Truck Parts and Service | Heavy Duty Trucking, Aftermarket, Service Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/526047
22 Sales & Marketing Buoyed by the ubiquitous monolith that is YouTube — the No. 2-ranked search engine in the world behind Google — online video marketing is now the second- highest grossing ad revenue format on the Internet. Only the catch-all "mobile" format can claim better numbers. And unlike other market- ing options, such as search engine optimization (SEO) and paid per click adverting, online video advertising isn't prohibited by a budget. Pre-roll advertisements cost money, but producing and uploading videos to You- Tube is free. But that wonderful feature is just one of several benefi ts businesses can enjoy by com- mitting to online video mar- keting, says Sean V. Bradley, CEO at Dealer Synergy. Another perk is exposure. Nearly everyone watches videos online. Citing a recent market re- port, Bradley says 78 percent of the world's population watches at least one online video per week, and 55 per- cent watch at least one video per day. YouTube says more than one billion unique users visit the site every month, and those users total more than 6 billion hours of videos watched monthly. Bradley also notes online shoppers are 64 percent more likely to make a purchase after watching a video on a product they are considering. That last stat is particularly valuable in the aftermarket. A customer pricing a new spring may require more in- formation than a basic catalog listing can provide. A video providing that info immedi- ately increases a distributor's likelihood of making a sale. Customers also typically remember what they see in a video, says Kent Lewis, presi- dent at Anvil Media. Lewis says video has fi ve times greater memory recall than the written word, and has been proven to improve viewer engagement by 300 percent on websites where it is used. "People remember what they watch, especially when they like it," he says. A good video also is enhanced by Google's search algorithm. The search giant pur- chased YouTube in 2006 as a way to capitalize on the Internet's never-ending thirst for video, and has spent the last decade promoting it. Ever noticed a random YouTube video at the top of your search results? That's intentional, Bradley says, as Google's current search code is weighted to drive relevant multimedia (video, photos, etc.) higher in both organic and paid search results. Bradley says Google's analytics indicate users prefer to watch video as opposed to reading through links, so the search engine provides that easy access. This offers a wonderful shortcut to marketing success for aftermarket operations, Bradley says. How-to and instruc- tional videos are among the most popular Google search categories, and as industry ex- perts, aftermarket operations are best equipped to produce these videos correctly. A simple video that shows how to replace a nearly inaccessible light, or the proper technique for remov- ing a clutch, can become a goldmine in Google's search algorithm. Lewis says this also helps capitalize on the fact most people are visual learners. Lewis and Bradley say T R U C K P A R T S & S E R V I C E | J u n e 2 0 1 5 People remember what they watch, especially when they like it. – Kent Lewis, president at Anvil Media 78 percent of the world's population watches at least one online video per week, and 55 percent watch at least one video per day.