Online Marketing: A User's Manual

Chapter 6

Video Marketing

INTRODUCTION

As a marketer, you want to be where the eyeballs are, and those eyeballs are increasingly turning to online video in one form or another. But whether you’re targeting YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo, Hulu, or somewhere else, it’s important to acknowledge that the list is huge and keeps on growing. According to YouTube’s own fact sheet,

“People are watching 2 billion videos a day on YouTube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.”

And as the Videonuze noted last summer, online video viewing during traditional prime-time television hours is up to over 62 million viewers in the US. Nothing to sneeze at, and a sure indication that people are watching online video during their leisure time. Add that to the consistently growing daytime viewing numbers.

Of course, “online video” is a broad category. There are different ways to use video, and how you choose to go about it has a lot to do with what your goals are and what you are trying to accomplish. What people tend to think of first when they think of online video is viral videos. This can be a great guerrilla marketing strategy, if building buzz for something new is what you want to do.

But not everyone needs a viral video. If you have a site with specific products, using video to show that product in action will give your ...