Video is by far the most important communication tool of our times. Today more than 80% of global data traffic consist of video and the trend is still heading upwards. Rob Toledo, a user engagement and bounce rate specialist at Shutterstock, says:
No longer just an interesting add-on, video has become an important feature for anyone concerned with SEO, conversion rates, or brand recognition. That’s pretty much everyone, then.
There are lots of reasons why online video has surged in popularity with today’s content marketers. Some of the key advantages include higher engagement rates, new channels to extend your message, powerful sales enablement tools, and of course, the search engine optimization (SEO) factor.
But many companies in the fresh produce industry are still reluctant or slow to adopt videos for their communication. One reason is lack of knowledge. While entrepreneurs, marketing and communication departments have great experience in using text and photos in print and online media they are not familiar with video production. They lack knowledge in briefing, budgeting, scheduling and execution of videos. They lack understanding of the very different ways in wich videos can be produced and distributed today. Many universities are only gradually implementing video in their PR and communication curriculum. Thus executives tend to pursue marketing tools that they know.
But video production is neither expensive nor complicated. In fact it can be a fast, easy and inexpensive tool and effectively lead to great communication and marketing success – even for small companies, brands, products and organisations.
For a global industry like fresh produce videos can be a key communication tool: People are able to see and feel the characteristics of new products and they can learn about your production and processing facilities. Fresh Produce is a people business: People can meet and hear you – and you can create a personal relationship with your partners.
Food is an emotional product – videos are the unique tool to create an emotional appeal with aesthetic imagery, storytelling with a human touch and beautiful music can create a long-lasting experience.
How can PR and marketing executives in horticulture receive the knowledge they need to use video effectively for their campaigns, for corporate communication, for the training of employees and of course increasing sales?
The german Corporate Media Academy has recently set up a workshop for people who want to use video production effectively for marketing and communication in fresh produce. The academy has scheduled a workshop on oct 15 in Paris, France – conveniently one day before SIAL 2016 starts. Another workshop will be held in Orlando before PMA.
Workshop Facts:
Learn how to bugdet, brief and coordinate media productions from the client‘s perspective. This exclusive workshop is designed for decision-makers in marketing, PR and communications of small to large-sized companies and government authorities. The workshop provides essential know-how for a smooth and successful production of television commercials, corporate documentaries, mobile and social media: Research, Tender Documentation, Budgeting, Scheduling, Postproduction, Rights issues, Distribution (Cinema, TV, Mobile and Social Media), Tracking.
Among the topics:
– Defining target groups
– Define effective formats for marketing, PR, IR, HR, events etc.
– Finding the right creative and production partner
– Defining budgets
– Writing the perfect tender
– Briefing potential creative and distribution partners
– Analyzing the tender
– Selecting the right creative and production solution
– Contracting
– Scheduling the whole production, techniques and checklists
– Technologies of production, postproduction, presentation
– Controlling the production and postproduction process
– copyright and personality rights
– Distributing your content on social media
– Keeping your content alive
– Archiving and organizing your media content
Workshops can be booked here.
Some important facts about the impact of video for communication and marketing:
Ranking on the Google’s first page is an SEO’s top priority, so it is difficult to ignore a Forrester study that says “pages with video are 53x more likely to rank on the first page of Google search results.” Yes, that study is five years old, but the point remains – Google SERPs prioritize video results.
Why is video marketing 53x more likely to rank than plain text content? A number of factors influence ranking, but a big one is a recent Google search algorithm update –Hummingbird – which prizes “quality content” over keyword optimization.
Eric Sui at Entrepeneur.com describes the shift in search results:
Google now cares less about whether you’ve optimized each individual page on your site to a particular keyword and more about whether your page’s content answers the question presented by the search user.
Gareth Davies at WordTracker, claims that as much as “80% of the video content served up in SERPs are informational videos.” So, the results aren’t simply viral lolcatvideos, but rather useful content that answer queries. Enter the explosion of explainer video marketing.
Google’s Head of Web spam, Matt Cutts, estimates the Hummingbird update in September 2013 affected over 90% of search queries. The way that most people use the internet fundamentally changed, and the shift toward helpful video content in SERPs is still in full swing.
Best Practices for Video SERP:
- Keep Your Video Short – Less than 4 minutes (engagement rates fall after 4-5 minutes).
- Create Rich-Video Snippets – This is the thumbnail beside the description of the content on the page. Follow this nitty-gritty guide to create a video sitemap.
- Transcribe Your Script – Even though Google is getting pretty darn good at parsing video content for meaning, transcribed text helps the spiders crawl your content for relevance.