Why Sales Letters May Still Beat Online Video
By Anna Johnson on December 13th, 2008Yesterday, I listed six tactics MarketingSherpa recommends for Internet marketers to use in their online video marketing. The first tactic listed – use ‘edutainment’ videos – deserves special mention. Basically because it reflects an important distinction: that your online videos need to entertain, not just educate.
To be blunt, the novelty of online video is wearing off.
People are becoming less and less entranced seeing moving images on a website. They are realizing that watching a Powerpoint presentation or a talking head on a website is just as exciting as watching a Powerpoint presentation in a seminar or a talking head on television. In other words, a Powerpoint presentation or talking head, of itself, is NOT exciting at all.
What’s more, video (like audio) has a MAJOR drawback: it cannot easily or quickly be scanned for specific information. So although some Internet marketers may claim that any kind of video – even long, boring videos – will generate higher conversions than sales letters… I don’t think this trend will last.
For many Internet marketers’ online video to continue attracting and converting a significant number of viewers, either the educational value or the entertainment value or both will need to increase.
What is ‘educational’… what is ‘entertainment’… and what are sufficiently high levels of each will vary on a case by case basis. However, Powerpoint presentations and talking heads will still work… IF they offer sufficient education and/or entertainment.
For example, Rich Schefren’s 26 hour video marathon conducted back in September was just a video stream of Rich sitting at his desk, looking into the camera. It was, however, a huge success, generating 27,355 viewers in that 26 hour period. Why? Because Rich was giving people powerful Internet marketing information – he was not just educating, he was answering the specific questions that his audience had.
An Internet marketing ‘guru’ who has used more ‘entertainment’ in his online videos is Frank Kern. Frank has gone so far as to create and act out a fictional (and rather hilarious) story to attract attention, traffic and conversions.
While there must be some kind of entertainment value in your online videos – which does NOT necessarily mean theatrics or creating fictional stories – I do think that, given the choice, Internet marketers are wise to emphasize education over entertainment. That is, if they are results oriented. We need only to consider television commercials and infomercials to see why.
Television commercials that are big on entertainment tend to draw attention to themselves i.e. the commercials rather than the products or services they advertise. That’s essentially the objection we, as direct response marketers, have long had against what Jay Abraham calls ‘institutional advertising’.
Infomercials, meanwhile, do not generally involve any kind of theatre or obvious creativity. They generally use a format involving an interview between two people and a product demonstration.
And, trust me, however boring it seems, this is the format that works. Otherwise, we wouldn’t see it used over and over again by infomercial producers and networks that simply can’t afford to run infomercials that don’t make money.
Of course, at the end of the day, testing and tracking will indicate what works and what doesn’t. But if the history of ALL other media is anything to go by – whether it’s print, television, radio – then people will be ‘sold’ less and less by the medium, and more and more by the content.
So, as Internet marketers, we can probably look forward to a time where it’s not enough – or even ideal – to put up just any kind of online video. Our videos will need to explain and entertain in a way that yields the best possible response from our audience.
By the same token, let’s not assume that video will always be the best vehicle for yielding the optimum response. In many situations, using good old fashioned text – e.g. a sales letter – may end up generating the best results.
Source: MarketingSherpa, “Video’s Role In Your Marketing: 6 Proven Tactics To Support Lead Gen, Search, Product Launches,” MarketingSherpa, Rich Schefren, “We Beat John McCain,” Strategic Profits Blog, September 18, 2008
December 14th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
The reason most people click on advertisments is curiosity. A good clear text that explains oin as few words as possible what the ad is about is in my experience the best.
It then gives the enquirer enough information tto decide whether or nor he/she is interested enough to go furthure and give their name and e-mail address for further information.
Time is money. Having to sit through long videos followed by long sales letters is far more likely to put the enquirer off and they do not then proceed. Enough information to know what it is about is enough.