Let’s get to some influential numbers…

• A recent eMarketer survey of the US online video landscape predicts that the volume of US video audience will climb up to 190 million by 2012 – That is approximately 88% of the entire online audience
• A much older poll by Prospectiv (2006) estimated that almost 85% of US travelers utilized internet for research
• Online Video Ads are now consumed and trusted in almost equal measure as the TV Ads
• Even Wall Street Journal is backing up its words that online Video is fast becoming the most effective online format for marketing
• A number of other reliable polls and surveys are in consensus that “Streaming video delivers nearly three times higher brand awareness and message association, and more than 100% higher purchase intent and online ad awareness than non-rich media ads.”

Afri-Tech Nairobi 2011

A recent jump in the viewership and registration for the Afri-Tech Nairobi 2011 drives the point home. The inclusion of the speaker’s videos on the Afri-Tech website (www.afri-tech.com) saw a jump of more than 65% in the viewership & a spike of more than 30% in the registrations.

Reasons for success

Democracy is the doorway to freedom, but unregulated democracy is chaos –and that sums up the ‘freedom of expression’ on the web. Content repurposing, unlimited duplication, mechanical content simulation – In one word ‘Spam’ is still the second nature of the web and text based content is the most abused of all the formats. While realizing the challenge of ‘authenticating the authentic content’, Google had pushed the paddle on the ‘universal search’ mechanism somewhere in 2008. This was aimed at serving the needs of the right content in the right way. The most promising part of the universal search pattern is that all the content formats have the level playing field – So, if you have an optimized video for your resort in Bermuda, then it has the same statistical probability to rank up in the search engine results as does a well researched article on the same report.

That speaks volumes about the credibility and craving for online videos in general – both from a search engine’s angle as well as a customer’s view.

Some of the pioneers of the travel industry were also the early adopters of travel videos. Thomas Cook, Kuoni and Thomson were convinced of the persuasive powers of the online videos and made this marketing tool an integral part of their customer relationship strategy, and the results have been trailblazing to say the least.

Market reception & reaction

Market is an intelligent creature and seldom gives an ear unless there is lucre at the end of the tunnel. Videos have captured the imagination of not only the viewers, but also the search engines, and that is not fortuitous. Google controls the traffic flow and business sentiments of online shoppers for almost 90% of the global transactions, and if there is not enough reason for videos to have gained dramatic prominence in the online searches, then we can stop the argument by just mentioning that the video mogul ‘YouTube’ is owned by Google – So, the second most popular search engine in the world is now coupled with the most popular search engine – That’s a heady combination for any marketer who thinks on his feet.

Let’s get to some influential numbers…

• A recent eMarketer survey of the US online video landscape predicts that the volume of US video audience will climb up to 190 million by 2012 – That is approximately 88% of the entire online audience
• A much older poll by Prospectiv (2006) estimated that almost 85% of US travelers utilized internet for research
• Online Video Ads are now consumed and trusted in almost equal measure as the TV Ads
• Even Wall Street Journal is backing up its words that online Video is fast becoming the most effective online format for marketing
• A number of other reliable polls and surveys are in consensus that “Streaming video delivers nearly three times higher brand awareness and message association, and more than 100% higher purchase intent and online ad awareness than non-rich media ads.”

Reasons for success

Democracy is the doorway to freedom, but unregulated democracy is chaos –and that sums up the ‘freedom of expression’ on the web. Content repurposing, unlimited duplication, mechanical content simulation – In one word ‘Spam’ is still the second nature of the web and text based content is the most abused of all the formats. While realizing the challenge of ‘authenticating the authentic content’, Google had pushed the paddle on the ‘universal search’ mechanism somewhere in 2008. This was aimed at serving the needs of the right content in the right way. The most promising part of the universal search pattern is that all the content formats have the level playing field – So, if you have an optimized video for your resort in Bermuda, then it has the same statistical probability to rank up in the search engine results as does a well researched article on the same report.

That speaks volumes about the new found confidence in travel videos and online videos in general – both from a search engine’s angle as well as a customer’s view.

It is now statistically proven that professional videos make more than a lasting impression, and that  customer persuasion is maximized when videos are utilized to market a product, resort, hotel or the Tour Packages. Travel industry market dynamics have been metamorphosed by the sophisticated use of Videos at every stage of the marketing cycle. One of the major impacts of video marketing has been on the smaller players in hospitality segment – With zero distribution costs, these operators are now jostling for the market pie with established leaders, and also making their mark with intelligent video marketing.

Online video revolution gathered momentum in the early days of 2004 and by the last quarter of 2005, two significant events changed the online video landscape forever – The summer of 2005 saw Apple launch a video podcasting aggregator in iTunes and by the year-end Tivo started streaming online video content to its boxes. 2006 belonged to YouTube with Multi-format streaming and broadcasting – enabling the online video to get into the mainstream web. The deal which dwarfed everything else on the web was the acquisition of YouTube by Google in October for $1.65 billion. By the end of 2009, YouTube was getting more than a billion streams per day and Hulu (being a late entrant) was almost garnering a billion streams per month.

Travel industry videos – early adopters

According to TIA conducted research – Video attracts more than 30% more viewers; These visitors stay almost 40% longer on your website and the conversion potential is almost 30% greater as compared to a text-based website. A visual experience is always a superior persuasion tool as compared to a text based pitch, and when it comes to the hospitality segment, nothing comes closer to the first-hand visual experience. The urge to explore lies at the core of a traveler’s mindset and very few things motivate a traveler more than a compelling video. Your prospective guests are hooked on to your resort even before they have arrived, and this fact is corroborated by the statistics – almost 60% of customers prefer Web Sites that feature video and customers are up to 70% more likely to book activities, hotels, packages and attractions shown in a video experience.

Some of the pioneers of the travel industry were also the early adopters of travel videos. Thomas Cook, Kuoni and Thomson were convinced of the persuasive powers of the online videos and made this marketing tool an integral part of their customer relationship strategy, and the results have been trailblazing to say the least.

Online video channels – Splashing it on the scene

According to Comscore, almost 15 billion clips were streamed through YouTube alone in the month of May. While 145 million unique visitors arrived on YouTube during this experimentation period, the average consumption volume was around 102 videos during this month (in US alone). This translates into a low figure of 43.1 as YouTube’s (or Google’s) online Video market share.

Available within US, Hulu (streaming movies) is the closest competitor of Google with 3.5% of market share. Microsoft grabbed 1.9% with 642,000 videos viewed in May, followed by Vevo, Viacom, Yahoo, CBS Interactive, Turner, and Fox Interactive, each with around 1%.

Keeping aside the undisputed benefits of video proliferation over the targeted networks, the major obstacle for online marketers is consistent creation of quality videos and further engaging the potential customers with the video. As many marketing division would secretly reveal that it is indeed a demanding task to consistently churn out high-engagement videos. Sears Holding (K-Mart), while understanding the twin importance of quality video marketing as well as the engagement of the customer community, adopted a unique and unorthodox approach towards video based persuasion – By launching BillionPoints.

What is BillionPoints.com?

This is a KMart-Customer managed site which accepts 45 seconds videos describing the best way to spend the 1 billion cuctomer points. This site came into existence after Sears decided to publish consumer generated videos and aimed at promoting its ‘Shop your way rewards program’.  “The contest is a fun way to engage our more than 17 million members while also giving them the opportunity to help others,” says Scott Freidheim, executive vice president, operating and support businesses. That’s one of the most effective examples of customer engagement in the online video arena. The online video that receives the highest number of votes will be adjudged the official winner in Fall 2010. While the winner keeps the 50%, the rest of it goes to various charities selected by the winner.

“Rebuilding Together is thrilled to be one of Sears’ chosen charities for this exciting, national campaign,” said Gary A. Officer, President and CEO of Rebuilding Together. “This campaign highlights the great philanthropic philosophy Sears Holdings embraces through countless employee-volunteer hours and millions of dollars it donates each year to important causes, such as Rebuilding Together.   This is a great way for Americans to get involved, win a great prize, and support their favorite cause simultaneously.”

Why read, when you can witness? Last year surely has been the year for video marketing. What with more You Tube views than Google’s searches, video marketing is a more lucrative assignment. Finding ways and means to ensure that your video will not be lost in the crowd is what SEO would now be looking for. You do not expect to put together a video and hope it would generate business for you. You sure can add on a welcome video, a virtual tour, or a helpful tutorial video to your website, and use this as a riveting factor to compliment your content and your attractive web design. Expecting your videos to open up vistas all by themselves will require some innovative, creative and fresh approaches, which will now have to be accepted as a new challenge.

How You Make the Most from Your Video Presentation

There are some things to be kept in mind, and, which will come helpful for optimizing your video content to its’ full potential online. You can always be the first, and that definitely amounts to a very good start. Your competitors may just like to follow.

• Embed your videos and share – You will definitely benefit by sharing your videos with an embeddable feature. Whether you are having viral videos, trailers, or informative video clips, embedded videos is an advanced feature, and will come useful in time.
• Make sure to use the best format – There are a number of video formats available for you to choose from.  You can have FLV, MP4, AVI, and others if you want; but, make sure to use the most popular, as this will help you make it easier while editing and viewing.
• Make use of all available accurate tracking tools – What use are these videos if you cannot find out how they help you? Moreover, how would you be able to effectively optimize without understanding an angle that needs to improve upon? You would only be able to better your access and progress by measuring your performance and the impact each video can  create on your online presence.
• Video SEO will come useful – Your video is 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of a search result in comparison to your text pages. Make sure to utilize tags and keywords because these help you make your videos all the more visible.
• Consistency eventually pays – If you are planning on integrating plenty of videos onto your website, see that when put together, they are able to give a very reliable image. Never confuse the visitors or promise them a moon that is not there.

Multi-media content will enhance your capacity to make some deep impact. As it is, we have been using images since a long time to assist our textual content make more sense, so also videos can integrate into design and generate a better sense if and when properly applied.