LawyersVideoStudio.com and YourOnlineTVchannel.com Partner to Offer a “Total Online Video Solution” for Attorneys
Gerry Oginski, recognized as one of the Country’s foremost authorities on the effective use of Online Video for attorneys and Founder of LawyersVideoStudio.com has joined forces with YourOnlineTVchannel.com to offer an affordable, turn-key consultation, production, optimization and distribution solution for the legal marketplace.
Oginski… a practicing New York Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice Attorney who is also an experienced Video Producer states that this venture “provides an opportunity for law practices and legal marketers to benefit from the undeniable power of Online Video done right!” I currently get over 75% of my new clients using the strategies developed over the last 3 years.” “Our goal is to show attorneys how easy it is to embrace this effective, new marketing solution by providing the training, techniques and technology that leads to more calls, clicks and clients.”
YourOnlineTVchannel.com, a division of HB Production Group pairs affordable Online Video Production solutions with the leading professional online delivery system for business and organizations. “The combination of Gerry’s real-world, practical expertise and the unique content creation and delivery approach of YourOnlineTVchannel.com provides savvy attorneys and legal marketers an alternative to the typical me-too approach to the marketing of virtually any law practice” says Harry Brockman President of HB Production Group
To learn more visit www.lawyersvideostudio.tv. or call 1-877-789-9163
About Gerry Oginski:
Mr. Oginski has conceptualized, produced and edited over 300 educational online videos on New York medical malpractice, wrongful death and personal injury law. His videos help online viewers understand this area of Law in the State of New York. Over 300.000 video views, 4 books and hundreds of Blog posts and articles to his credit, Gerry’s popular websites www.oginski-law.com consistently comes up #1 in the organic search results when you do a Google search for “New York Medical Malpractice Lawyer”. Naturally his videos often dominate YouTube search results as well. He has been quoted by the NY times, the Wall Street Journal, the American Bar Association, and Law.com. see www.lawyersvideostudio.com
About Harry Brockman:
As founder of HB Production Group , Mr. Brockman has been delivering professional marketing media to a global client base for over 15 years. Specializing in compelling viewers to action through the use of Creative-Digital-Persuasion, HB Production Group is an innovative production and marketing company that applies over 20 years of expertise to produce powerful, highly successful media that promotes products and services to a mass audience. Our productions have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales for our clients worldwide. YourOnlineTVchannel.com draws on that expertise to provide effective premium online video content and distribution solutions.
Introducing YourOnlineTVchannel.com!
This site is a culmination of over two years of work… over that time we have strived to put together a product that marries what are too often perceived as two different disciplines… The Production of effective and engaging On-line Video and the creation of internet video distribution channels or what we call Online TV or Video Channels.
In essence YourOnlineTVchannel.com is the combination of our over 25 years of experience in calling viewers to action by crafting video that stimulates a response with the expertise in the design and use of Online Video Player Platforms to better reach these viewers.
We understand that ultimately what Marketing your business is all about is in the end…EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
Fortunately we live in an age where the means to effectively communicate are more numerous than any time in history, the barriers of access, cost and technology that once kept people from reaching a mass audience have pretty much crumbled, no longer are there the “gatekeepers” in charge of the cameras and microphones as in the past. Today… the Internet has not only fueled, but it has become the backbone of this communication revolution and I believe that what you are experiencing right now is the next step in the ongoing evolution of this medium! Online Video…
The fundamental shift to a video-centric Web is taking place everyday and the goal of this site… and this Blog is to bring you the latest information and education on this shift and to explain how it can benefit you or your business.
Now obviously I want you to check out what YourOnlineTVchannel.com can offer your business! I know that what we offer is a little different than what is currently in the Marketplace today and I’d like the opportunity to share with you some of the reasons why. But shameless plug aside… It is my hope that you will come back often. Give us your feedback… tell us what we’re doing right or wrong. In the coming weeks and months ahead we hope to share with you some of our thoughts as well as the thoughts of our Partners and many others who are at the forefront of this marketing and communications revolution.
Video = Fastest Growing Website Feature for Small Businesses
Indeed, small businesses have been racing to get their websites video-capable over the past year - and those same small businesses are spending more on paid search advertising. According to a new report, small business advertisers spent more than twice as much on paid search and nearly 4 times as many of them reported having video on their website vs. a year ago.
Local online advertising firm WebVisible just released the second installment of their study, “State of Small Business Online Advertising,” which examines trends among their nearly 12000 small business advertisers and represents around $22M in Q4 2009 U.S. small business advertiser spending.
While there are a lot of nuggets of data about where SMBs are headed with online advertising, I thought I would take some time to highlight the aspects of the data that most apply to our readers: video, search, and conversion.
Video Continues to be Both the Present and the Future
In fact, “video capability” was the single fastest growing feature that small businesses added to their website. In the same quarter of the previous year, only 5% of small business websites had video. In Q4 of 2009, that number climbed to 19%–four times as many. That’s rapid growth for just one year.
I expect this number to jump significantly again in the coming year. At ReelSEO, we’ve been banging the gong on small businesses embracing video for a long time. It’s one of the best ways to engage your audience, and is rapidly becoming one of the best ways to position your company in front of those that are seeking out your product or service via search.
Speaking of Search Engines…
There are many findings in the report that might pique your interest. For example, small businesses seem to be leading the charge on embracing Google’s competitors (Bing, Ask, and Yahoo) for advertising purposes. The click through rates from 2008 to 2009 may point to one reason why these companies are moving some spend to Bing and Yahoo. In 2009, the click through rates for Google improved over 2008 by about 32%. However, for Yahoo, the jump was 123% and Bing went up 109%. Google still trounces them both on cost-per-click, which can matter greatly assuming similar conversions.
Overall, spending by small businesses on search advertising rose to an average of $2,149—that’s an increase of 111% over Q4 2008 and a jump of 30% over Q3 2009. No one should be surprised by these numbers, and you can certainly expect to see them climbing again in the next WebVisible report.
Here’s a quote from Kirsten Mangers, the CEO of WebVisible, that is both a statement of the obvious and the most important thing that you (as well as webvisible customers, partners, etc..) can glean from this article:
“These numbers show increased confidence by small businesses in using search to gain leads – and increased ability to turn those leads into sales.”
Conversion Rates are Rising?
Any form of advertising that captures the imagination of cost-conscious local merchants has to be effective. And by that measure, online video is hot. It would be tough for the small business to stay in online advertising if they couldn’t see conversions going up as a result. Small companies rarely have the luxury of throwing money at campaigns for brand awareness.
Which is why these increases in spending are exciting—it shows that online advertising is working for many small businesses. In my experience, these small business owners rarely make marketing decisions based on gut feelings. Even when they do, their focus quickly changes away from the novelty of the medium onto measured effectiveness. In the end, it’s usually something quantifiable on the bottom line that informs and guides their spending decisions.
The conversion stats are pretty impressive, with 35.5% of clicks resulting in conversion actions (versus 32% for the previous quarter and 26.6% for the same quarter of the previous year).
As a side note, keep in mind that it is also true that small business advertisers are becoming more and more sophisticated over time when it comes to tracking and measuring online advertising effectiveness. This may just be an indication of that welcome trend.
Glance back over the stats I shared above… are you seeing a pattern? More small businesses are spending their ad dollars online, implementing online video and targeting search… which is leading to better click through rates and higher conversion rates. For us, it is affirmation that the advice we’ve been giving for years is becoming more widely accepted and is proving to be successful.
Summary & Takeaways for Small Businesses:
1) Get video on your website. There’s not a single business I’ve met that can’t find a way to use video to improve customer relations, branding, or profits. When small businesses are racing to get their websites video-capable, you know it has officially moved from gimmicky entertainment to a legitimate business tool.
2) Remove the blinders and consider using going beyond Google for some of your search ad spend. The click-through-rates may be rising faster on these engines, and there is certainly evidence to suggest that conversions for certain types of small businesses are higher on the secondary engines than on Google. But at the very least: try advertising on search engines!
3) Finally, don’t let your advertising efforts and your new found passion for video blind you from the most important conversion piece in the entire chain: your own website. Make it video capable, make it pretty, and make it useful. While video and search can be huge wranglers of traffic to your site, they are only part of the conversion process. You haven’t really helped your business until the conversion action takes place.
Search and video will definitely work to help market your business online. But they are only pieces of the puzzle. As most small business owners know all too well, at the end of the day you still have to have an attractive, useful product or service. If you skip that step… all the fancy web marketing in the world won’t save you.
Re-posted from ReelSEO.
The Three Types of Online Video for Business
So much has changed about the way we absorb information in the past few years. Can you even remember what accessing the Internet was like ten years ago? In 1999 one of the most used features in Netscape’s Navigator was the ability to uncheck Autoload Images. Once you did that you would only get text, no pictures. Page load times were crucial as users were often paying per minute to their phone service provider in addition to whatever they were paying their Internet service provider.
Jump forward to 2004 and everyone was starting to sign up for broadband, but no one was watching video online, it was still too heavy. Short clips would be distributed via email inevitably resulting in your inbox getting clogged up trying to download 5 Mb attachments from the server.
Then in early 2006, things started to change – instead of video being attached to emails people started sending links to a mysterious new site called YouTube. Even more exciting was when people started sending links to sites and blogs other than YouTube that had embedded videos that were hosted by YouTube.
By the time YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in September 2006, everyone who used the Internet regularly had seen one of their videos. Once it became common practice for people to watch video online, it was only a short time before it became an essential part of the experience. As the commercial world started to exploit the power of the Internet for business, it became clear that online video would be co-opted into that fight and made available by almost every business with an online presence which, by 2009, meant every business.
Why Video
Brightcove recently published their “Top 6 Reasons B-to-B Marketers Need Videos” as follows:
- Grab people’s attention instantly
- Tell your story in less time
- Bring your ideas to life
- Make your site stickier
- Create a buzz with viral video
- Bring your website into the 21st century
Parsing that list into three types of video based on their natural homes – embedded offsite, on the site’s homepage and within the site – helped to identify the three kinds of online video for business:
- Viral Video
- Conversion Video
- Educational Video
Viral Video
If online video got its first big break with the advent of YouTube, then Viral Video was the first breakout star for the medium. It’s a classic case of business noticing what’s going on in the real world and then trying hard to catch up.
Viral videos were the natural result of the culture of sharing that began once everyone you knew and/or did business with went online. Before there were viral videos, people shared jokes or inspirational PowerPoint presentations. The first viral videos were just evolved versions of the same.
As the demand for content grew, people started crafting video with one eye on making them go viral. There were several factors to consider. In order for a video to have a chance at becoming viral it needed to be most of the following:
- Original
- Unusual
- Unexpected
- Funny / Mysterious / Sexy
In addition there was one more ingredient, a compound of timing, luck and Internet serendipity, that was required for true online ubiquity. Almost impossible to fabricate, this elusive quality is still the thing that prevents most attempts at creating a viral video from succeeding. Nevertheless businesses leapt at the chance of promoting themselves through video usually by replicating a formula that had already achieved some success or notoriety.
Viral video differs from the other types of video in terms of its location. Viral video is at its best when it is found outside the company’s site. Viral video is all about distribution and promotion. The company’s aim is for the video to be embedded in many different sites to reach as wide an audience as possible. This is not always a good thing. Once a video can be embedded outside the company’s site the company loses control over the surrounding text and, perhaps more worryingly, the surrounding pictures and ads. If you allow your video to be watched anywhere, you have to consider that viewers may see your logo and messaging juxtaposed with less savory images.
Metrics for Success
How do you measure the success of a viral video? It’s not enough to consider the number of views only, although this is important. If you are looking at views, you need decide “how much is enough?” The most popular videos on YouTube have been seen tens of millions of times. In order for your video to be considered a viral success, you might not need anywhere near those kinds of numbers. It depends who your products are targeting and whether or not you were noticed by the right kind of audience. If the video is hosted on a video sharing site like YouTube, you might want to look at the number of comments your video receives to get an idea of the level of “buzz” you have created.
You can use a company like TubeMogul to upload and track your video across the internet but you probably need to combine that with your existing site analytics to judge whether or not it has an impact on your traffic. If you’re aiming for a success metric that is even more intangible such as brand-building or buzz-making you will have to work out your own metric for success.
Creating a viral video is a bit like catching a fish… with your hands. It’s slippery and almost impossible, but if you manage it, you’ll feel fantastic.
Conversion Video
With all the uncertainty surrounding viral video, it seems much safer to manage video with more tangible goals. There are a number of reasons why site owners would want to place a video on their site. Video is a great way of engaging site visitors. Engaged visitors spend more time on websites. More time spent on websites means more opportunities to make money.
The most important thing for a commercial website is to identify the goals of the site. As you build multiple points of entry to your site you should carefully define the conversion goal for each. These are some of the most commonly seen conversion goals for commercial websites:
- Enter Your Details – the aim of the site is to get visitors to give you contact details that can be used immediately or later to contact the customer and initiate business
- Download This File – installing the file may be the first stage in turning the site visitor into a customer
- Buy This Product – a direct inducement to the site visitor to pay money in return for a product or service
- Deposit Now –used by companies to establish the financial relationship that turns browsers into committed customers
Once you have a clear conversion goal for your landing page, a good conversion video should focus on driving users to that goal. Video does that in a number of ways. To begin with, a conversion video, like any other kind of video, should be an engaging experience drawing viewers in and helping them to spend more time on the site. A successful conversion video should carry a clear call to action. This can be part of the script, part of the visual, part of the player or any combination of the three. The call to action in the video must be aligned with the conversion goal for the page the video sits in to ensure that there is a clear path for the viewer to follow.
A brief review of the available material on the Internet throws up an abundance of lists of tips for making your corporate video. If you have questions about any aspect of video making from the perfect duration to the perfect volume, you will find someone with an opinion on the subject. The best thing you can do is to start with what you think makes sense and to test it on your site.
But before you can test the effectiveness of your video, you need to make sure people are watching. There are many ways to promote the viewing of your video on your site. Once you have produced a video that you are happy with, you owe it to yourself to exploit as many of these methods as you can. First of all you want to ensure that people can find your video. Make it visible and accessible. If the video is a key part of your conversion strategy for a page then make sure people know where it is. Once you are happy with its location on the page, you should consider having the video autoplay. If autoplay seems too aggressive there are variations you can try such as having the video autoplay without sound (but with subtitles) until the viewer opts in to listening as well as watching.
Metrics for Success
If the goal for your conversion video is to increase conversions then the metric for success should be easy. When the number, or the percentage, of your conversions rises then the video is a success. Depending on the conversion goal, increased conversion can have a direct impact on the revenues of your company. It is no wonder that more and more companies are focusing on conversion video as the most likely to provide a return on their investment.
Educational Video
Educational video probably doesn’t sit on your homepage. There are a number of reasons for adding educational videos to your site and, unlike viral and conversion videos your educational video can help you achieve multiple goals without detracting from the video’s success. That means your educational video doesn’t have to be quite as tightly focused on a single goal. With educational video you have the freedom to build towards a number of achievements.
Primarily an educational video is there to educate. But, educational video can also help to establish trust and thought-leadership. Visitors to your site who move beyond the landing page and begin to delve deeper into everything your site has to offer may be looking for more information. We know that video is an excellent medium for distilling information and enquiring visitors can find much to satisfy their curiosity in a well made video.
Good video can be a real differentiator for your company against your competitors. You can use the videos to do things that other people in your market are failing to do well. If a visitor learns everything he needs from you, he’s more likely to come back when he’s ready to become a consumer.
Educational video can also take the strain away from your customer support team. Linking your videos to an FAQ or any other part of your online support can help answer some of the questions and pain points that would otherwise make their way to a customer representative. The interaction can often be even more satisfying with the customer feeling they were able to get the answer they wanted in a format they are at ease with.
Educational videos can guide viewers through a difficult process and help to ease the concerns of nervous browsers. Educational videos can help to build a mentor-mentee relationship between the site and its visitors which must have a positive impact.
There are fewer restrictions in Educational video in terms of duration and messaging. It’s probably not smart to load your Educational videos with sales messaging, but beyond that there is a freedom to communicate clearly knowing that anyone watching is doing so with less enticement that other forms of video.
Metrics for Success
Educational video may be one of the hardest types of video to manage in terms of ROI. The production costs are as high as other forms of video but success should not be measured by the number of views. There are other metrics that should be captured such as ‘time spent on video’ or how many chapters of your video were viewed. Not every player will provide you with this kind of data, but it can be invaluable for establishing ROI.
Educational videos are less likely to be promoted than other kinds of videos. They are more correctly positioned and targeted to specific customers at different stages in the sales cycle. Educational videos are designed to prevent customer confusion and deliver clarity.
If your Educational video is aimed at reducing the number of referrals to customer support then, then a clear reduction is the best measure of success. Beyond that tangible proof, the success of educational videos is notoriously difficult to determine.
Summary
Once you are committed to making video part of your corporate marketing strategy, there are still a number of questions to be asked. Choosing which kind of video you want to produce may depend on how you measure the return on your marketing spend. There are risks and rewards for each kind of video, but there is no denying the potential impact of the medium. Harnessing that impact and using it to your advantage is one of the key challenges facing online marketers today.
About our Guest Author:
Daniel Sevitt spent several years at Metacafe heading the content division and working with online video creators from independent producers to established Hollywood heavyweights. He worked on content acquisition and development, helped create branded entertainment experiences well suited to the short-form video environment and oversaw Metacafe’s content standards and copyright policies. Daniel joined EyeView in May 2009 to discover that there was more to life than “unmanageable UGC, unimpressive CPM and unaccountable ROI”. Daniel regularly blogs about the best ways to get value out of online video on the EyeView Digital Blog.
Re-posted from Reel SEO
Google Search Accounts for More Than One-Third of All Video Streams
Google searches referred 38.92% of all streams according to new collaborative TubeMogul & Brightcove research. The companies have teamed up to create a new online video index and quarterly research report, which will help identify key industry trends and answer questions about the state of the industry.
According to the report Google generates the highest volume of referral traffic to online video content, followed by Yahoo!, Bing and Facebook. However, compared to search engines and other social media sites, Twitter referrals generate the highest level of consumer engagement for online video content from broadcast networks, magazine publishers and music labels. Newspaper publishers see the highest level of engagement from viewers who find their content via Yahoo!.
But how truly massive is that Google Search number? It’s the largest external source and the others pale in comparison. Yahoo provides roughly 5.6%, Bing roughly 2.3% and Facebook a mere 0.4%. Where, you might ask, are the rest of the discoveries coming from? 51.75 percent of all video streams in the sample were discovered via direct traffic. So it goes to show that while ranking high in Google will certainly bring in some video traffic, having your own site that is easy to find and full of valuable content still reigns supreme. Of course it’s hard to say just how many of those direct traffic-based video streams came from people who originally found your site via a search engine.
But there’s another major feature of the research. How they find your content also determines how long they will interact with it:
Average minutes watched per stream by referrer:
- Broadcast networks: Google (1:38 min), Yahoo! (1:22 min), Bing (1:37 min), Twitter (1:52 min), and Facebook (1:38 min).
- Magazine publishers: Google (1:12 min), Yahoo! (1:02 min), Bing (0:57 min), Twitter (1:23 min), and Facebook (1:13 min).
- Music labels: Google (2:01 min), Yahoo! (1:32 min), Bing (2:11 min), Twitter (2:33 min), and Facebook (2:04 min).
- Newspaper publishers: Google (1:19 min), Yahoo! (1:20 min), Bing (1:19 min), Twitter (1:19 min), and Facebook (1:09 min).
So Twitter reigns supreme for most categories and Yahoo! is the source for news by a very narrow margin.
The research should certainly allow online marketers to better focus their efforts on the places that best serve their companies and clients. Obviously for news you want to rank high on Yahoo!, for music, magazines and broadcast you want to have a strong Twitter presence and for just about everything you want to do well in Google’s search rankings. After all 39% is nothing to sneeze at.
The report covers a great deal more than just what I’ve covered here. But I figure you can go read the rest for yourself and draw your own conclusions from it. I’m sure it will become the topic of boardrooms and business dinners for weeks and months to come.
Re-posted from Reel SEO
Videos Sell Products – Even If Users Don’t Actually Watch Them
While adding video to your online store isn’t exactly new, it is still a medium in its infancy. Only within the last year or so have retailers begun to wake up to the power of video as a marketing tool that builds customer confidence and increases conversion rates. The amazing thing about video is that it works to this effect whether it’s watched or not. In other words, just by adding product videos to your site, whether they’re watched or not, will help move products.
Why add video to product pages?
Why add video to your site’s product pages? Because simply put, product videos sell products. While shoppers who actually view a product video are buying at a higher rate than those who choose not to watch the video, what has proven even more interesting is the fact that people who do NOT watch the video are converting at a significantly higher rate than shoppers viewing the same product page without the option for video viewing.
Take the following case studies which show conversion rates (CVR) for January 2010.
E-Commerce Retailer A:
• Control group (= pure CVR in site, without video at all): 1.04%
• CVR of people who could watch video but did not: 1.47%
• CVR of people who watched video: 4.06%
• Increase when comparing the users who could watch video (whether watched or not) to control group: +46.22%
E-Commerce Retailer B:
• Control: 3.27%
• CVR of people who could watch video but did not: 4.06%
• CVR of people who watched video: 4.82%
• increase (as defined above): +27.05%
The above case study data was provided by Treepodia and based on multivariate testing results for their client’s e-commerce websites.
So, it turns out that just offering the option to watch a product video is already a selling point. How could that be?
I believe that it has to do with consumer behavior and the trust factor. People feel more secure if they know you are able to show video on your site. 1) Because it means you trust your product enough to show it in full multi-dimensional format, and 2) Because it means you are an etailer that invests in your site, bringing your customers the best user experience possible. It makes your site seem more reliable which in turn increases consumer confidence.
If I look at it from another perspective altogether, I’d perhaps equate it to the fact that while I may not be an opera fan, I like the idea of living in a city that has an opera. It’s about options. In other words, while I may not use a particular service, I like to know that it’s there. I can recognize its benefit without the need to use it, and it says something positive about the place, or site, I’m visiting.
What’s the best way to display video on landing pages?
Although overall product videos are a strong sales tool, not all video displays are created equally. The three main ways most e-commerce sites choose to display video to site visitors are via a link, as a “watch video” icon, or embedded in the actual product page.
While all methods are effective, embedding the video player in the product page will generally generate a higher view rate. For example, according to Treepodia, a leading vendor in the realm of ecommerce videos, if you add a simple link to video from any given product page, you can expect something between a 5%-15% video view rate, while a video player embedded on the same page will deliver a view rate ranging from 10%-35% .
Both are obviously good options, and number are not the only thing that matters. Beyond the number of views generated you need to think about appearances. The display format you choose depends on the type of page real estate you want to allocate to video. But remember, your shoppers respond positively to videos so a good spot above the page fold is best.
What else should I know?
In most cases and across all verticals, video is a proven and effective tool for increasing conversion rates. However poorly executed or shoddy video may have a detrimental effect on your site. This should come as no surprise as we’re all well aware of the damage that inadequate copy-writing or unimpressive photos can cause conversions. In short, video obeys the same fundamental rules governing the performance of all mediums – quality matters!
That’s why, whatever video strategy you choose, it is imperative to continue to measure performance according to the parameters for success that you have established. Once you learn what works best for converting products on your site, you can focus on doing more of the same and getting the most out of your product videos.
Re-posted from Reel SEO.
