Beyond Viral: How to Attract Customers, Promote Your Brand, and Make Money with Online Video

Chapter 1. The Least a Marketer Needs to Know

In this chapter, you will learn:

• Why a marketer needs to know about online video.

• Pitfalls to avoid and ways to save yourself time and money.

• How to target customers in ways you may not have considered.

• How video can help you from awareness through loyalty.

Presumably, you would not be reading these words if you had not recognized that online video can help drive businesses. However, I feel compelled to point out why I think this is the most interesting thing happening in our time:

• Online video generally refers to viewing that occurs at a computer, and that remains the prevailing mode today. Over time, however, the convergence of the three screens (television, computer, and mobile devices) will further complicate the definition of online video and perhaps eventually make the term antiquated and obsolete.

• This medium is disrupting industries and traditional networks, and content producers have so far fumbled and lost relevancy in online video. While most video viewing is done via a television set, the audience has continued to fragment. In the early 1950s, more than 30 percent of households watched NBC, and today it's around 5 percent.^[5] As television audiences fragment and shift to online viewing, marketing dollars are following them.

• Today, online video is the only advertising medium with a growth rate estimated at 40 to 60 percent per year,^[6] while such traditional areas of marketing mix as television and print are flat or declining.^{[7] ...}