FAQ Friday: Online Video Platforms for Sales and Marketing Success

It’s time to ramp up your video production and video distribution to meet your sales and marketing goals. In today’s FAQ, we’re providing thought provoking information on how to enhance your inbound video marketing. These are practical tips and answers to help you get started today!

Question #1: What is the value of video marketing?

For several years now, digital video has outranked all other online activities. If you are not producing video content, you are missing a large area of opportunity. 50% of all mobile traffic includes streaming video. From mobile devices to tablets and laptops, many people look to video to aid them in research before making a purchase. More than half of all online adults used video to research a recent purchase.

Key insight:

Mobile and tablet shoppers are three times as likely to view a video as laptop or desktop users.—Direct Images Interactive

Whatever the initial investment, your business cannot afford to ignore an online video platform any longer. Once you enhance your video content production, you increase the ability to close by 53%, and this number is increasing every year. Need help getting started? Check out our previous post showing you how to go live with your audience.

In addition to further engaging your clients, the data captured from your video analytics will also tell you more about your customers. You will know how long viewers are watching, what videos have higher views, how viewers are engaging with the content socially and when potential customers are leaving. All of this data, if interpreted correctly, will help you better craft content that retains potential customers. Any trends or areas of improvement can create new leads and drive new business.

Question #2: What is an Online Video Platform?

An online video platform or OVP allows users to upload, convert, store and play video content online. Some online video platform companies are: Vidyard, Wistia, Brightcove, Ooyala, Ustream.

An advanced OVP can also include auto transcription to enhance SEO, streamlined cloud video editors and customized content support to increase engagement. OVP systems can support your efforts in:

Organization: many platforms can connect to your enterprise content management (ECM) and digital asset management (DAM) systems.
Automation: most OVP’s can integrate with DAM and your website to produce content.
Streaming: OVP’s can help you with seamless playback eliminating any buffering.
Trends: OVPs can help you identify new video trends.

Check out these helpful posts:

Question #3: Why can't I use YouTube for all my videos?

Go where your customers are: Are all your leads actively on YouTube? Probably not and therefore it would be wise to diversify your online video content distribution. Try disseminating video content on other social profiles or via email marketing in addition to YouTube.
Engagement: You want leads to begin engaging on your website and not just on YouTube. While starting a conversation on YouTube is fine, the goal is to bring the traffic to your site. So why not embed a video directly on your company website and cut out the middle platform?
Limited Space: YouTube only allows for videos that are 15 minutes or less. If you ever needed to offer a tutorial, special Q&A session or virtual workshop, you may find YouTube limiting for your prospective needs.

Question #4: What kind of videos can I produce to enhance my marketing efforts?

What kind of videos would work best for your business? What kind of answers would you be providing your potential clients?

And to learn more about engaging your customers through video, check this out:

Food for Thought:

What kind of videos are you most interested in producing and how often? Would your business benefit from live streaming, video-on-demand, user curated playlists, push to YouTube, push to Facebook or a call to action? Each method has its pros and can positively impact your goals.

Here are some resources to get you started in engaging with your audience through video marketing best practices:

Question #5: What is the difference between progressive download and streaming video?

A progressive download is video delivered by an HTTP web server rather than a streaming server. This is delivered to the viewer's hard drive. This method typically provides the smoothest playback and best looking video as it is pulling the data internally. One downside is that the longer the video and the larger the size the longer it will take for the video to start. A risk associated with this method is the ease of copying the downloaded content.

Streaming video is when the starts playing. The file is not stored locally or cached on the viewer's device. The key to smooth playback here is that the data rate of an encoded file must be smaller than the bandwidth capacity of the remote viewer (which varies viewer to viewer). If the file is larger or has a higher encoded data rate than the bandwidth capacity, the video will stop playing. To enable playback on multiple devices at different bandwidth requirements, some OVPs use DASH to assist in a better viewing experience.

Question #6: What is DASH and how does it work in an OVP?

Dynamic Adaptive Streaming Over HTTP, or DASH, is an adaptive technique that allows high quality streaming of media content online via traditional HTTP web servers.

DASH eliminates compression and delivery technical issues by compressing multiple renditions of the video at different data rates.

Content creators can generate a single set of files for streaming and encoding that are compatible with mobile, tablet and desktop viewing devices. The goal here is that viewers should not have to worry about the playback with online video platforms across multiple devices.

Multiple renditions of the video are compressed at different data rates and typically between three to eight renditions are created. One rendition is encoded at a data rate most suitable for a mobile phone, another at a rate best suited for a laptop and yet another for a desktop version, optimized for playback on a large monitor. The video served up is based upon the viewer’s connection speed and viewing device. What is truly remarkable is that an OVP has the capability to switch out these renditions on the fly depending upon viewing requirements in real time such as a change in connection speed during playback or a viewer opting to go for full screen playback.

Question #7: What is a Content Delivery Network and what benefit does it provide?

In essence, a Content Delivery Network or CDN, serves up video files that are requested from an OVP player that resides on your site.

A CDN is a system or network (distribution servers) that populates geographically targeted web pages and web content to users based on the origin of the user's location. A CDN is beneficial because it allows for smoother and quicker playback on streaming content. This is possible due to network distribution servers near your geographical location. For example a San Jose, CA resident decides to look up videos on travel tips while in New York City. Instead of connecting to files from overseas or the East Coast, the request will connect to a “local” distribution server. This CDN may be located in San Francisco, Los Angeles or anywhere closer to his actual location. This allows for a quicker population of requested data. It also allows for a more seamless playback because it is downloading files from a nearby server.

If you have questions you would like to see featured in our weekly FAQ Friday, please submit them in the comments below or mention us @DirectImages on Twitter. Until next FAQ Friday, keep your communication lines open. Don’t know the answer—just ASK.

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