Online Video Content: A Case Study

Online Video Content: A Case Study July 19, 2009

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IT’S THE BEGINNING

I’m involved with an incredibly interesting case study using online video as website content for driving traffic and sales. This is one of the largest examples I’ve personally witnessed to see the incredible benefits of using video for online customer education and promotion.

The video production company I work with is currently building a new website for a local Oklahoma plastic surgeon, Dr. Juan Brou. We are filling it to the brim with all kinds of videos. Instructional videos, educational videos, videos of patient testimonials, interviews with the doctor, surgery videos, animated anatomical videos, videos by local news crews. In total, we are adding about one-hundred videos to this website.

(We did all the video on an incredibly low budget, more on that below.)

HOW WELL WILL VIDEO DRIVE TRAFFIC?

My first question is, how well will all this video content do as a traffic and lead generator? The ultimate bottom line question is: Will Dr. Brou’s phone ring as a result of all this video on his website?

I’m betting that the answer is a resounding YES.

Over the coming months, I will be updating the progress of his site as a public evaluation and learning experience for how effective online video is as a source of website content and online promotion here at Video Production Tips.

THE PROBLEM

The old website we are replacing for Dr. Brou is simply not performing. It looks nice, but draws only a trickle of traffic. The search engines barely know it exists. All-in-all, it’s been a total flop in terms of marketing benefits for the good doctor, in spite of the fact that it has been a major expense.

Now wonder, I thought as I scanned the site the first time. Very little content, poorly written with no keyword research behind it.

THE SOLUTION

In addition to fixing those issues, the new website is loaded with video. We want web surfers to meet Dr. Brou face-to-face, so a talking-head video introduction is planned for a prominent spot on the home page. That talking head, plus a few new testimonials, are the only new video segments we are having to actually produce now.

WHERE TO GET ALL THE VIDEO?

We are filling up the rest of the website with video content from two different sources. One is content we are able to lease, which makes our job much easier and cheaper. An innovative online video provider, Understand.com, has pre-produced hundreds of computer-animated medical videos they lease out to medical websites.

This makes it affordable and easy. All we had to do was order the videos, instruct Understand how we wanted them customized and they gave us embed code. Without such an arrangement, we could never hope to be able to afford this much video content of this high quality. To produce these videos from scratch would cost upwards to a million dollars. We’re leasing them for $1,500 a year.

SOMETHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

We’re also cutting down a thirty-minute show produced several years ago for Dr. Brou. It was doing nothing besides gathering dust on the shelf. The old graphic opening had to be recreated, but other than that, everything was pulled directly from the edited show. Fortunately, it had been written using a segmented format, so each topic was already isolated. I was easily able to re-purpose 17 new videos out of the old show. For the internet, have MORE videos that are SHORTER is much better than having one long video.

So between re-puposing old video and leasing a pre-made library, we were able to build a website with an incredible amount of video content for a local client on a budget.

Stay tuned to see how well the video content does for Dr. Brou. In three months time, I told him if it’ss bringing in hordes of new traffic as I predict, he owes me a free face lift! Or maybe liposuction. I dunno, that’s a hard choice.