Looking at Video on the Web with Ken McCarthy

In the last issue, I pointed you to an
Internet video web site that sells Halloween
costumes.

If you’re wondering about why anyone would
bother with video to sell such a seasonal
niche product consider this:

1. The company ships 20,000 orders a day in
the days leading up to Halloween.

2. Costumes range in price from $50 to $850
for a Collectors Edition of Darth Vader.

3. Projected annual sales for 2005: $25 million

Rumor has it the company spent $100,000 producing
the show. Costs included: the two hosts, a dozen or
so models, studio rental time, director, camera
operators and other technicians, post-production, etc.

This means their production budget equaled 0.4%
of their hoped-for sales. Not too bad.

What worked?

Clearly, this is a case where video rocks.

There’s just no comparison between still
pictures on a page and actually seeing
what the costumes look like on real people
from all angles accompanied by the commentary
of two experienced ‘QVC’-style hosts.

What didn’t work?

There was no interactivity.

If you wanted to check out specific costumes, you
had to sit there – as if the web were a cable TV
channel – and watch the entire program sequentially
until it got to the costumes you were interested in.

Dumb!

The beauty of the Internet is that you can
call up exactly what you want when you want.

You can all this ‘interactivity.’ You can call
it ‘on demand.’ But whatever you call it, make
sure you take advantage of it.

Video on the Internet is not TV.

If you’re offering lots of different products,
make sure your prospects can get right to the
clip of their choice without having to wait
around.

This may seem like common sense, but as Mark Twain
once observed, there’s nothing more uncommon
than common sense – even among otherwise savvy
and creative Internet retailers.   

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Do you have a minute (literally) to answer five
quick questions about what topics in Internet
video marketing you’re most interested in?

If you do, please visit the page below and help
me make this newsletter more useful to you.

http://www.thesystemseminar.com/video/survey.html

Thanks.

Ken

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