Web-Epics Video marketing

…is the subject of our new TV production that goes out this Friday evening at 21.00 (and every evening until 14 August) on Sky Digital Channel 167 (Information TV).

Drive Greener and Save Money was produced in conjunction with our friends at Launch Group and was pulled together in 4 weeks from brief to broadcast!

As mentioned in my last post, I think this sponsored TV model is a very interesting development. At a time when there is a shift away from coventional TV advertising, maybe sponsored broadcast content could be an exciting development. I guess only the viewing figures will tell!

While most of our activity is involved with on line video and traditional media (DVDs etc.) We are quite excited at Web-Epics that we have just been commissioned to produce a programme to be broadcast on a Sky channel. More about this in due course, once it is in the public domain and we will be able to write about the client and the project.

However the channel it is to be broadcast on is interesting in itself.

Information TV, as they say on their website;

“We broadcast in-depth public service programming on topics of vital interest to various sectors of the community.

Public bodies use Information TV to broadcast their own video material in the form of sponsored TV programming. Programmes may be one-off broadcasts, or regularly repeated, and can be as short as 5 minutes.  The sponsor of each programme will be clearly credited so that viewers know who has enabled the broadcast.”.

Watch this space for more news.

I know I rattle on about video testimonials and how powerful they are, how effective it is to have your clients selling you 24/7 and so on, but I found myself the other side of the camera recently! Our ‘virtual’ Business Development Manager Bryan McCrae of Cognitive Sales put me on the spot and asked me to film a video testimonial for his skills. Here is the result.

Knowing Bryan, there is no doubt he will be measuring the effect on his traffic, lead generation and conversions so I will post the results here in due course when he lets me have some numbers.

Thanks Bryan, but I think I’ll try and stay behind the camera in future.

Received a great written testimonial today from our very valued client Peter Czapp of the Wow Company for whom we recently completed filming a set of video testimonials. (Peter has agreed to commit this to video when the opportunity presents itself!)

I just wanted to write to you to say thank you very much for completing our video testimonial project for us. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with you and we are delighted with the end result.

I also wanted to thank you for your professionalism throughout the whole project – it could not have run more smoothly and it is great to be involved in a project that is completed on time and on budget. I was really impressed with the speed that you got the completed videos back to us and your prompt response to the edits we required meant we had the videos up on our website really quickly.

I would wholeheartedly recommend Web Epics to anyone thinking about using video to convey a message about their company. Martin and the team really do a fantastic job and the results speak for themselves.

Kind regards,
Peter

Thank you Peter!
You can see the videos embedded in The Wow Company website here

Congratulations Life Magazines!

An amazing local business event took place on Friday evening at Petersfield Festival Hall, for which Web-Epics sponsored the video coverage. Under the banner of the Life in Petersfield Magazine, which itself is only 18 months old, my good friends Nick Keith and Gareth Gammon, both directors of Life Magazines pulled off an excellent first event. Cat Jarman did a lot of the behind the scenes hard work and pulled together a large team of supporting individuals and organisations. It was a huge achievement to persuade some 250 people to attend this first event and they have set a precedent for a significant local business and community annual event for many years to come.

Watch this space for news of the video of the event (when we have time to edit it all!). Thanks for involving us Life Magazines… it was a privilege.

At last some UK online video stats!

I am constantly coming across US figures and all too rarely UK statistics. So it’s good to get confirmation from Hitwise that online video growth is every bit as healthy over this side of the Atlantic.

The headline figure is that UK Internet traffic to online video websites increased by 178% between February 2007 and 2008.

But perhaps of most interest (and buried towards the end of Robin Goad’s blog) is the fact that “One in every 40 searches in the UK during February 2008 resulted in a visit to a video site”.

Videoegg, one of the first established user generated video content sites that launched in early 2005 is shutting up shop; or at least they are closing the “My Video Egg” platform part of the business.

As the email sent to all subscribers states;

“It is with our sincerest regret to inform you that we will be closing the doors on the Videoegg Publisher Platform and related services at http://my.videoegg.com/. “

In answer to the question as to why they are decommissioning, the FAQs on the site state somewhat ambiguously that;

“… resources at technology startups are limited and it is in our best interest to focus on the core of our business at this time. With a wide range of video destination sites available on the market, we feel that we are leaving you in good hands. “

It was not that many weeks ago that Brightcove pulled the plugs on their free upload facility.

Presumably the “paying” side of the Video Egg business is working. As they stated in a recent blog;

“People working in the digital marketing space have a couple of things to be happy about in 2008. First, we are finally seeing a decent amount of TV dollars moving online – something that took much longer than it should have, and wasn’t easy.”

Suggesting that this particular egg has landed sunny-side up and they have secured enough of those TV Dollars to jetison the user generated video that brought them traffic… and overheads.

Is this a start of a trend as the plethora of user generated content sites try and find sustainable business models? After all, Google can’t buy them all!

I wonder as well if the pure ‘novelty’ online video has had its day and whether people are more interested in sensible communication with video rather than distraction?

Just over a week ago Web-Epics took our first tentative steps into Email marketing with some impressive results.

• 1. 25.9% of people who opened the email clicked through to view our video content.

• 2. Within an hour of sending the email a prospective customer we had not heard from for many weeks came back with a confirmation he wanted to go ahead with a Video Testimonial

• 3. Another potential new client has just visited us for a two hour meeting about how video can boost the effectivenes of his website in at least six different ways

• 4. Our website traffic has doubled

• 5. We now appear 7th and 9th on a global Google search for Video Marketing (3rd and 5th for the UK)

The power of video marketing!

I’m sure you have noticed just as much as I have the increasing number of web sites that are now making use of video.
In an effort to try and find some stats to back my perceptions up, I came across these figures a few weeks ago when researching a presentation I was making for Business Link

Okay, they are all USA figures – why do they always seem to have more research available than the UK? – but I think they give a fair indication of the scale of the national, international and global apetite for video on the web and how it is growing.

Anyway, here come the numbers – watch out they are BIG!

By the way the figures come from comSCORE Video Metrix

1. 1. The total number of videos streamed in the USA during September 2007 was 9.2 billion!
2. 2. The number of people in the USA who viewed a video online in September 2007 was 136,000,000!
3. 3. 74,8% of ALL USA web users watched a video online during September 2007!

Big enough?