 alone.

Content Where?

* Top tactics where content marketing is spent: Email marketing, Corporate web site, Social media.
* Where will the money be going next year: Online video and podcasts, White papers/eBooks, Social media.

How to use this report?

If you need research and statistics in order to get buy-in from your executive team for content marketing, this will be incredibly helpful. There are a lot more stats in here than the ones I included, so download the entire eBook report here.

Thanks to King Fish and Junta42 for putting this together.

The post Content Marketing / Custom Publishing Research – Marketers Telling the Story appeared first on StoryFirst Media Website.