The October 18 webcast with Caterpillar’s Brian Stokoe, along with Brian Reuhl and Neil M. Brown from the Construction Marketing Association (CMA) identified a number of tips, ideas, and strategies for more effectively using video to drive search engine results, generate sales leads, and support customer service.
Video is Critical to Marketing
All presenters agreed that video is possibly the most important social media channel. CMA Chairman Neil M. Brown shared a statistic on video use doubling in just two years. He started the webcast with four polling questions: 1) Do you use video or YouTube for marketing? 2) How many videos do you produce per year? 3) Do you embed videos? If so, where? 4) How has your company benefited from video?
Survey Says
Video use was nearly split evenly (48% yes/52% no) suggesting many of the webcast participants are new to video. A majority 53% produce 1-2 videos per year. 32% produce 3-5 videos per year, and 16% produce more than 10 videos per year. Not surprisingly, websites were the leading application for embedded videos (67%), followed by Facebook (38%), emails (21%) and blogs (17%). Benefits of video included brand awareness (68%), SEO and customer service tied at 37% each, followed by lead generation (26%).
YouTube Rules of Thumb
CMA social media manager Brian Reuhl detailed several YouTube basics:
1) Use graphics to custom brand your YouTube channel
2) Video must be less than 15 minutes and 2GB file size
3) Use keyword-rich titles, descriptions and tags for each video upload
4) Change video order with the YouTube admin tool
Next, Brian demonstrated a YouTube video channel example from Construction Marketing Advisor’s client WeatherGuard.
Caterpillar social media program manager Brian Stokoe shared CAT’s video marketing evolution from CAT TV to a single Caterpillar YouTube channel, to vertical industry channels below. One of the most interesting insights Brian Stokoe shared was that Caterpillar produces an average on 54 videos per month, spiking during big trade shows like CON EXPO.
The webcast concluded with Q&A (questions and answers). Both panelists agreed that the optimal length of a video is 1-3 minutes, and that production quality is not as important as authenticity, especially in our construction market! Both panelists also agreed that YouTube is one of the most important social channels, ranking only behind blogs. Brian Stokoe added that video will continue to grow in importance as younger managers used to the medium take over.
The webcast concluded with a number of resources for YouTube best practices including whitepapers. Construction Marketing Advisors, the association’s marketing partner, now offers a low cost YouTube video service package for $899. For more information, link here.
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