Win a Free Animated Marketing Video!!!

Welcome to Switch Marketing’s First Ever Video Contest!

Video is the most engaging marketing method online and we think everyone should give it a chance and see the results it can bring. So we’ve decided to launch a contest on Twitter where the company with the most votes WINS A FREE VIDEO!

All the details are below along with contact information should you have any questions.

If you’re wondering whether this is a contest worth trying for, we’re obviously going to say yes! There are more than $11,000 in prizes to be won so we’ll leave that up to you.

When:
March 1 - 15, 2010

Grand Prize: A FREE 2-minute Plus, animated web video for your company. The video will be produced by Switch Marketing in the 8 weeks after the contest ends. This package is worth $8,000 !

Second prize: A 1-minute Plus screencast video for the business that comes in second. This package is worth $3,000!

Why:
Video is the most effective communication and marketing tool online. Having a professionally produced video that explains what you do, who you are or how to use your product(s)/service(s) is a great way to brand your business, increase traffic to your website and boost your conversion rates.

How:
To get started follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/switchmarketing

Then send out the following tweet to your followers:

Win a free animated marketing video! Follow @switchmarketing & RT this to your followers. http://twttr.me/dbqR

Once you nominate your company by following us and retweeting this message, we will DM you with a link to fill out a short form with a bit more information.

Once you fill out the form you can start asking for some Twitter love from your followers.

Ask your followers to vote for you by Tweeting the following message on Twitter:

I vote for @company to win a  free animated marketing video from @switchmarketing because….
That’s it!  So easy!

The Rules:

1. All votes must be received by midnight EST on Monday March 15, 2010 to count.
2. All nominations must come from a @switchmarketing follower.
3. Your followers can only vote for you once each.
4. The winner of the 2-min Plus Explanatory web video from Switch Marketing will be announced on Tuesday March 16, 2010 at 2 p.m. EST via Twitter.
5. Video projects that we are currently working on are not eligible to win this contest.
6. Switch Marketing reserves the right to use the winners’ videos on our website portfolio and video sharing sites.
7. The winner can then contact Shelby at 1-877-297-6090 ext. 725 to claim their prize.

All questions can be directed to Shelby at videomarketing@switchmarketing.com

Producers of Explanatory Videos

A couple of months ago as you may remember, we posted a blog that listed some explanatory video producers following a TechCrunch article titled “The Underutilized Power of the Video Demo…” that got a lot of attention.

Well, after attempting a little market research and realizing that it’s still quite difficult to search for and find explanatory video producers, I thought this is a list we should keep updated over time. So here is an updated version that I will continue to add to upon request.

If your company should be on this list but isn’t please just add a comment with a link to your portfolio and pricing if available.

So here it is! We will rightfully begin the list with the Common Craft Explainer Network which includes the following:

Switch Marketing: Portfolio - Pricing

Say it Visually:  Portfolio

Lilipip:  Portfolio - Pricing

Splainers:  Portfolio

1/29 Explainers:  Portfolio

Animated Explanations: Portfolio

Other explanatory web video producers include:

Nutintuit:  Portfolio

Video Army:  Portfolio

Transvideo Studios: Portfolio

EyeView Digital:  Portfolio

Epipheo Studios: Portfolio

Simpleshow:   Website

Howcast:   Portfolio

Wheelhouse Communications:   Portfolio

RapidFire Video:    Portfolio

Please let us know what you think about our list and follow us on Twitter for access to our web video Twitter list as well!

Short Videos vs. Long Videos

It`s probably no surprise that short videos are more engaging and effective than long videos. Heck, we’ve built a business on this knowledge, but the stats recently reported by Wistia, a hosting service  for thousands of videos, are out of this world!

They first compared two videos by one of their clients. “The red line in the graph represents the engagement of their 30-second video. The blue line is the engagement graph for a 90-second video. It’s expected that these two videos would have different engagement graphs, but what’s odd is that the first 30 seconds of both videos are identical!”

The results? “Even though viewers were exposed to the same exact content, the drop-off rate of the 90-second video was much higher. By the end of the 30-second video there were about double the number of viewers than at the same point in the 90-second video.”

This means that just knowing the video is longer is discouraging enough to viewers to quit watching earlier on than they will if they know the video is short. It’s really a fear of commitment!

It’s also interesting how Wistia measured these results on a larger scale including many of their clients to see how many people watched videos of different lengths all the way through.

While viewing length continues to drop after 30 seconds, the big drop begins at two minutes plus. It seems that this is the point where many attention spans timeout and lose interest. If it’s important that your viewers make it to the end of your video for say, a call to action then this two-minute time line is one to aim for.

Depending on your goals for your video the length will vary, but the better you can simplify your message into a shorter, more engaging video - the better the response you’ll receive.

Check out the full article titled Does length matter? It does for Video!

Positive Predictions for Web Video

Yesterday Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer released his annual seven predictions for the New Year and we may be a bit bias, but we think his predictions are great!

Focusing on the elements of the article that speak to web video, here is a short summary of Mr. Ramsey’s predictions for 2010. (We’ve bolded the parts we like best).

“During 2010, as US ad budgets crack open just a little, look for an accelerated migration of ad dollars from traditional to digital media. According to Forrester Research, 59% of US marketers plan to increase their budgets for digital by pulling funds from traditional outlets. Other sources support this shift, including a recent survey among Association of National Advertisers members and a separate study from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.”

(more…)

A Simple Video about Simple Video

Here it is… the moment you’ve all been waiting for.

Our completed video on the power of simple video!!

If you didn’t get a chance to read our last post on the psychology behind simple video, now is the time to do so. Or, if you don’t feel like reading - just watch the video!

We think our Creative Director Chris Dacol did a brilliant job on this video! What do you think?

Psychology Behind Simple Video

There’s no doubt that videos are cool and fun to watch - certainly more fun than reading page after page of text let’s face it. It’s become rather well known that having a video on your website that explains what you do, what you offer, why people should choose you or how you work, will get a better response from your audience.

But, why?

Aside from being more exciting than text, there are underlying reasons hidden deep within the brain that make video an extremely valuable tool for business owners.

Let’s start by looking at it in terms of time. You have about 8 seconds to capture the attention of a visitor to your website. If they don’t leave by then what are the odds they are going to leave understanding, let alone remembering your message?

Well, if you only provide text or audio, your visitor will only remember 10% of what they read 72 hours later. How much will they remember if they watch a video? Wait for it…..

68 percent!   

To understand this a little more we looked into recent research being done in cognitive psychology and found out that the brain works in a pretty fascinating way. We discovered that when trying to captivate an audience’s attention, keep their attention and send them home with a message they remember, there are three important factors to keep in mind.

1. Keep it simple.

Only include relevant information and movement. Our brain stores working memory, which only has a certain capacity. Non essential information will take up that space and distract from the learning and this is why we make sure our videos aren’t too busy - to keep the viewer focused on the message.

2. Know your audience.

Your viewer’s prior knowledge is important to know. That’s because new knowledge is built on that foundation. Also it’s much easier to retrieve at a later time, when it’s attached to   something they already know and understand. This is why we use analogies in our videos so often. 

3. Use powerful learning tools.

Dual coding theory is key! What is it?
Combining audio and visual information together for the purpose of learning.

Don’t forget that your viewer will remember 58% more when you teach through both these senses.

As our attention spans get increasingly shorter, the time you have to captivate your audience and explain what you do also becomes shorter.

That is why simple, explanatory video is such a powerful business tool.  Don’t forget to check out our final video on December 10th that you can share with all your video friends!

Web Video for B-to-B Marketers

If you take a look at our portfolio you’ll notice a lot of videos produced for business to consumer marketers, but you’ll also see some of the videos we’ve created for business to business marketers.

B-to-B companies are utilizing the power of simple video to boost business and increase sales, and it’s working!

Recently, Daniel Sevitt wrote a blog for ReelSEO that included Brightcove’s recently published “Top 6 Reasons B-to-B Marketers Need Video”

1. Grab people’s attention instantly
2. Tell your story in less time
3. Bring your ideas to life
4. Make your site stickier
5. Create a buzz with viral video
6. Bring your website into the 21^st century

Parsing that list into three types of video based on their natural homes – embedded offsite, on the site’s homepage and within the site – helped to identify the three kinds of online video for business:

• Viral Video
• Conversion Video
• Educational Video

Check out the full blog post on reelseo.com to learn more about the three types of video mentioned above.

Our Video Packages

Finally a video to explain our videos!

You may know that we offer four different packages, but do you know the difference between each one? We found this a bit hard to describe in words and thought hey, why not make a video? After all, videos do make things a lot more fun and easy to understand, right?

So here it is. If you’d like to learn more, see our pricing or inquire about a custom made video for your business just fill out the short form on the right, and we’ll get right back to you.

Student2Student - Textbook Exchange Made Easy

Has your wallet ever been victim to purchasing a textbook?

If you answered yes, then you are going to love our newest video! Oliver Berchtold, a young entrepreneur and student has created a service that aims to make college life cheaper for all.

Student2Student.com in an online platform that students can use for free to  exchange and sell old textbooks on and find the books they need. They can search by campus and if they can’t find it on their campus, they can use a compare feature to find the cheapest place it’s available. Cool!

Oliver was so much fun and so easy to work with, and luckily he thought the same of us! This is what he wrote to us once his video was completed:

“I am super happy with the video. Everyone was so super nice and very responsive. It was literally a perfect engagement. I really appreciated the easy-going approach. This is going to be great and I have absolutely no problem to put a reference on my page of Switchmarketing once it gets some traction. I am already thinking of some other portal we would like to develop so expect more business.
Thanks again for all the hard work.”

Unisys Video: SmartCash Vault

Have you seen the video on the Unisys SmartCash Vault yet? Well, you’re about to! Unisys came out with this new vault to tighten cash processes, increase security and enhance cash flow and like all of our clients, they wanted to explain their new system in a way that was fun and easy to understand.

We had a lot of fun working on this one and Unisys was a great company to work with. They used this video on different online platforms like YouTube to drive traffic back to a landing page where potential clients could learn more about the vault and its many features.

Bob Walters from Unisys said, “WOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love it. Thank you very much!”