Being late to the party: getting on the video bandwagon

When online video first hit the market, there was a small storm surrounding it. Businesses were excited. This was a new way to reach consumers; a more effective way to reach the elusive online market.

Then autoplay was introduced. Perfect – now any online video would guarantee views. Views were highly sought after…until marketers realised that a view didn’t necessarily mean a complete view, and it was just irritating consumers.

Many businesses that jumped on the bandwagon early found themselves reevaluating their strategy. Video could be expensive, almost impossible to put together quickly to make relevant content and difficult to measure.

Fortunately, new ways to measure video success have come into play. Analytics online allow you to see how many viewed your entire clip and how many only viewed a segment. Despite this, as recently as September, Bauer admitted it’s video content strategy was failing.

So that’s it, right? If a company as big as Bauer can’t make video work, what hope do you have? But here’s the thing. Bauer invested a lot of money into a messy strategy.

Many companies that threw themselves into video early before it was fully understood, made mistakes. And that’s fine. Some then took a step back and considered what they had done right and what they had done wrong, came up with a new strategy and started again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQN0cKThkVA

When sales of Mother energy drink were struggling, Coca-Cola identified the issue, acknowledged it, and started over.

Others didn’t take that path. These are the Bauers of our digital world. I won’t pretend to know the ins and outs of what went wrong for Bauer, but it’s clear to see that they hadn’t learned the digital video market just yet.

Bauer’s videos weren’t popular, so they ditched them.

By staying clear in the early days, you’ve given yourself the opportunity to learn from the bigger players’ mistakes without wasting any of your own hard earned money.

And the best part? You waited long enough for some cheaper alternatives to hit the market. If you can’t afford a big budget production, look into animation. It can be a lot more fun and appealing for an audience, as well!

To learn more about how an animated explainer video or any other type of web video production could work for you, ask us for a free quote!

By Emma Wilkinson