On a fundamental level, the term video marketing could potentially apply to any use of video to sell a product. For example, television commercials could be considered a type of video marketing. When most people talk about marketing with video, they are specifically referring to marketing methods that rely on the Internet. This includes creating viral concept videos, infomercials, and other movies as a way to sell a product to people. These are often placed on a website that sells the product, and they may also be released through social media sites.
One of the more common approaches to video marketing is the use of so-called "viral" videos. These are designed to capture people’s interest on an entertainment level and subtly push a product at the same time. In theory, people will enjoy the videos so much that they will do a lot of the marketing work for the company by showing it to their friends and posting links to it on various websites. According to many experts, this approach to marketing has been shown to be fairly effective when it works, but it can also potentially be hit and miss.
Another approach to video marketing is for a company to simply make a video about one of its products. These videos might be like documentaries or long commercials explaining the product in a positive light. They may also include interviews with people who use the product and experts explaining benefits of the product. A video like this might be promoted on social media websites, or it may be prominently displayed on the company’s website. In some cases, both strategies may be together.
In the early days of the Internet, there was a two-part problem with using online video in any serious way. For starters, videos compression technology was more primitive, and it didn’t allow for easy high-quality video streaming. In addition, bandwidth was much more limited. Downloading any kind of video was generally something that only power users would bother with, and as a result, companies focused much more on selling with text or banner advertisements.
The combination of greater broadband connection availability and improvements in video compression technology made video marketing more useful, but it didn’t really take off in a big way at first. According to many experts, the breakthrough that made the biggest difference was the creation of small video players that stream-compressed video through websites. Streaming video is generally very compressed, and all a person needs to view it is an updated web browser, which means that it is open to a wider range of people.
