Love it or hate it, television has revolutionized the business world. Many of PRMG’s television production clients are small businesses, non-profits or law firms with big dreams. Our clients have come to us to produce commercials, documentaries, direct marketing videos and web content to help achieve those dreams.

Television advertising is the cost-effective way to reach the most potential customers in the shortest time. The cost of production and airtime for a commercial is a wise investment and is surprisingly affordable, even for small businesses. Television advertising brings the message into customers’ homes and instantly brands the company as a leader in its field.

Direct marketing is another powerful use of PRMG’s Television Production service. A DVD illustrates all the lifestyle benefits the product or service provides, with more effectiveness than another brochure. Unlike most junk mail which ends up unread, people will watch a marketing DVD.

Many organizations have come to PRMG for a boost in fundraising efforts. An historical or issue-based documentary showing the organization’s goals and achievements can secure grants, donations and media attention more efficiently than traditional methods, at a lower cost.

Just as the web has revolutionized business, it has revolutionized how video is used to promote business or to gain attention to a cause.

Marketing Online with Video

Online video is one of the best venues to engage an audience — don’t even think about excluding it! This new medium allows the video creator to communicate a message on multiple levels — via visual imagery, the spoken word, music and visual text. It may sound like a commercial for a Montessori school, but this is the way people learn, and consequently, the way legendary brands are created. As a case in point, think of traditional Internet marketing; when was the last time that a paid search listing or banner ad raised your blood pressure or induced you to forward something to a friend? Get the point?

With online video, you can also reach a huge audience for a minimal investment, thus the ROI of online video marketing can be astounding. Consider that, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, more than 50% of the US population will watch video online next year. That’s 155.2 million people, and we’re just talking the US! Increasingly, people are watching a lot of video as well. According to comScore, Americans watched 9 billion online videos just in the month of July.

Like everything else, there is no “free lunch” — the video-sharing sites don’t charge to host your content, but getting your target audience to watch and forward your video is no easy feat. That’s where we come in.

“Secret Formula” — .50C + .15M + .20T + .15P = Success

Alright, we admit that an exact formula may be a bit over simplistic, but when it comes to deciding how to allocate time and resources on a video intended on marketing something virally, the weighting of these four components should follow closely to something like this: That’s it.  Write down the formula above on a cocktail napkin and you have the code cracker for getting people to watch and forward your video.  The formula above says that creating a video is a weighted function of four components:

50% C = Content and Production — this is storyline, style, lighting, production, etc.

15% M = Metadata — the text title, keywords, descriptions, and categories that help people find your video

20% T = Thumbnail — the packaging which draws people in when displayed on the page

15% P = Promotion — just good old fashioned marketing

These aspects help communicate your message far and wide in a way that makes an emotional connection with the viewers in a way that motivates them to pass it along to others.

Consider submitting your videos to other “Web 2.0” websites that employ voting systems to promote content. Some of the most popular sites are Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. As your video or article gains more votes, the video will attract even more attention and may even end up in a featured or “top 10” type category which can generate hundreds of thousands of views in a day.

Generally, deploying videos to multiple sites makes sense as different sites have different content niches and audiences. Essentially, each site represents a community opportunity that you can tap into. TubeMogul “Load and Track” is an easy tool to deploy to multiple sites at once. Here is a handy grid that provides some information on a few of the top video-sharing sites:

	Description	Demographics	Registration	Upload	Notes
YouTube	No intro needed here	Evenly female/male audience, even age distribution, U.S. East and West coasts.	Easy	Fast review process, mainly automated	Experimenting with ad sharing
Yahoo! Video	An original video destination, but late to the game	Slightly more male viewers, slightly older, even US geographic distribution	Medium	Relatively slow and unpredictable review process
MySpace	Primarily a social networking site, but video is still huge	High percentage of female and under-18 viewers	Easy	No review process. Videos go live immediately	Being rebranded as MySpaceTV
Metacafe	Popular worldwide, prides itself on community votes driving featured content sharing	Skews towards older, more educated, male viewers	Easy	Fast human review process	Offers ad sharing
Google Video	Increasingly becoming more of a video search engine	Slightly more male viewers, disproportionately more Hispanic audience	Medium	Limited review process. Unlimited content length and size	Integrates with other Google apps like Web Albums and Picasa
Revver	One of the first video sites to offer ad revenue sharing	Slightly older, white male crowd	Easy	Discriminating human review process	Ads inserted into all videos
DailyMotion	The YouTube of Europe	Overwhelmingly white male. Higher age and income than most	Easy	Fast and easy	Growing in the US
Blip.tv	Publisher-friendly video sharing and distribution site	Slightly more male, slightly higher income level than most video sites, even ethnic distribution	Easy	Easy	Publisher can choose to insert ads
Brightcove	Trying to bring TV to the Internet	Even split male and female. Few under-18 viewers	Easy	Easy	Ad share options available
Crackle	Focused on making people stars	Largely male, disproportionately African-American audience	Easy	Slick Flash upload tool allows many videos in one shot	Owned by Sony
Veoh	Focused on full-screen video programming for anyone with a broadband connection	Slightly more male viewers, predominantly Asian, distributed across all age categories	Medium	Easy	Investors include Michael Eisner and Time Warner

Contact PRMG to learn how our digital video production and web design and promotion services can help expand your business or organization. For more information and a free consultation, fill out this form or contact our offices at (631) 207-1057.