Video Marketing Tools

People love to be entertained by video. This fact is emboldened by the ever increasing multi-trillion dollar valuation of the global film industry as well as the hyper-growth multi-billion dollar valuation of the online video industry. As a marketing medium, online video marketing offers the dynamic ability to not only entertain but educate, attract, promote, and convert individuals interested in information related your products and services. With the cost of digital video production drastically dropping, the available bandwidth and power of content delivery networks dramatically increasing, and the options for distribution heavily consolidated, the time for video marketing is now. In order to jump in this space in a quick and efficient manner, I have outlined several video marketing tools that will help to get your campaigns up and running in no time.

Video Marketing Books

The two video marketing books that I elected to cover are both YouTube marketing centric. However, while the majority of the principles in these two books are centered on YouTube, most of the strategies can be applied across the various platforms. What Google is to search marketing, YouTube is to video marketing.

YouTube for Business by Michael Miller is one of those books that made my group of ten to fifteen readily accessible desk references. Michael does an excellent job educating both the novice as well as the expert on all things video marketing related. From early stage strategy development to low cost video production, and ultimately promotion, this book succinctly explains the process and presents the various options. Michael touches on key aspects of video marketing ranging from video search engine optimization, video promotion and distribution opportunities, as well as call-to-action overlays that include links to lead generation landing pages.

In his book, YouTube Strategies, Paul Colligan focuses on search, social, and content marketing strategies for video. He goes into explicit detail on key VSEO tactics, methods to increase social video sharing, as well as suggestions for content planning, production, and optimized distribution. Paul provides a comprehensive list of YouTube video marketing software options complete with pros and cons of each third party tool.

Video Marketing Certification

As we are currently in the earliest stages of having affordable bandwidth for the masses combined with decreasing costs of video production hardware, reputable video marketing certification programs are few and far between. I anticipate that within the coming months, a major player industry player will step up and create an industry standard video marketing certification program. Until that time, in my opinion, one of the better video marketing programs is available through the University of the Pacific. Their program concentrates on video production, YouTube marketing and distribution, as well as content creation and optimization. Their secondary certificate based course is dedicated entirely to YouTube video marketing for businesses.

Video Marketing Conferences

In contrast to the video marketing certification segment that lacks a current industry standard, the video marketing conference scene is dominated by Streaming Media an Information Today Inc. company. From Streaming Media Magazine to their two feature video marketing conferences, Steaming Media West and Streaming Media East, this organization is on the forefront of all things video marketing. Their two primary conferences are cannot miss events for those seeking to learn the latest and greatest, hob knob with the industry influencers, and discover and learn about the various video marketing software options that are available.

In addition to the two Streaming Media conferences, I highly recommend attendance to the Reel Summit. This video marketing conference is brought to you by ReelSEO and it is far more intimate than the aforementioned events. The featured speakers and panelists are the biggest names in the industry and the schedule offers both video marketing and video commerce tracks.

Video Marketing Software

As mentioned, the most dominant video marketing software platform is YouTube. Yet, in addition to YouTube, there are several other significant players in the video distribution realm. The post-mentioned platforms each offer varying ease of use, unique marketing and encoding features, video creation services, and licensed creative commons resources.

For those who intend to distribute, manage, and market a large volume of video content, I have also included a couple of my favorite pure play video marketing software platforms.

Video Distribution Platforms

Video Marketing Software

A Major Motion Picture of Marketing

As the inevitable growth in online video marketing continues to occur, if you engage with the proper tools and resources now, you put yourself in the pole position as an early adopter. Start small with and tinker with different facets of this powerful marketing medium. In all likelihood, you will find a specific segment of video marketing that interests you. Who knows – Maybe your online marketing video becomes that next big viral marketing video that trends on the web. You will never know if you don’t try and if you need help, we are always here to help.

Video Marketing Tools