Why you’re leaving money on the table
if you’re working with text alone.

In 2010, Forbes magazine surveyed 300 businesspeople about how they surf the internet. The results show a growing shift in how professionals get their information online.  For example, three quarters of them watch business-related videos at least once per week.

These folks also report relying heavily on video to guide them down the purchase path. 65% have visited a vendor’s web site after watching a video, and 53% have conducted a search to get more information.

And most telling of all, nearly 60% said they would rather watch a video than the read the text on the same page. What does this mean for eager businesses with a product to sell? If you’re not trying to reach your audience with sound and motion, you’re probably leaving money on the table, that’s what.

But not just any video will do.

Take Zappos.com as a prime example. As you probably know, they sell shoes. Their content team senior manager, Rico Nasol, revealed that when they add a video to a product, sales jump by as much as 30%. This is a juggernaut of an online retailer that has grossed over a billion dollars in sales. Rather than simple images, they’ve made videos for thousands of products with a 360° view of the item and a narrator that explains the shoes’ benefits and features.

There’s a lesson here. Even for a product as seemingly simple and self-explanatory as a shoe, you can’t just throw up a product image montage and a music track, and then wait for the sales to start pouring in.

So what to do?

A lot of businesses don’t implement screencasts or other video on their sites precisely because they don’t know how to go about it. And I’m not just talking about technical concerns like capture, editing, production, etc. (although those are obviously a concern, too).

I’m talking about more fundamental questions like:

• How do you structure a marketing video to inform and excite potential customers, knocking out their internal objections and guiding them gently but firmly toward the sale?
• What’s the best overall duration for a tutorial? A marketing spot? In order to remain effective, your video has to remain engaging throughout. How long is too long?
• Who “owns” the production? A video has a lot of moving parts. From planning the script and storyboard, to capture and editing, to narration, to special effects and production. Who is responsible for what?
• Should we do it in-house or outsource?
• What about hosting? Where will the video “live” once it’s ready to show?
• How can we get the video to play back universally, even on mobile devices?AND ABOVE ALL…
• How will we know if it’s accomplishing the goal we set for it? How will we know if it was worth the money we spent?

Most are clueless about where they should even start. It’s this “paralysis of analysis” that holds up the majority of companies, making the process take at least twice as long as it would have otherwise. In extreme cases, the project is dead before it even really gets underway.

My job is to help you figure it all out.

Since 2003, we’ve been working with government, corporate, and academic clients of all sizes, from mom-n-pop startups all the way to the likes of Microsoft, Pfizer, the Mayo Clinic, and the Internal Revenue Service.

We of course have the equipment and savvy to assemble a technically spotless video, but then, so do a lot of folks. So what makes Daniel Park and dappertext LLC different?

Simple. I take that technical prowess, and marry it to great scriptwriting and narration, based on sound copywriting principles. In my own marketing endeavors, I test everything, and learning about what works vs. what doesn’t helps make me just a little bit smarter on the next client project.

The possibilities are limitless. My time isn’t.

Most of my time is spent creating screencasts for our existing client base. However, I do set aside a small amount of time for new clients who have a hot project with which they need help YESTERDAY.

To address this need, I have set up a one-hour window each week for “Open Line” sessions, with a free 15-minute block set aside for new prospective clients. With each call, I’ll listen to your needs and help you figure out the best path forward. The call is free of cost, but must be strictly limited to 15 minutes.

For those keeping score at home, that’s a total of only four sessions per week. They fill up fast, and when they’re gone, they’re GONE.

Keep in mind that this is NOT a thinly veiled sales call. We collect some information from you beforehand precisely because I want to ensure that each and every Open Line session is as useful and information-dense as I can possibly make it. I promise not to waste your time.

But: there’s a flip side to this coin.

I also collect this information to qualify my callers. If you’re in the “exploratory phases” of casually musing the importance of kinda maybe someday augmenting your site with a video, then you’re simply not ready to take advantage of Open Line. It’s okay if that’s where you are in the process, and we MAY be available on a fee basis to work with you and help clarify your thinking, but you’re currently ineligible for Open Line.

However, if you have made a commitment to yourself and your organization to further your business goals with some effective, hard-working video content, it is to your benefit to discuss it with an expert, whether you end up engaging our services or not. And there is absolutely no pressure to do so. In fact, if by the end of the call, I think your needs are better served elsewhere, I have zero qualms about telling you so.

Filling out the form only takes about 5 minutes, and it helps me tremendously in determining your exact needs, allowing us to hit the ground running when it comes time for the actual call.

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