It forecasts business Internet video traffic will be 66% of business Internet traffic by 2020 – up from 44% in 2015. The Case for Increasing Video Marketing Budgets Even if you have an accurate forecast of where the digital video marketing business is headed, and you've taken the time to learn about the top trends and insights for video marketing in 2017, this doesn’t mean that the members of the C-Suite in your organization will buy into your vision. This means that when they were your age 20 years ago, the online world was very different. Next, you can ask up to 10 questions at a time and select from a variety of question formats, like single answer, two choices with an image, multiple-answers, and multiple answers with an image, which can all be used to screen respondents. While on mobile, app users answer demographic questions up front. Websites commonly have several kinds of micro conversions, so it's likely that you will want to set up at least two or three goals, including: Email signup: Create a URL Destination goal and define your “Thank you for signing up” page as the goal page. Browsed site extensively: Create a Pages/Session goal. Then, the results of a new video marketing initiative or an influencer marketing campaign don’t get blended or buried somewhere in your organization’s Google Analytics Reports. Is there a better way to measure sales than completed purchases? That’s a better way to measure sales than completed purchases.
How valuable would it be to have an accurate forecast of where the digital video marketing business is headed in 2020? Well, among other things, an accurate forecast would help you:
- Develop a business case for allocating more budget to video marketing.
- Improve by experimenting with new initiatives.
So, where can you find the equivalent of Grays Sports Almanac for our industry and era? Well, the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Complete Forecast for 2015 to 2020 is a good place to start. Among other things, it predicts more than one billion new Internet users will join the global Internet community, growing from three billion in 2015 to an estimated 4.1 billion by 2020.
The Cisco VNI forecast also predicts that internet video will account for 79% of global Internet traffic by 2020 – up from 63% in 2015. It estimates the world will reach three trillion Internet video minutes per month by 2020, which is five million years of video per month, or about one million video minutes every second. And it estimates that HD and Ultra HD Internet video will make up 82% of Internet video traffic by 2020 – up from 53% in 2015.
The Cisco VNI forecast Internet also forecasts video will increase four-fold between 2015 and 2020. It predicts that video traffic will be 82% of consumer Internet traffic by 2020 – up from 68% in 2015. It forecasts business Internet video traffic will be 66% of business Internet traffic by 2020 – up from 44% in 2015. And it notes that virtual reality traffic quadrupled in the past year and estimates it will increase 61-fold by 2020. This report represents the culmination of months of data gathering, analysis, due diligence, and crosschecking with syndicated and direct data sources. But, I can hear some of you saying, “Okay, so now what do we do?” Well, as I indicated at the beginning of this column, having an accurate forecast of where the digital video marketing business is headed in 2020 can help you accomplish at least three things. I’ll explore the first one this week – and the next two in the coming weeks. Hopefully, this will provide you with a roadmap for getting from here to 2020 successfully.
The Case for Increasing Video Marketing Budgets
Even if you have an accurate forecast of where the digital video marketing business is headed, and you’ve taken the time to learn about the top trends and insights for video marketing in 2017, this doesn’t mean that the members of the C-Suite in your organization will buy into your vision. Why? Well, it’s complicated. Let’s avoid the stereotypical assumption that they’re just dumber than the dinosaurs. Instead, let’s give them credit for being smart and experienced executives, who are probably Baby Boomers (ages 51-69). This means that when they were your age 20 years ago, the online world was very different.
As a Baby Boomer myself, I remember what the online world was like in January 1997. I was the director of corporate communications at Ziff-Davis and we had just launched The Site, hosted by Soledad O’Brien, with MSNBC. Back then, I had a Toshiba laptop with 166 MHz processor chip, 8 MB of RAM and possibly 1 GB of hard disk. I also had the privilege of using a company-paid dial-in modem at 14.4 kbps – 28.8 kbps. And I had an early-generation cell phone – that was more than 3 cm in thickness – so that I could be available for any urgent communications related to my business responsibilities.
Popular Internet applications were basically nonexistent. Almost every app I relied on was PC centric – the mystery of World Wide Web was still in very early years of being woven. There was no streaming media over the Internet – most of the apps were text driven and any rudimentary webpage animation represented an awe-striking contrast to the volumes of static content. Online gaming was limited to games downloaded to your PC. Voice was the main application over cell phones. Television was delivered over analogue signal and rabbit ears.
Netscape was the popular Internet browser. Internet service providers (ISPs) were moving from charging by the hour for Internet connectivity to flat monthly fees. Amazon.com had been launched as an online bookstore but e-books had still not appeared on the scene. Google had begun as a research project but the popular online video platform, You Tube, was almost a decade away.
So, even if some of your corporation’s top senior executives are venturesome, I suspect that more members of the C-Suite are deliberate, just as many are skeptical, and some are downright traditional. This means that even an idea as good as allocating more budget to video marketing will need a champion who has the respect of management to make this happen.
That’s why one of the venturesome senior executive will often ask you to make the business case in order to convince the other deliberate, skeptical, and traditional members of the C-Suite that shifting money out of other budgets and into video marketing is a good idea. So, you need to learn how to think like they think and speak like they speak in order to get buy-in from the management team.
And, that means building your business case on objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) that they value. Let’s explore four goals and metrics that might do the trick:
- Brand awareness
- Engagement
- Lead generation
- Sales
As I’ve said several times, some video marketers mistakenly think that the right metrics for measuring brand awareness is “impressions” or “views.” If you doubt me, than ask yourself the question: “How many impressions or views do we need to increase brand awareness by 17%?” If you don’t have an answer, then it’s dangerous to use these metrics as KPIs. What happens if you claim that your new video marketing initiative will generate a ton of eyeballs, prompting a deliberate, skeptical, or traditional member of the C-Suite to ask this question?
So, what’s the alternative?…
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