The Web Uncovered

While there are many aspects to running an effective online marketing campaign, including video is seen as imperative, especially if there is an intent for going viral. The billion dollar deal that brought Youtube into the Google fold only reiterates this fact. Before we can appropriately address how to approach the use of video in online marketing, we need to understand why it works with people.

Coming back to Marshall Mcluhan, media is either hot or cold, either interactive or ready-made. The internet transcends these boundaries. I won’t divulge too much here as this is a post of it’s own. However, beyond the fact that humans are visually-based, and that culturally we put a visual emphasis on everything (“’see’ what I mean?”), video has been and will likely be the quintessential example of hot media. Whether it is a cooking recipe, a guitar lesson, or your product commercial, people will choose a video over a typographical description 99 percent of the time.

Another reason for this is that Video is a mixed medium. It can be visual, audio, and typographical at the same time. This solidifies it as a hot medium.

The Takeaway: Taking this all into consideration, your target audience wants to come as close to experience your service, product, etc, as possible within the confines of technological ability. If you don’t have a video showcasing your value-added, your competition will, and likely already has. To have an online presence to be multisensorial in a mixed medium.

Marshall Mccluhan maybe remember for his wonderful observations of how the media and society are inseparably intertwined.  However,  the vast changes in technology since his death in 1980 has astounding ramifications for those marketing in the digital age.

If the entity providing the message is the medium, they still may be tied to the message as long as the source is credible.   The appearance of credibility is so easy to create online that it becomes increasingly difficult for media consumers to differentiate between credible sources and well-performed shams.  However, if the medium is the internet, then the message is incoherent.  There is no message on the internet.

But this is not completely dreadful news.  In fact in means that the medium becomes so constant that the only thing left is the message, even if only in hot terms.  However, the issue is that many older marketing managers see the internet as the ready-made fix-all and fail to recognize that not only can content not be developed, but that it must be done in standard marketing terms; segmentation, value-added, and placement.

The Takeaway:

Large-scale web presence requires quality content.  The internet transcends McCluhan’s hot media/cold media labels, so pictures and videos can be followed with detailed descriptions of your product or services, in a multi-sensorial approach.  Technology is great, but the more technology-savvy your target audience is, the more clearly focused your message must be.  In short, online marketing is not a bandaid for a bad marketing plan.