5 Ways Online Video Can Increase Your Business Revenue

May 31, 2012 by Larry Kless

Businesses today rely on a number of things to help them to advertise their products or services. With real estate, it is all about location. With online businesses, it is all about visibility. In order to engage your website visitors and keep them coming back, you have to give them something that intrigues them. Online video is an excellent way to impress website visitors and keep them coming back for more.

Following is a list of 5 ways that online video can help you to increase your business.

1) Using online video can help you to make consumers more aware of your brand. The first step in increasing your business is to make yourself known. Video is all about making you visible. Creating a video that keeps your audience interested will help to move them through the sales process.

2) Video can also help you to build trust. People typically tend to not do business with people that they do not know. Video will help you to build a relationship with your website visitors and allow them to get to know you, making them much more likely to buy from you.

3) You can also use online video to help you with training. You can train your customers on how to properly use your services or products.

4) Major brands have been using video for some time to increase product sales. Having a video on your site will show your customers that you are serious about your brand and that you care enough about them to give them a better user experience.

5) Finally, you can use video to be in more than one place at the same time. You can send sales associates or executives to trade shows to promote your products without ever having to leave the office. You can save on travel expenses and give your staff more free time to work on other projects at the same time.

Video has been proven to be an effective tool in increasing conversion rates online. You should note however that a bad video is going to do just the opposite. When you decide that it is time to join the major brands in online video, ensure that you are providing your website visitors with a professionally produced video that explains your business message and presents you as an expert in your field.

This article was written by Vidify, specialists in the provision of online video production services at a national level. Visit them at vidify.co.uk today.

How Can a Small Business Get ROI From Video?

December 14, 2011 by Larry Kless

Guest Post by Neil Davidson, Mywebpresenters

Many small business owners and marketers will have heard the hype surrounding video marketing. This time the hype is also backed up by some compelling figures. According to recent research by Nielson, 26.9 million UK individuals consumed online video in April – that is about 40% of the population.

While that’s all very well, we know that the majority of video ad views will belong to well known brands with deep enough pockets to have a punt at large scale online video without having to batter an eyelid should they not receive a direct return on their investment.
So how about the rest of us? Can a typical small business see verifiable (and direct) results from using video?

What are your aims?

Video is no different to any other marketing channel; it needs to be a working cog that plays its part in achieving the company’s broader goals. For example you may have too slow a process for closing leads due to your product being a high cost product or perhaps there are trust issues in your market so it may be helpful to add customer testimonial videos onto your product pages to help improve your performance in these areas.

Marketo is an example of a business doing customer testimonial videos well.
Alternatively you may have issues with people understanding exactly what your product does and how it can help them.

A good example of a small business doing this well is Harvey Water Softeners they have a number of videos throughout the site that explain how water softeners work and the health benefits of using them.

There are also plenty of businesses who have used video to achieve their goals more effectively. Take the Khan academy for instance: they have revolutionized education meaning that children all around the world can learn at their own pace, support others who need help and get help from others who are already clear on certain subjects: Here is an overview video from TED’s YouTube channel.

Our specialty is using video Web Presenters and we find that these are possibly the type of video that carry the lowest costs in production and are the easiest to get up and running quickly.
To give you an example with figures: The National IT Learning Centre increased the website bookings for their courses by 35% through the use of the web presenter video which you can see on their homepage above.

So, initially you must define where you are as a business and what your current short to mid term goals are, then once clear determine if video can or cannot play a part in helping you to achieve those goals. I am of course biased but I would be happy to take the challenge of finding a practical way for any business owner to use video effectively to achieve their business goals.

Video is simply a medium for communication and because it helps to visually rather than textually convey your message it is generally effective as many people respond well to visual explanations.

Set Targets

Once you are clear on your aims for video production and marketing you should set yourself some clear targets that will measure how close you come to achieving your aims.
In the first example above where I talked about video testimonials there may be 2 measurements that you could use:

lead to sale conversion time lag shortening
increase in the number of leads

Whereas for the second example it is more likely to be a clear-cut matter of the number of additional leads gained versus costs of the video production. It is worth taking into account that the videos will probably be good for a few years use in both cases. An additional measurement in both cases could be site conversion rate.

Keep it Real

Whatever type of video that you are producing it is important that you speak from the heart, insincerity (bullshit) is easier to spot on a persons face or in the tone of their voice than it is in text.
Your pride in your business needs to come across, of course not in an arrogant way but in a passionate way. If you are excited about the things that your business is doing and are obviously keen to share it with others then the response you will receive is likely to be positive.

If you are producing customer testimonial type videos then give your customers a short list of possible points to cover that will really get them talking, e.g.

What advise would you give to other potential users of this product in hindsight?

Use natural language that suits you, do not try to be the person you think your customers want to see, just be confident in yourself that you have something worthwhile to share and be yourself.

What results can be expected?

We have produced video for a wide range of different businesses and have seen many positive results and some not so great results.
The difference between success and failure usually comes down to the strategy behind the video production and use. If there is a clear aim and this is being fulfilled by the videos well then they usually work.

Obviously not a small business but Virgin Holidays managed to increase the upsell of their upper class seats by 30% due to a single web presenter video. This resulted in an additional £4 million in revenue for Virgin.

As mentioned above The National IT Learning Centre increased the website bookings for their courses by 35% and many more small businesses have had similar results.

Bespoke (personalized or tailored) web presenter videos vary in price depending on the complexity but start at £597. Many companies offer cheaper, off the shelf options for less. Sitepal for example offer avatar style videos for less than £50. In fact we have also trialled generic web presenter type videos but found that the response rates to the generic rather than bespoke videos were disappointing so are now focusing solely on improving the efficiency of our bespoke video services.

About the author
This post was written by Neil Davidson, CEO of Mywebpresenters who are a video production company specializing in corporate video for the web. They are also the pioneers of video web presenters technology. If you would like to have a conversation about how to tell your corporate story then please email Neil at [email protected].

Video Editing on the Cheap

December 12, 2011 by Larry Kless

You don’t need expensive video editing software to tell your story, as Jonathan Wylie of PC World, points out in his recent article, How to Edit Video on the Cheap | PCWorld. Wylie says, “Buying the latest, greatest high-def camcorder or Digital SLR camera can be expensive, but the software you use to edit your footage doesn’t have to be. A number of free or low-cost video editors do a very respectable job of prepping your home movies for sharing with friends, family, or the rest of the world.”

Wylie shared these four options to edit your video on the cheap:

Windows Live Movie Maker – “Microsoft’s Movie Maker has been available at no charge for years, but the latest Windows Live version is a very respectable video editor. In addition to the usual basic editing tools, Microsoft Movie Maker lets you add video themes, music, titles, and credits–and apply a few transitions, some pan and zoom effects, and various visual-effect filters. You can publish finished projects to Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube, or export them to your hard drive in 1080p HD or any of a range of other resolutions. If you’ve invested in a great HD camcorder and you’re editing on a budget, Windows Live Movie Maker is a great tool to start with.”
Video Spin – “Pinnacle’s Video Spin is another smart choice if you’re on a tight budget. You can download it for free and take advantage of Video Spin’s straightforward interface to edit video quickly and efficiently. You can split, trim, or combine movies, and add transitions, text, and even a soundtrack. Not all features are free forever, though. After 15 days, you’ll have to buy different codec packs (for around $15 each) to continue editing certain video formats.”
Serif MoviePlus Starter – “Serif launched MoviePlus Starter as a free version of one of its more advanced video editors. The Starter edition is far from the most full-featured video-editing software you can buy, but it’ll do the job unless you’re looking to edit a blockbuster movie. You can use MoviePlus Starter to insert fades, wipes, and transitions, as well as to fiddle with captions, titles, and credits. You can experiment with a “picture in picture” effect, add three (or fewer) video or audio tracks at once, and edit your video content quickly and easily. Beginners will love the built-in help system and the simple drag-and-drop interface.”
YouTube – “Editing video online might not be an ideal scenario, but if you’re already in the habit of uploading lots of clips to YouTube, you may find it easier to do your editing with YouTube’s own online video editor. The new YouTube editor lets you trim the beginnings and ends of videos, and adjust the brightness, contrast, and color to your taste. The editor includes a video stabilization feature to help reduce the shakiness of handheld footage, and it has 14 style effects like black-and-white and sepia. Once you’ve finished editing, the YouTube editor’s software makes posting your projects to your YouTube account and sharing them with others very easy.”

Wylie left out iMovie, the obvious choice for Mac users video editing application that ships free with all Apple computers. iMovie ’11 has all the same features as the rest of these applications and has an easy learning curve once you get comfortable with the interface.

Is there a cheap video editing software that you can suggest? Let us know in the comment section of this post.

Pre-production: 10 Exercises To Consider (before touching a camera) For Best Video Results

July 20, 2011 by Larry Kless

Guest Post by Seth Kenvin, Market7

Working with video as a medium is cool. Professionals take pride in mastering crafts of shooting, editing, imparting effects. People from outside the field who occasionally participate by commissioning production, appearing on-screen or weighing in on direction of projects also get gratified as rich content comes together. This blog is full of enticing advice about picking cameras, achieving right light and sound levels, and transcoding. But some of the most important work for making great video can happen before any of those considerations. Like stretching before sports, like taking vitamins before breakfast: aspects of careful pre-production may be dull but are often essential for great video results.

In fact, without the right sort of pre-production in advance, a fun project with cool content seeming to be heading towards a hit deliverable can become suddenly derailed with realization of some oversight: the most important decision maker was never consulted about what to emphasize, getting verbose content to fit within allotted running time necessitates an editing hack job, the featured product does not appear because nobody had responsibility to bring it to the set.

Some aspects of pre-production can be as fun as working with video gear and video content, some can be drudgery, but all can be essential for a production’s success, so consider the following list (appropriate as lists are constants during pre-production) and which exercises are vital for your project.

1) Review, discuss, revise, approve: Not a singular step, these are

constants throughout pre-production, and post-production too for that matter. Video projects are multi-handed, multi-staged, and multimedia and it’s rare that some single perspective on how to do something can’t benefit from someone else’s viewpoint. So, for each of the nine following steps, remember to circulate to stakeholders, consider their inputs, resolve differences, and continuously improve for best outcome.

2) Treatments: Video production is ultimately a creative process, even though aspects of pre-production are much more logistical, but a creative step up front provides great foundation. Treatments are brainstorming exercises: come up with a handful of ideas, expressed very briefly (a couple sentences &/or a quick sketch) for what’s to be produced and have a team conversation building off of those to get project oriented.

3) Brief: As the high-level concept gels, it’s time to start breaking down details to assure nothing essential is overlooked. What is the key message? When is this due? Who will be in the audience? A creative brief is a question & answer exercise for consensus on these considerations as guidelines to abide throughout production.

4) Schedule, Budget: Knowing constraints up front helps make best decisions and helps stay grounded within realm of possible. The most fundamental constraints are time and money. A good brief may establish when delivery of video is due and how much overall funding is available, then diligent scheduling and budgeting seeks to best pursue priorities while allocating within those factors. How many iterations of script writing can be accomplished before a shoot has to happen? What sort of set can be afforded?

5) Script: On top of the math in scheduling and budgeting, if the production is scripted, writing is required too. Those who like the sizzle of capturing and seeing video may find this part of the process the most dreary. It can be important to have someone involved who thrives on writing. This is another activity to abide by constraints that may be established in the brief: write a script that fits within planned running time (but perhaps long enough to allow for some optimizing edits later). Also, scripts are for video – in addition to dialog, they can describe visuals such as appearances of people, props and sets and the on-camera movements and changes of those.

6) Storyboard: This can be where the process starts to get fun again for those stimulated by visual artistry. Storyboards don’t have to be fancy or time consuming to create. They’re basic depictions of the anticipated look of the video vital for a couple reasons: to assure consistency with the appearance that’s sought, and to guide selection of what to use and how it all should be situated.

7) Cast, crew, location scouting, equipping: Well developed notions of themes, constraints and what a viewer will see and hear, all of which can be established in the steps described above, provides great guidance for final selection of who, what and where are involved in the project. As concepts mature clarity is gained on questions such as what particular specialized skills may be required, whether to source talent through an agency, and if shooting is best in-studio or on-location. Making these decisions at the right time, neither too early nor late, best assures the right people and things to be both in front of and behind camera (including what camera to use) to meet project’s objectives and abide by its constraints.

8) Assign tasks: As the team comes together and the shoot approaches, the volume of details to be addressed can skyrocket and assuring coverage of them can be vital. Video productions are distinctive versus other kinds of creative projects by the shoot representing something of a deadline in the middle of the project – it’s when costs are highest and timing is tightest. If some important preparatory step is overlooked the whole project can be substantially compromised like wrong content being captured or another shooting day having to be scheduled. It isvital to assure, and often to double-check, that all of myriad requirements are being addressed by capable people.

9) Rehearse: This is another case of deference to the time and cost sensitivity during the actual shoot. Too frequently, rent and wages are paid for idle locations, equipment and crew people while the on-screen talent becomes familiar with the lines on the set. Professional actors tend to prepare, although it may be important to establish timing and chemistry if there are several of them. Non-actors appearing on-screen, like a company’s executive spokespeople, are frequently the real problems and in addition to knowing what they’re going to say, they need preparation to speak at compelling pace, volume, pronunciation and inflection, and to appear with good posture and looking in right direction, and to be relaxed. Time coaching and practicing with them in advance can reduce one of the biggest variability factors of the shoot.

10) Call sheet: The highly logistical processes of pre-production can kick off with the stylistic exercise of treatments, and likewise the highly stylistic processes of capturing and editing content can be best prepared for with the highly logistical step of circulating a call sheet as culmination of pre-production. Call sheets are in a time-tested (as in decades, probably close to a century) format that condenses the final assurance that people know where to show up, when, how, with what, and answers all the other key question words. For those who haven’t been having fun yet (and I hope this list indicates at least a few cool opportunities along the way of pre-production even to such people), circulation of the call sheet should signal that the really cool stuff’s about to start.

Images courtesy of Videomaker.com

About the Author – Seth Kenvin

Seth Kenvin is CEO and founder of Market7, a provider of web-based software for collaboration in the development and management of creative content. He was previously was VP strategic marketing and corporate development for BigBand Networks from founding through profitability and more than $200 million of revenues. While there, he managed financial transactions, customer and partner relationships, and marketing of the company’s network infrastructure platforms for rising quality, variety and volume of video services. Earlier, Seth was a principal for the VC firm Cedar Funds since its founding as well. Prior experience includes being an associate for the VC firm Venrock Associates, consultant to the software company Check Point Technologies, senior editor for The Red Herring magazine and corporate finance analyst for the high tech group of Bear Stearns. Seth is a dedicated writer who has been a monthly columnist, blogger, by-line contributor to multiple magazines, and author of more than a dozen white papers published and presented at conferences. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering from Cornell and an MBA from Stanford. Seth occasionally quotes Elvis Costello lyrics and scribbles notes about what’s going on in his life at http://twitter.com/sethkenvin.

Vimeo Launches Free Online Video School

December 21, 2010 by Larry Kless

Online video sharing site Vimeo has launched Vimeo Video School, a free online video initiative to help educate people of all skill levels make better videos. Vimeo Video School had been planned for over a year, and includes ‘Video 101’, a series of originally produced videos for beginners that covers step-by-step instructions on choosing the right camera, shooting tips and simple editing techniques. ‘DSLR Basics’ with renowned videographer Philip Bloom, and at the center are the internally-developed Lessons, which are short, simple-to-follow tutorials on a wide range of video-related topics. Basic to advanced Lessons can be found on a broad set of topics and new Lessons will be introduced regularly on the site every week.

Additionally, the Vimeo staff has selected hundreds of user-generated video tutorials created by Vimeo members and organized them into easy-to-find categories. Users can browse through tutorials to find those that best fit their level of experience and areas of interest.

Tutorials categories include:

“Vimeo has an amazing community of members who enjoy sharing their knowledge to help each other reach the next level, whatever that level might be,” explained Dae Mellencamp, General Manager, Vimeo. “With Vimeo Video School we have created a structured extension of what our community members have done for one another for years – teach and share best practices.”

“Vimeo Video School is the next step in our continued commitment to provide a platform for people to learn from and inspire each other,” said Blake Whitman, Director of Community and Product for Vimeo “By aggregating well-produced tutorials made by our members as well as creating light-hearted and informative Lessons ourselves, we are making the process of creating videos easy and fun.”

Video 101 comprises is a 4-part lesson of three videos that help you with: (1) choose a camera is the first step (2) learning shooting Basics (3) Editing basics (4) Editing details, which covers both Mac and PC software.

Video 101: Choosing a Camera from Vimeo Staff on Vimeo.

Learn how to choose the right camera for you. See the full lesson here for more details- vimeo.com/videoschool/lesson/22/video-101-choosing-a-camera

Video 101: Shooting Basics from Vimeo Staff on Vimeo.

Learn the basics of shooting videos. See the lesson here for more details- vimeo.com/videoschool/lesson/32/video-101-editing-basics

Video 101: Editing Basics from Vimeo Staff on Vimeo.

Learn the basics of editing videos. See the lesson here for more details- vimeo.com/videoschool/lesson/32/video-101-editing-basics

Kudos to Vimeo for creating this comprehensive, easy-to-use online video resource to help expand the knowledge base and skills of the online video publishing community!

About Vimeo, LLC

Leading video sharing site Vimeo® provides the easiest way for people to host and share their videos in high quality. The site provides great privacy features and inspiring videos from a vibrant, respectful community of creative users who care about how and where they show their work. Launched in 2004 and headquartered in New York, NY, Vimeo offers users a video sharing experience that is both entertaining and easy to use. Vimeo is a 2010 & 2009 Time Magazine Top 50 Website. Vimeo, LLC is a subsidiary of IAC (Nasdaq: IACI).

Strategies, tips, how to's and best practices for online video publishers

What are your aims?

Set Targets

Keep it Real

What results can be expected?

Online Video Publishing [dot] com by Larry Kless

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