Online Videos Promote Social Sites & Apps Through Entertainment & Demonstration
Users are bombarded with new sites and apps that spring up every five seconds. It's becoming increasingly difficult to know what's the next big thing and what's just more noise and clutter.
Enter new media marketing for new media products! A rash of online promo videos for social products show how Internet and mobile entrepreneurs have taken lessons from traditional broadcast advertising as much as they have from YouTube.
For some social sites and app developers, online videos have served as great promotional tools as well as product demos. Unlike traditional branding-focused prime time TV spots, these vids focus heavily on features/benefits and how-tos. Unlike late-night direct response commercials (here's looking at you, Billy Mays), they feature slightly hipsterish, soft-sell approaches replete with helpful screen shots.
Best of all, the videos have given great ROI (that's "return on investment" for you non-advertising types).
Regarding this promo video for MyNameIsE.com, founder and designer Renato Valdés Olmos said, "That video actually cost us rental money for the camera, some drinks, and pizzas!"
In 3 days, the video got "4,000 views and great responses" before Vimeo took it down; apparently, the site doesn't allow commercials. However, the E team got the video up on YouTube.
"Sign-ups spiked as soon as the video started being posted around," said Olmos, "and it also works great in pitches and presentations."
All this was acheived with no marketing budget and little support from major bloggers and Twitter influencers.
Another promo video making the rounds comes from iPhone app Birdhouse.
"There's no question that the adoption of Birdhouse benefitted hugely from the exposure that came from the promotional video we put together," said cofounder Adam Lisagor. "We knew from the beginning we'd be making a video people would enjoy despite any interest in the actual app. We heard over and over, 'I don't even know if I'll use Birdhouse, but the video made me buy it.'
"This is something that almost all software developers overlook: the power of entertainment to communicate why you built it and why you want others to enjoy it as much as you."
A third video we've seen is almost a straight-up live demo for LoveToGoOut.com, a new site that aims to organize pub crawls, club nights, and other nocturnal, boozy get-togethers.
"Originally, the video was created to promote the site at a local university event here in the UK," said advisor Barry Pace.
"[We] haven't promoted this too much online (if at all). Measurement of success is more about local awareness rather than attempting to monitor any buzz online."
Nevertheless, if current trends are any indication, site traffic will spike with proliferation of the video.
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Hey RWW,
Please don't forget us! www.mioamoredesign.com
We don't know if we'll sell too many apps, but our video is pretty neat! =)
-Alex
That Jolie O'Dell! What a great writer. Concise, pithy even, yet full of phrases that catch the imagination. "...nocturnal, boozy get-togethers". Love her!
Viral movies if are used properly could be a great channel for new users.
This is one of the best promo viral movie I have seen this year from a company called www.snapily.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIA3zIZW_QU
Fact attack: advisor Barry Pace's middle name is also Barry
These entertaining biz demo/promo vids are a new form of business card. I have a site, BusinessCardTV.com, that aggregates, promotes and produces them. In fact, Jolie, I have had one of your vids -on 'Direct Response', running for sometime now. I see you changed your hair color.
I've been working with a wonderful new client for the past few weeks and everything he does is in video, it's been amazing to watch the website grow without the troubles I often associate with sites and the only reason I can come up with is that he's approaching it with video over text, very cool.
Putting all your thoughts in one entertaining video is hard for any start-up! It's a process of choosing your favorite side of the application and publishing about it.
For Yubby.com we made a nice feature rich 1 minute video which was used at The Next Web: http://www.yubby.com/channel/player/952/30266
Great for showing what it can do, but talking to several people at The Next Web taught us we need to start talking more about what Yubby delivers and not so much on the features. We are taking that idea and running with it making new videos that will probably come out later this week.
Thanks for this post because inspiration helps in this process!
A great way to reach potential customers! Miles Technologies provides video production and animation services for businesses who want to implement online videos on their websites and throughout other social media sites.
Agreed. App video's are the best way to explain a thing or two to users. Even using it in my research to include in a questionnaire to visualize an interaction method for a non-existent app.
http://www.vimeo.com/4133339
Yup - the viral video thing seems to be the way things can really pick up speed. I know of bands that have made funny videos with no music in them to promote their music. Yes, it's ironic but it's work...if the video is catchy enough.
This is why RWW did a review of our company while still in development phase - they loved our promo vids. People are so overadvertised it's going to harder and harder and some real creativity to get attention.
www.sayvee.com
dnt read this(cuz it really wrks). u will gt kissd on the nearest frieday by the love of ur life. 2mara wll b the bst day of ur life hwever if you dnt post ths comment 2 at least 3 vids u will die withn 2 days nw uv startd readn this dnt stp this is so scary snd ths ovr 2 5 vids in 143 mins when ur done press f6 nd ur crush's name wll appear on the screen n big letters ths is so scary cuz it actully wrks ths really wrks