There is an old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. The fact is that in sales and marketing the actual value may be much higher. There is a reason that most promotional and sales literature is mainly comprised of easy-to-digest images and graphics, and that is because it works. The right image can be very effective in influencing the opinions and decisions of potential customers, and the information they convey stay with the viewers far longer than the mere written word. A recent paper put out by Hewlett-Packard cites both the federal government and a psychologist from New York University, stating that studies:
…show that people only remember 10 percent of what they hear and 20 percent of what they read, but about 80 percent of what they see and do.” and “…that the retention of information three days after a meeting or other event is six times greater when information is presented by visual and oral means than when the information is presented by the spoken word alone.
Take a moment to let those numbers sink in. Potential customers will remember 80 percent of the information shared with them if they are shown and given something to do, rather than simply being told. Even better, they will retain much more of that information for days afterward if they are both told and shown. Some educational research has shown that up to 83 percent of all human learn happens visually. That’s just for retention. People also tend to believe more of what they are shown than they are told. According to the University of Mississippi Division of Outreach and Continuing Education:
67 percent of researchers at the Wharton School of Business believed that presenters who combined visual and verbal components were more persuasive than presenters who presented only verbally.” and “Color accounts for 60% of acceptance or rejection of any object.
Using video as a sales or marketing tool is easily the most powerful and effective way to combine the multiple techniques into one very persuasive and easily disseminated format. A properly-produced sales video can tell the prospective customer about the benefits provided by a particular product or service, show that customer how the product works, and offer on-screen graphics and statistics that the customer can read to bolster the company’s claims. Additional samples and promotional materials can be included to give the customer an opportunity to have a tangible interaction with the product. With a sales video, even the psychology of color can be used by strategically choosing the color of any objects or backgrounds shown. A well-thought out and produced sales video can drive consumer interest and sales in ways that mere brochures never could.
Sales videos can bring the persuasive power of television to the internet. They can deliver the most salient information to the customer in a fraction of the time that it would have taken them to read the equivalent literature. Many customers appreciate the convenience, preferring to watch video rather than reads text. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are evolving from a nation of readers into a nation of viewers. According to the website Social Media Today, video marketing is especially desirable because it prompts the viewer into taking an action:
Research from Forrester, ComScore, eMarketer, Invodo, Forbes and other top organizations all support how marketing with online video marketing by internet video production creates some form of action, moving the prospect deeper into the sales cycle, 52 percent of the time.
One of the biggest reasons companies should use sales videos to promote and market their products and services is the instant access granted to prospective customers, anywhere in the world and any time of day. Whenever the customer has a notion to seek information about a company and its products, the video is there, on demand. Whether it is on a desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, or any streaming device, customers can find the video at their convenience.
In fact, even if the customer doesn’t know that an informational video exists, it is very likely that the video will populate during an online query. Google and other search engines give more weight to results containing video than those containing only text. Video content is 53 times more likely to be among the search results than text, and visitors who view product videos are 85 percent more likely to purchase than those who did not. 40 percent of visitors to an online or brick-and-mortar store visited as a direct result of having watching a product video.
Like a billboard, online sales videos are viewable by potential customers twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. However, the potential audience is far greater for online videos. A well-ranked video can be viewed by millions of people around the world. The exposure of the video can even increase if it is shared or if it is embedded in a social media spot such as Facebook.
Videos as part of the overall sales process is the way of both the future and the now. Customers want to control how they learn about products and they want to be able to buy on their own terms. On InternetRetailer.com, the CEO of Invodo, Craig Wax, says:
Up until now, retailers have had to make decisions about video without getting information from the most important stakeholder-their customers…. it is crystal clear that consumers expect video as part of their shopping experience, and rely on it when making purchase decisions.
The logic is inescapable. Online sales videos are one of the most cost-effective and most productive ways of reaching the desired audience and keeping them intrigued. That being said, the success of any campaign that utilizes sales videos will still largely depend on the overall quality of the presentation, the amount of research that was carried out before the presentation was put together, and the way in which it is displayed to the public. Quality information that helps prospects and clients to be educated on a product service, or to give them advice in a specific niche that your business deals in will ensure that you get the best results from these videos in terms of building a large client base and keeping your sales conversion rates high.