Today, videos are used at many points in the customer acquisition and client relationship management process—from generating interest with prospects to communicating with loyal customers and providing improved post-sale service.

Videos are everywhere (in search engines, on websites, on every social media platform including YouTube etc. and in offline locations e.g. taxis). And while watching video has become ubiquitous, video marketing by small businesses is still a largely untapped opportunity for many local businesses.

If you have not considered video marketing before or are looking for new ways to market your business online, here are 11 reasons web video marketing is a great way to improve your marketing plan:

1.    People prefer to watch video over reading text—20% of visitors will read the majority of text on a website, but 80% will watch the same content in the form of a video (forrester research).
2.    Video marketing can be done cost effectively and is much less expensive than most print advertising .
3.    Video makes your website 6 times more likely to convert a “browser” into a paying customer (forrester research) .
4.    YouTube (not Bing or Yahoo) is the #2 search engine.
5.    Videos posted online can be tracked and measured—when measured, data collected can help you understand if video marketing is achieving your marketing goals.
6.    Video marketing can be highly targeted to your audience, including their geographic location. Given that most businesses are local and most searches are done for local businesses, video is a great media for local marketing.
7.    Video marketing is growing exponentially in volume, distribution and adoption. Forrester estimates that 90% of the online population will watch video regularly by the year 2017. Every minute, 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.
8.    Video can improve one-to-one marketing. Video provides a deeper emotional connection between presenter and viewer, as well as a more personable message.
9.    Video is interactive and social media friendly— with little effort it is easily shared across social media platforms and embedded into any website.
10.   Video is fun. Reading text is (for many)…not as fun. If you make your business fun to engage with through media like video, you may receive more interest and more attention from customers.
11.    With the growth of mobile devices and the fact that video is more optimized than text for smartphone viewing (text is still small and difficult to read on most smartphones; tablets are better), videos are likely to increase in importance as mobile devices continue to replace traditional desktops. In the 3rd quarter of 2011, tablet users spent 30% more time watching video per internet session than desktop computer users. (source: Ooyala). The mobile video audience has gained 15 million viewers in the last two years, a 77% increase via Business Insider. [source: http://www.magnetvideo.com/content/online+video+statistics+for+november+2012/306349 for the stats]

As mobile marketing becomes increasingly important to your business, video marketing might be the right media for optimizing your visibility on mobile devices. In our experience, communicating to your customers where they are already spending their time through a media channel they prefer is an important part of marketing successfully!

The list goes on…

What would you add to this list? We know there are dozens if not hundreds of other compelling reasons to use video and web video to help grow your business.

Read this related video marketing article.