Brand is a much discussed topic, and many businesses spend lots of money to develop and build their brand. Increasingly, they are using online video to do this. Traditional TV advertising has been replaced by viral online video, which spread from social network sites to video websites likes YouTube.
Millions of pounds are spent on developing online video campaigns as well as making the videos themselves. Almost regardless of sector and the demographic of the target audience, internet video marketing is playing an increasingly important role.
All of this is great news for smaller businesses. Even without budgets the size of the GDP of a small South American country, SMEs and entrepreneurs can benefit from changing consumer behaviour and lowering video production costs and use online video to build their brand.
By investing so much in online video, larger brands have changed customer habits. Potential customers are not just expecting online video they actually spend increasing amounts of time watching them. Clients don't want to have to read through pages of dense website copy when a two minute video can deliver all the product information they need at the click of the button.
By investing in online video, small businesses can develop their brand personality. It might be the personality of the owner or the whole team; regardless, it moves the business away from an anonymous organisation in a competitive market to a business run by real identifiable people – trustworthy, personable and knowledgeable.
What you brand ‘look' like will depend on the organisation, the market sector and the target audience. You're online video might be jokey and informal, or authoritarian and direct.
And your brand is not just your online video – it will include everything from how your shop looks to how you answer the phones. You need to make all these things connect – if customers who expect an experienced customer-focussed brand because of your use of online video are then sent poor quality products or cannot get through to customer services, all your brand building has been a waste of money.
Whilst statistics show people are spending more time watching online video, the message is very slow to reach smaller businesses, whose websites continue to be very text heavy and largely anonymous. Another benefit for businesses of larger brands continued investment in online video is that production costs continue to fall. The cost of producing an effective web video is now less than producing a DM leaflet campaign – and far better for long term brand building.
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