Engage, Entertain, Elevate: Use Online Video to Your Advantage

Consider the Competition
What are your competitors doing with online video? Video blogs, demonstration videos on microsites, customer-submitted how-tos or testimonials? Take a close look at your competitors and peers before creating your own plan.

Test your Tactics
Before creating an online demo for every product in your arsenal, test the concept. Survey your customers and prospects to understand their propensity to view online video. Do they distrust downloading files? What type of demonstration content will help them most? How much time will they invest in watching your video? By testing and then evaluating results, you'll have the information you need to create a long-term plan and larger-scale rollout.

Combine Copy & Visuals
Online videos don't have to be limited exclusively to video footage. High quality, visually impactful images can easily support your objectives and messages. Don't forget to guide your viewers through your video with simple on-screen text to drive home your key messages. Conclude your piece with a strong call-to-action and contact information. Embed a link to your online contact information to make it available at any point during the video. Put thought into how you name/title your video as well. This will have a huge impact in encouraging your audiences to click, download and view.

Prolifically Promote Your videos - whether virally submitted, sourced from a third party or produced internally, need careful consideration when it comes to where you'll make them available to your audiences. Your Web site is an obvious opportunity, but you can showcase and share your videos in a variety of ways:

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• Posting to third-party social marketing and video sharing sites
• Sharing with media relations contacts
• Enhancing e-mail marketing campaigns
• Sharing within Intranets and Portals
• Posting to company and third party blogs
• Submitting to industry trade publications
• Incorporating into campaign-specific microsites
• Displaying at industry functions
• Making available to sales staff, dealers/distributors via PDA

Offline promotions along with search engine optimization and search engine marketing can play an important role in ensuring your target audiences are able to find your videos no matter where you've made them available online.

Who's doing what online with video? Take a look at these note-worthy efforts:

• General Mills is out with a marketing campaign to reinvigorate its Chex Cereal Party Mix, which includes an online sweepstakes, videos and recipes. Visitors to www.chex.com/Recipes can access five, 15-minute microwavable Chex Party Mix recipes. They can also watch online video featuring lifestyle-cooking expert and campaign spokesperson Katie Lee Joel. In each, Joel teaches people to make the recipes and offers entertaining tips.
• Gardner Bender has made safety priority number one with its new line of voltage-sensing Circuit Alert hand tools. A publicity campaign is driving electrical professionals and do-it-yourselfers to the brand-dedicated CircuitAlert.com site where visitors can see and hear the unique products beep and flash when near a live wire or outlet is live. The video demonstrates how the products work and emphasizes how important safety is when working on electrical projects. See the demo at: www.circuitalert.com/demo_video
• Fox News Channel has created an outlet for election-related video segments on YouTube, aiming to cultivate an eclectic audience of Web surfers and build viewership for its TV programming. See it at http://www.youtube.com/foxnewselectionhq
• A video-sharing site designed specifically for K-12 students and educators, SchoolWAX, is a general online help tool for working with homework. It includes resources for language arts, math, science, social studies, and world languages, broken down by grade level (elementary, middle school and high school). Check it out at http://schoolwax.com/
• The Discovery Channel's "Mythbusters" series is challenging the YouTube community to submit viral videos about myths they'd like to see busted on the popular cable TV series. Submit your myth to Adam and Jamie at http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=290018A7BF3DC8FB
• Google will add video to its paid business edition of Google Apps, opening up a whole new category of online video: internal corporate video sharing. Customers pay for communication and collaboration tools and can upload videos of up to 300 MB, with no time-length restrictions, for a total of 3GB per account and unlimited video views. Learn more at http://newteevee.com/2008/09/01/google-launches-video-sharing-for-business/

And…Action!

Okay, you're convinced…but now what?

You need a PLAN. What are your objectives? Who is your target audience? What are your competitors doing? What challenges might you face? Where will the footage come from? What's your budget? What are your key messages? How will you promote it? What will you ask your viewers to do after watching it? How will you track your visitors' actions? How will you know if your video endeavor is a success? So many questions to be answered before you forge ahead.

But, planning is well worth your time. A proactive plan will ensure your video is interesting and relevant to your audiences; and guarantee you are reaching those people. Strategic planning will also make sure your video is helpful, credible and leaves your audience wanting to come back to you for more. The bottom line: A well-planned online video initiative will help you get results you can measure and a return on your investment.

Grant A. Johnson (grantj@johnsndirect.com) is the founder and CEO of Johnson Direct.