If you have been marketing online or driving traffic for any length of time, you understand the necessity of evolving with the marketplace. In fact, the marketplace actually evolves with introductions of new technologies.
Conversely, if you want to increase your marketing reach and prospecting- you need to stay updated with your understanding of technology, and what is available for getting additional visitors to your site.
Let’s take a look at a couple strategies that are becoming increasingly important in traffic generation and marketing – using videos and audio (specifically, podcasting).
Using streaming videos in the internet as a form of marketing is a relatively new approach. Currently, most marketing brochures and newsletters are using text and pictures in combination to attract a consumer’s attention. Some pictures are a combination of still and animated objects to better the
chances of attracting a prospective customer. But, if there is anything advertisers and consumers have learned about marketing, television advertisements are still the best way to attract attention for a product and keep it in the consumer’s memory.
To fully understand why internet streaming videos are the next step in online marketing, we need to be able to grasp the objective of advertisers and the effects of the different methods of advertising.
To begin with, online advertising began mainly with newsletters in the form of emails or pop-up screens containing pure text and some inanimate pictures. As internet users became more and more accustomed to surfing the web, these newsletters and pop-up advertisements gradually turned into annoyances. Strategies to block e-mails and popups emerged to combat the annoying distraction – and have made newsletter, e-mail and popup marketing quite difficult.
As far as email newsletters and advertisements are concerned, a similar phenomenon is occurring where they have suddenly evolved into what is known as junk mail or spam mail in internet language. Again, anti-virus protection software creators incorporated spam mail protection within their software while numerous sites in the internet make available free, downloadable anti-spam software. The biggest blow to spam mail marketing was when e-mail providers decided to add anti-spam or spam blocking utilities in their website. As a result of these measures against pop-ups and spam messaging, an avenue in internet marketing is about to close.
This is where streaming video comes in. It is undisputed that television commercials are still the best way to attract attention. The advertiser needs to make the product look good in TV, but their primary objective is to attract the consumer’s attention. Their second goal is to make the video memorable enough so that the customer remembers the brand name when they have need of the product.
One of the greatest strengths of internet marketing through streaming videos is the ability to grab attention. The only thing that you as an advertiser have to do is to make the video interesting enough that it maintains or improves on that initial level of interest. When the video is old enough to become common place, you replace it with a new one. Unlike pop-ups or spam messages or newsletters, they cannot become an annoyance because the first thing it does is to grab the consumer’s attention and curiosity.
With the use of videos, the consumer gets a clear picture of what your product or idea is all about. This is an added bonus to the attention grabbing feature of using videos for your marketing or advertising campaigns.
Using audio is another way of drawing attention to your product or service, and is another excellent way to build relationships with your visitors. It helps to grab attention, and certainly can be more interesting than simply having words on a page.
Here are a few tips for the Podcasting beginners to help you get started generating traffic by podcasting.
The most amazing thing about Podcasting is that it gives you the ability to air your voice across the continents all over the world. You need not have to be the head of any country to send your message through the media. The advent of Podcasting lets you do what used to be a privilege of some powerful personalities only.
In simple terms, you can imagine Podcasting as an audio version of Blog. Podcasters record the audio program just like any other radio program. Then they upload these programs on Internet with the help of MP3 files or RSS feeds. End user has the liberty of downloading program of his choice on his iPod or any other portable media player. Later on, he can listen to theses programs whenever or wherever he wishes to at his convenience. However, in the sharp contrast to the radio programs there is no regulatory body the controls the Podcasting. It gives you the liberty of talking on any topic of your choice.
