The thing about video that many marketers overlook is the eyeballs part of the equation. If you make a great video but no one ever sees it, is it still a great video. Well, maybe, if you’re a billionaire and you don’t care about results.
Unfortunately, most marketers don’t fall into that category. A great video is no good at all without a great user experience.
Video is on everyone’s mind lately. If you aren’t watching it, you are probably on the production end trying to figure out how to get your share of eyeballs to give your video a little love.
This means factoring mobile platforms into your marketing planning. Device manufacturers haven’t make it easy. If you just list the most popular mobile device resolutions, you come up with about a dozen or so. Factor in all the different browsers and the video player compatibility with different operating systems, and the your video project starts to look overwhelming when you think about trying to deliver a consistent user experience to everyone in your target market.
There isn’t a simple answer to this conundrum. At least not yet. Meanwhile, here are a few suggestions to help you get more prospects into your brand’s funnel and generate more sales with your video budget.
You aren’t done yet
You’ve got a fantastic video in the can, it is edited perfectly and the post production is exquisite with a resonant voice-over and snappy special effects. Miraculously, it under budget and everyone on the team is high-fiving and fist bumping.
Hold the celebration. Your journey to your target market’s brain has just begun. You’ve still got to deliver it to a device you audience will use to watch it. Then you’ve got to get their attention, and keep them engaged with your content. And, all this has to appear seamless and be effortless for the user.
Make a splash
The first couple of seconds are the important ones. That’s all the time you have to captivate your viewers before they forget about you and your video forever.
The thumbnail image they see first (also called a splash screen), is your invitation to stop doing something else and pay attention to you. This image literally needs to be arresting. It has to do the equivalent of seducing their fickle attention span in less time than it takes to say, “Attention span.”
To accomplish this, you may find yourself spending as much time getting the splash screen right as you did with the entire video. The images have to pop, the colors have to work together, and the fonts have to be instantly legible. If you do all this, you have a chance at getting the rest of your message seen and heard.
What’s in a player?
The player you use must render the video on everything from a regular iPhone to a full-size HD monitor. This means 640 pixels wide on the low end and 1920 pixels wide on the upper end. You also want to make sure the aspect ratio of your video is not compromised or squashed in one direction or the other. This means using a responsive video player that is device agnostic to serve up your video content.
Make sure your web site is using code that can figure out which device and operating system you user has and then send that user a page and a video window that will be rendered and scaled appropriately for the device’s display and operating system.
All you have to do is…
If you want your viewers to do more than watch your video, whatever you want them to do has to make sense at the miniature scale they are using. You may want them to click a button or fill in their email address or something else. Whatever action you want them to take should not entail reading any fine print. Big, bold and graphic is the name of the game at this point. In fact, the more you can make it look like a game, the better.
You’ll probably want to do some testing with your call to action to figure out how viewers brains are really working when they see what you are presenting to them. This is no time to make assumptions, especially if you want consistent actions as a result of your call to action. Having users bail on your carefully crafted video right at the call to action is frustrating, but it is also instructive. Dig into your analytics reports and figure out if the problem is device specific, operating system specific or something else.
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The experiences your mobile users are having cannot be left to chance. The number of your mobile users is only going to grow. In fact, mobile users will probably be the major growth strategy for your brand in the very near future if it isn’t already. What this means is that you and your team are going to have to get good at mobile video.
Mark Kirkpatrick is a proud father and communications specialist.
