Six Reasons Videos That Aren’t Viral Are Valuable

August 4th, 2009

When people
talk about online video they typically talk about videos like this one,
the Minnesota wedding entrance choreographed to the Chris Brown ballad
Forever.

The video was published July 19, and it already has over 15 millions views.

That’s
what you call a viral video. It’s the stuff marketers dream of — 15
million people reached with no money spent on distribution or
production. Businesses that achieve that kind of reach profit
enormously. If you have any doubts, checkout what it did to Forever’s itunes
sales.

Of course, the chances of your company
creating a video that reaches 19 million people in three weeks are
essentially zero. It’s not going to happen, so don’t bother.

Most
marketers understand that truly viral videos are almost impossible to
create — and they use this as a reason to abandon video altogether.

That’s a mistake.

Video
doesn’t need to be viral to have an impact on your business. In fact,
any robust inbound marketing content strategy should include a video
component, designed with assumption that none of the videos will “go
viral.” Instead, businesses should put time into video for at least six
other reasons:

(1) Video Gives Your Company Voice – It’s one
thing to read a paragraph about a company, but it’s a completely
different thing to spend four minutes listening to a company’s founder
explain the vision and purpose of the company. Video adds a personal
dimension to company websites, which are typically heavy on impersonal
text.

(2) Videos Are Marketing Anuities — Like a blog post,
videos are anuitites; once you’ve published your
video and it passes its intial burst of traffic, you’ll continue to get traffic and banding value indefinitely.

(3) Videos Build Company Culture — Videos are fun and they show
that your company can have fun. They serve as morale builders within the
company, and recruiting tools outside the company.

(4) Video Is
Another Channel for Your Content — Effective inbound marketing content
strategies need to be executed in multiple media types. Some forms of
information are best communicated in blog posts; some in photos or
graphics; some in webinars; others in video. If you’re not using or
even experimenting with any of one these channels, you’re missing
potential customers.

(5) Videos Are Easier to Produce Than You
Think – If your company is in a content mindset, videos will be easy to produce. Don’t get
sucked into production details. Just plan the video, schedule time to shoot it, and make sure the shooting doesn’t drag on. It doesn’t need to be perfect.

(6) More Video, More Likely to Have a Big Success — Just
like venture capital or movie production, online
marketing video is porfolio business. No successful movie
studio bets their year on a single film. They spread their resources
across multiple films, and hope they’ll get one money-maker out of
their portfolio. You should approach your marketing videos the same way.

Does your company use video for marketing? Why? What else should be on this list?
Webinar: How to Use Online Video for Marketing