Video Use in Marketing Has Its Faults

If rapid communication for product strategy marketing is considered the most productive way to insure that you are most likely to attract a buyer, reader, or seeker, as is broadly promoted in the world of copywriting, advertising, and print media, then, logically, video should be a deterrent to product marketing of anything. Especially when it takes minutes of watching to get the message, and that same message can be seen in seconds in printed format.

When the purpose of the video placed immediately under the header is to introduce a potential customer to your product or service, not to give all the details, then why go ahead and add all the content and information below the video, or on the next page, that a buyer sees and understands in seconds. There must be some other reason for the video such as entertainment, credibility, study of body language, or simply complying with the herding concept dominant in the marketing world?

Oh... I see. Marketers are taking advantage of the fact that our population is making video the center of their universe and seems to be the perfect way to get their attention. You know, old and young fondling the handheld video gaming device riding along in the bus because life is so boring otherwise. Video gaming, DVD videos, online videos, video stores, videos in education, videos for record keeping, are just a few of the influential, addicting, and brainwashing strategies being used to slide into video marketing heaven.

What if you came to recognize that the time, expense, and energy you use to create, edit, and publish video clips and apply them to your niche marketing segments, you could effectively market to a thousand more potential clients using other methods and with better results? With online marketing, it takes the same amount of effort and cost to get a potential customer to your video as it does to your business website where the video has been placed. Doesn't that seem to be redundant?

It seems incredible that people who scan instead of read materials, won't read articles over 1000 words in length-takes too much valuable time, and intimidate others by interrupting them and asking them to, "Get to the point," all in the name of speed and saving their time, are so captivated by "time consuming video" over print.

Hey, are we doing all this for entertainment? Perhaps, the boasted increase in conversion with videos is a matter of potential customers responding to the "reciprocal trigger" of feeling they should pay for the video entertainment. It's like subliminal influences Dave Lakhani describes in his book, "Subliminal Persuasion."

As a marketing skateboarder, don't you get sick and tired knowing that the next time you open up a webpage the first thing you see is a video template with a header above it, because you now have to spend the next 3 to 5 to 10 minutes watching it before you're allowed to go to the next page? The irritating thing about it is that below the video you often find no summary of the points made in the video, or any useful content for your education.

Rerunning the video to refresh your memory about what was said will take another 5 minutes, give or take, even if you've discovered you can drag the arrow in the script loading bar back and forth with the mouse pointer.

In addition, if it's your marketing strategy to have marketing reference files, when you go back to the stored file, you again have to watch the video end to end to bring the issue you have into relative focus. In a direct mail piece you can have the same result in 30 seconds. So, if you watch 10 or 20 videos a day, it becomes a real "time sucker" for busy people.

Logically, for people who are addicted to high-speed living and business, video watching should be at the bottom of the pile for choice, and top of the pile for time consumption. The question remains, will a 5 minute marketing video pull more sales than a four page sales letter? And, if so......why? We may think in a mental picture format, but is that enough of a connection to make videos an attraction winner in buyer's minds?

Other features worth considering are the advertising trends and cycles of ideas and technology over the long term. Let's see........how long did podcasting hang around, or teleseminars, or audio tapes and floppy disks? Good marketing strategies and methods become quickly overused, become fragmented into many more niche oriented strategic marketing elements, and, lastly, end up in potter's field without a headstone. Besides that, entertainment video is increasingly diluting the video marketplace-beware marketers using video, your competition is increasing at an exponential hyper-speed.

As a comparison with other marketing media, one could also consider the first 20 to 30 minutes of a live webinar, or an Mp3 of it, a total waste of time as well, because it takes that long to let the visiting speaker describe his or her life up to the present time. Someone must have spread the idea that the only way a listener can get any value out of the information presented, it to know how "poor" the speaker was, living in a dilapidated trailer, stumbled around looking for work for several years, then suddenly had a breakthrough which made him a millionaire.

How many hundreds of times have you listened to that same story modified to make it unique to that person? Video in marketing is often no different. The presenter's story is more interesting than the topic he discusses. Talk about wasting a busy person's time who is there to learn, not sympathize about a poverty background. We've all been there haven't we? Those who haven't, will never know what a terrific motivating experience they've missed. Who knows where and how video marketing will end up. One thing seems clear. It won't be very long before we find out.

The author, Curt Graham, M.D., an experienced physician, author, and marketer with expertise in medical practice business and marketing strategies, is an expert author and motivator for professionals in the business world. He is a platinum expert author with EzineArticles.com and has been published in Modern Physician and elsewhere. Discover how to make your medical practice flourish and exceed all expectations with simple business and marketing strategies. Click here now for the effective ways to do it. http://www.MarketingAMedicalPractice.com Please feel free to copy, distribute, or use this article and information to benefit others.

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