The Wall Street Journal recently ran a headline titled, “Facebook Embraces a Video-First Future.” The article goes on to describe that Facebook will spend heavily to become a major hub for video, spending up to a billion dollars through 2018 in order to secure original content. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg calls it a move to make Facebook a Video First Platform.
These types of announcements are becoming a trend. As a result, all of the big media companies are racing to carve out their own positions – be it media platform or media creator. Disney, for example, is trying to do both. They’ve announced they’ll be pulling most of their original content away from other media companies and will create their own streaming service. This will compete with cable, Netflix, and many other platforms of this nature. At this point Disney has the advantage, they have plenty of their own original content sitting in the archives and loads of franchise type works such as Star Wars and Avatar (they can also add new movies to expand these existing storylines and there is no doubt that they will – as some are in the works currently).
Now you may be wondering how this move by giant companies affects your business. The answer is a lot.
These announced moves are like having your own billion-dollar think tank telling you what is working and what you need to be doing: Video. Of course, be sure to scale these ideas appropriately to fit what your business can afford, whether it is a one-person company or you have thousands of employees.
For instance, in our own case, we know that our Facebook ads do better with a picture in it. Even a still picture pulls response better than just a caption. Yours will too. And it’s an easy thing to test if you don’t want to just take my word for it.
We also know that film is even more powerful than still pictures. We are seeing audiences give standing ovations to films. We have clients tell us that documentaries about a subject sell products at a seminar at least equal to the sales of a live speaker. We have even heard from very credible sources that sales made at seminars where a film about the subject was played first have increased sales by as much as 3.5 times compared to sales presentations given by just a human. Also, appointments made by financial clients at dinner seminars have performed at least the same when a film was used as compared to a live speaker.
I saw this phenomena happen in the seminar business years ago with a guy doing credit repair seminars and another speaker who was selling financial and tax advice. Both quit going out on the road every week and instead sent staff to do the set up, show a video presentation and collect orders.
This is important information to take advantage of in your business now. Does it mean you stop your current marketing that is working to try video? No it doesn’t. However, you should test it against whatever you are doing that is making you money. You never just stop doing something that is working to try another form of marketing, but that doesn’t mean you only commit to that one form of marketing either.
For example, if you have a Facebook ad that you are spending $50 a day on and it is making you money, take the same ad and run it with a picture illustration to see if the result is better or worse. This is the classic method of A/B testing of ads, and once you find the better performer you use it until you find another option you can test against it.
If you are doing a podcast right now, you might want to film one of your podcasts and show it to your prospects. You can send it online or you can make a DVD and send that to them, then keep track of which brings in more response and which sells the best best. Changing things up a little never hurts because it keeps your marketing fresh. That is especially true when we know that a trend is developing, like how using more video in your marketing is today.
