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I saw a site promoting video products today and it had this ‘fact’:
The Industry is predicted to grow ten-fold in the next 5 years. By 2013, video will account for 2/3 of all global Internet traffic including mobile phones.
So I wonder where this prediction came from?
And even if it’s true, it doesn’t say, “2/3 of all internet marketing traffic will be video”. Yet that’s their premise in suggesting I buy their product.
As far as Internet Marketing (IM) goes, there’s been a massive increase in the number of video-only sales pages. Even video-only opt-in pages – I can’t know what I’m opting in for without watching the video. Well screw you, I’m not wasting 2/3 of my life watching videos when a few bullet points would tell me what I want to know and pique my interest enough to opt-in (or not).
You’d like to think these people have split-tested a video-only version against other pages – text only, text and video. I would bet my business they haven’t.
Video-only is a lazy way to do sales pages; yes, video is great for the psychological triggers that are harder to do in text. But I buy mostly on facts, not emotion. And yes, I know according to many, most people buy on emotive triggers, not ‘boring’ details – like facts. Well why not provide both, you lazy SOBs?
This is what I think happened:
Someone added video to a sales page and got good results. Then someone started selling the idea that video increased sales or opt-ins.
Next thing, someone’s doing opt-in and sales pages where virtually the only content is the video (e.g. most clickbank products now).
And crucially, many many other people thought “this is the trend, this is what I should be doing”. And it came to pass that video-only pages proliferated, no-one bothered to split test and sales depended on an emotionally laden, factually lacking video.
OK, I’m extrapolating a lot from my own feelings, my own loathing of video-only pages; I hate being forced to watch a video with a signal to fluff ratio of 5%. I didn’t set out to make this a promotional post at all but if it wasn’t for my trusy enounce video speed control (http://www.enounce.com/), I’d have gone mad by now. At least I can squander only 10 minutes of my life at a time rather than 20.
Am I the only one? What do you think? I’d love your comments…
Excellent post and about time someone spoke up about this.
I agree that video-only sales pages and emails are the “lazy” approach to marketing. I’ve found many people that use this method are either not good at writing content or just don’t want to do the work involved in writing good sales copy.
I almost never watch video sales pages. I can read a LOT faster than you can talk and I’m not going to waste precious minutes of my life listening to people babbling on.
Give me the facts….give me the benefits in bullet points and actually WRITE something that I can refer back to instead of having to listen to the video AGAIN because of something I may have missed.
Now if someone wants to include a video ALONG WITH ad copy that’s fine. Then I will read your copy and may even watch your video afterwards
because you took the time to sit down and write something .
.
I hate them, Troy. No, that isn’t strong enough. I absolutely loathe them.
As Jackie said, I want to see bullet points. I want to see something clear and concise that takes me no more (preferably far less) than 5 minutes to take in.
If I’m new to whatever it is you’re offering, I’m not going to sit there for 20 minutes while your video buffers, plays a bit, locks up my browser, plays a bit more, until I’m left at the end wondering what it was I just sat through.
I may be missing out by doing this, but if all your sales page has on it is a video, I don’t watch it. I just move on.
I had a feeling I wouldn’t be the only one Louise!
Agreed, I want to spend almost zero time if it’s just for an opt-in – I’ll decide on the first or second email whether it’s of value.
And as Jackie says, there’s nothing worse than wanting to go back and check something out when there’s only a video. Especially as the latest players won’t even let you FF or rewind.
I have to say video is being used more and more and people look to it more and more. However for the IM niche and the types of things we do I feel written content along with video content should play hand in hand. Have both available for those who want to learn by reading or by seeing. Everyone learns differently.
Sean, thanks for the comment (you’d gone to spam)
I don’t know if people are going to video more and more – not for information. Most people can skim a page of text in a fraction of the time taken to watch a video.
But yes, ideally pages should have both (so long as the video can be stopped easily – or not be autoplay at all)