We once lived in a state of blissful ignorance, where the only success metric was ‘does our client like the video we’ve made for them?’ If the answer was yes, we’d duplicate the video in the hundreds or thousands on VHS or DVD, and dispatch them to the target audience in a padded envelope.
And, our clients colluded with us in this ignorance – if they’d commissioned a ‘good video’ then their job was done. Nobody ever knew if the envelopes arrived, if the tape/disc was taken out, if it was viewed, and if so for how long. Worse still, the prevailing wisdom was to have the ‘call-to-action’ right at the end; how silly did my entire industry feel when web analytics developed and we all realised almost nobody watches anything to the end.
We now live in a world where granular measurement of video marketing is possible. We can monitor views, clicks, engagement, ratios … we can tell if a video has delivered a site visitor, a subscriber, a sale – and we may even be able to tell if it’s saved a life.
Hurrah! So, what’s next? As results are all-important, our thoughts are turning to pricing models for video that are exclusively about results. In other words, cast aside the notion of paying for content altogether – decide what results you want to guarantee from your activity, and we will generate the exact amount (and type) of content required to deliver those results. As a campaign develops and is monitored, this may mean that we make 10 videos, or 10 variants of a video; it may also mean that you only get one video – the important thing to remember is that this is about delivering tangible results for your business that you can measure. How many videos it takes us to get you there becomes almost irrelevant, if your objectives are met or exceeded.
Seems odd at first. That’s what we thought at first, but now we’re convinced, and for those clients taking a strategic view of their video marketing we’ll be rolling out this new way of working very soon.
Mark Burgess
CEO
