(2 Parts: Split Testing and Examples. Taken from client case studies and included in Optimize Your Video 2.0)

Split Testing: If you are curious to see which display image of your video gets the most plays, use a video player that has the option of using a hosted image as your first frame.

The reason why is because you can switch out this image at anytime to do new tests.

I have clients that do this during campaigns to see which ones get the most plays.

There are different ways to track this because it all depends on how your videos are being hosted, so the easiest way that I have seen clients do it is just by seeing how many times that video was called up.

You should be able to see that in your web stats/awstats where it shows what files were called and just switch out the image every week and see which week has the most clicks/views = click rate.

Another way is to just have the same video, but copied somewhere else (i.e-Video1.mp4 and Video1Copy.mp4). Then, you would publish each video to separate pages that would get rotated when you are split testing.

In each video that you publish, have a different first frame. Then, you could see your results by tracking the following:

Targeted campaign 1: clicks/visitors tracked = click rate % campaign 1

Targeted campaign 2: clicks/visitors tracked = click rate % campaign 2

Then, whichever % is higher would be the video first frame that gets the most clicks.

First Frame Video Player Image Strategies

You can add a first frame depending on what your web video player allows, as not all players are equal. Some can add the first frame in ONLY by having it as the first frame of the actual video. Others will allow you to insert first frames as .jpg files.

Strategy 1: Hand-Written Teaser

What you see below is a screenshot of a video player I used on a site for a few campaigns.The only thing someone sees is the handwritten font and once they see that, the arrow leads their eyes (and mouse) to the play button to click play…..

Strategy 2: Complimentary Copy Teaser

This is where you have a play button in between the words “Click Play” or “Press Play” and the words and play logo blend in so people naturally press play.

This gives a clean look and feel to your video. Here is an example below where people naturally click play when it is woven into website copy. In other words, not so much the example you want to use by itself, but with a “lead-in” to the video where you’re explaining your product or service while leading into phrases like….

“Now that you’ve read about what it does, watch the video below to see exactly how it works.”

To really make it compelling, there should be an image of what is inside the video rather than a white or black background.

Strategy 3: “Press Play” Overview Teaser

Below is an example on how you can add a call to action to press play or “reason why”. Several marketers want a first frame like this because they know it works.

I often do this style for clients (like I did below with this client a few years ago).

You can see the how the frame below integrates with the video at www.patenteducationseries.com/video

Strategy 4: Call-To-Action Text Teaser

This can be applied with a combination of branding your product with text and visual, then adding your biggest benefit immediately followed by the “Click PLAY…” that will show them exactly how to obtain that benefit.

Notice how the word “PLAY” is in red BOLD. The font used for this is “Lucida Grande Bold” and the aspect ratio has been tweeked to -12.5

Here is another client example of a very similar concept where I added an image of the product and text together. This way, viewers can connect the dots to click play.

Strategy 5: Image Teasers

This “image teaser” type below  is one of my favorites. This is where you add a first frame from within the video so those who see it get a “visual taste” of what’s to come.

There are many ways to integrate this.

When viewers click on the video, something else will pop-up that gives a call to action such as “Fill out the form below to get INSTANT access to the video.” From what different clients have told me, these are most effective directly ABOVE the email opt-in on landing pages.

If I could only choose to get ONE item of value from this post, I would recommend it be the above in red bold

Alternatively, if an image like this is on a site, multiple things can happen.

When clicked on, the image:

1. Sends viewers to another page where they can either watch the video on auto-play or opt-in.

2. Have a light-box modal pop-up so the rest of the site gets darkened/greyed out and the video is the main focal point.

Strategy 6: Snapshot Teaser (updated 2013 sample)

If it’s a talking head promo video, I recommend using an image of someone talking in the video as the first frame.

Here is the first frame I used of a promo video I did for a landing page where I used an image from within the video. When website viewers see this video embedded, here is what they would see as the first frame.

With the clients I work with when doing promo or talking head videos, this tends to be the most versatile and widely used methods to use as a display and to get viewers to click on videos.

The post appeared first on VideoProducerOnline.com. Read the original article: First Frame Video Player Strategies

I’ve been out of the loop since last year because I ended up just working with a few major client projects while also doing some more personal adventures in San Diego.

Below are some insights I’d like to share with you on what I’ve been doing with those clients and what’s working now behind the scenes that comes from “connecting the dots” with my colleagues I share information with.

1. Are you launching a project? The way to start a conversation with potential affiliates and create buzz is with a “themed” intro.

Press play below to see one that I shot and edited for a client.

2. Are you creating UPSELLS WITH VIDEO in your marketing funnel? A recent client of mind did and it helped him lift conversions. I helped edit a screen capture video for the client that explained what the upsell page was about so users wouldn’t get confused on why they were on his page to begin with after they had just ordered. Think about the POWER of doing this and how it could give CLARITY to your buyers!

3. What is converting better than the standard “text based” video sales letter? Simply put, it’s the “whiteboard animation drawing” also known as “whiteboard video scribing” style. I recently worked with a company to produce the video at www.mobilemoneybandit.com, a rock solid product on mobile marketing and advertising.

The whiteboard animation style has been converting higher than text based video sales letters where some of the numbers I’ve been told have been as high as 30% more from the same traffic and referral sources. If you’re an OptimizeYourVideo.com subscriber, just login to see the multiple companies we recommend for this. Intern Profits, another client I’ve produced videos for over the years was ahead of the curve and had this video done for their company before I even researched this style.

4. Optimize Your Video 3.0 has been released! It was our 2 year anniversary of OptimizeYourVideo.com last month and I we released version 3.0 last week that consists of:

– Our complete series of clickable video marketing flowcharts

– Advanced & interactive client case studies with step by step, “Here’s why this was done.”

– Combined episodes of related content for more efficient consumption

– Updated members’ only rolodex of tools, resources, and video creation outsourcers

– Over 215+ video, audio, text, and pdf training items

Click the link below to WATCH the NEW VIDEO to get a glimpse of how you can add more response in your business starting today.

Dedicated to YOUR Success Through Video,

The post appeared first on VideoProducerOnline.com. Read the original article: Behind the Scenes Update from My Video Marketing Labs

This post is to just give you an update on what’s been working, new updates to my video marketing products, and client projects. These can hopefully help give you some ideas on what you can do when it comes to more ways of using video in your business.

Client Projects – I’ve been creating some new styles of videos that are really pulling well in 2011.

You can see a few of those examples where they are more the “video sales letter” style at unstoppableaffiliate.com and raiseyourrank.ca

Unstoppable Affiliate is a long video sales letter, mirroring the long sales letter word for word.

Raise Your Rank is a short video promo, but that has the text of the entire voice over throughout the video.

Here are some other client project styles to view and see if they can spark some ideas for you.

InsaneMarketing.net with a movie trailer “hard hitting promo” style.

Eproneur.com has more “professional business” feel to it.

What’s Been Working – I would recommend looking into this video sales letter style approach, because I’ve added a new twist on it, and it WORKS! You can see both twists at work in the unstoppableaffiliate.com video. Rather than just plain text, I have a certain color theme, thicker fonts, use motion for the text to come in an out (in some slides) and added images to keep changing the flow visually.

In OptimizeYourVideo, I cover this from A-Z including new Fill-in-the-Blank Video Sales Letter Templates. You can see how our customers can access our Video Sales Letter clickable flowchart where they can click on any of the links to get the content in step-by-step fashion.

Optimize Your Video Content Development Updates:

The main video content and video overview of our Optimize Your Video membership has been updated to reflect the new changes.

http://videoproduceronline.com/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/videomarketinglabs.jpg

– We combined training sections where now “Video Marketing” and “Video Marketing Syndication” is now one section.

– We added 3 clickable flowcharts that are at the core of video marketing and the most requested.

Optimize Your Video Updates – You can see all the updates below that I’ve added ever since disappearing in April. Customers get access to all this for if they join. Pretty cool, right?

Using More WordPress and “Feeder” Products – I’ve also been working on a new marketing funnel with Optimize Your Video. I created an alternative version of Optimize Your Video using the OptimizePress wordpress theme.

I did this because we are going to be creating feeder products soon, which are basically mini-products from our membership.

Using Optimize Press was the easiest way to deploy this for now where I could switch the content over to WordPress and then create pages for each product. You can see the clean look and design by going to webvideomarketing.com/optimize-your-video

On that site, you’ll see I already have “mini sales pages” for each section, along with the video at the top, so when it comes time to it, it’s just a copy and paste job.

Remember that you can get full access to Optimize Your Video by going to webvideomarketing.com/optimize-your-video including all the updates above.

Dedicated to Your Video Success,

The post appeared first on VideoProducerOnline.com. Read the original article: What’s Working, Video Sales Letters, Client Projects, and Clickable Flowcharts

It’s been quite some time since I posted on this blog. The last time I was in touch with you was back in April and then I pretty much disappeared for four months.

WHERE DID I GO!?!? Some web friends have been asking and I’ve been wanting to post for some time, so better late than ever.

I became so busy between filming video projects in San Diego for different clients, working on OptimizeYourVideo.com episodes, and getting hired for some behind the scenes product launches like http://unstoppableaffiliate.com where I produced the entire video launch sequence and sales letter video.

I’ve also spent the last four months taking a breather and enjoying San Diego more than ever and exploring more vegetarian cuisines and restaurants around the city. Having been vegetarian for five years, I thought it was finally time to take some breathers by exploring more vegetarian cuisine rather than my own “wannabe chef” creations at home

In San Diego, I directed a multicamera video interview shoot with the Canada’s former Secretary of State David Kilgour, and another with the former President of Mexico Vicente Fox. Both were in full HD and the shoots came out great.

I also went home to Kansas City, Missouri to visit family and take a road trip to go kayaking while making a two day stop in St. Louis for a wedding.

So that’s what I’ve been up to in my personal life Feel free to comment to let me know what you’ve been up to… and what kind of video projects you’ve working on any video projects as of late.

Best,

The post appeared first on VideoProducerOnline.com. Read the original article: Mexican Presidents, Missouri Kayaking, and Vegetarian Explorations

This episode shows a visual editing and video creation style to combine branding of the company and your call to action throughout your video that can by used for website or video syndication.

Up until recently, most big companies just wanted to “brand” their name on the web, but now they are getting smarter and want some kind of call to action as you see with clickable video ad rolls.

I created this for a client where I had to scope out the correct specs and sizes who wanted to still show the brand of the video the whole time while adding a call to action throughout.

There are 2 ways to achieve this.

Sorry, but you do not have access to the rest of this content. To get access to 215+ web video creation episodes that includes the rest of this post, you’ll need access to OptimizeYourVideo.com which you can subscribe to below.

The post appeared first on VideoProducerOnline.com. Read the original article: Visual Hack: Combining Branding and Direct Response Call to Actions in Same Frame

2011 is off to a great start. With it being a new year, many local companies and offline businesses are looking for ways to use video on the web. They have finally caught on

If you provide marketing services to businesses, your clients will start to ask you, “How can I get a video created for my business?’

You may have already had this question asked by your web based clients,  your local business clients, or both!

So I want to share with you some ways you can SIMPLIFY this process of your local and offline clients wanting video.

In the back of the OptimizeYourVideo.com members’ area, I go over the two main video packages.

Sorry, but you do not have access to the rest of this content. To get access to 215+ web video creation episodes that includes the rest of this post, you’ll need access to OptimizeYourVideo.com which you can subscribe to below.

The post appeared first on VideoProducerOnline.com. Read the original article: “How Do I Get A Video,” Asks the Local Client

A solution to increasing response is to not use YouTube on direct response sales pages. With incredible deals these days on flexible video player solutions, using an optimized professional player is the real key to response. YouTube has its purposes but direct response videos on websites are not it. The best video players out there are…

Sorry, but you do not have access to the rest of this content. To get access to 215+ web video creation episodes that includes what the best video player is for your business model, you’ll need access to OptimizeYourVideo.com which you can subscribe to below.

The post appeared first on VideoProducerOnline.com. Read the original article: Interactive, Customizable, HTML5, Hosted and Web Based Pro Video Players

Over the past 3 months, I haven’t written any newsletters, been out in the public much, or posting on my blog.

Good folks have been asking what happened. Where did I go? What was I doing?

Since I wrote my last newsletter in August, I started working on a series of product launches for clients, from the 4 Video/Blog Sequence to a 10 week short “themed video” sequence.

On a side note, customers of OptimizeYourVideo.com receive behind the scenes case studies for these and similar projects I work on.

I also decided to completely revamp the Optimize Your Video 2.0 membership throughout our soft release. This was after taking in customer feedback, seeing how they wanted to experience the episodes, and what else they wanted to know more about.

We also took a different approach and thought it would be better to just cut to the chase and lay out what works instead of delivering filler to “simulate” content value.

You see, our customers have an advantage because both my partner and I make a full-time income in web video development aside from the membership. This factor alone is how customers get “here’s what works” rather than the “content simulation” approach.

So here’s what I spent the last 3 months doing in my video labs making interesting discoveries for website video publishing at 2am and having multiple “ah-ha” moments depending on where I’m working from at the time.

1. We cut down 18 modules of navigation! We did this so customers could have as much of the content condensed in similar modules.

• For instance, instead of an entire module for Amazon S3, now it’s just a series of 16 videos inside one single episode in the “Multimedia Content Delivery” module.
• I revamped many episodes so they are up to date with content and where the helpful tips and related information flow naturally.

2. I also combined multiple modules, such as:

• Production-Creation-Editing/File Format Mastering
• Maximizing Web Video Response/Best Practices for Video Presenters
• Website Video Embedding Strategies/Website Video File Optimization
• Audio Video Publishing Bonuses/Cost Saving Resources

After this navigational redesign, we have 12 modules + The Video Profits Business System + Optimize Your Video 1.0!

The response for this has been very positive, as members can navigate to a single module and get more content than ever before.

I find it much easier to navigate and go through myself now!

3. The main website was also given a complete makeover with all the new module and episode changes.

4. Next, I created an “all-in-one” welcome page that comes up immediately after log-in with:

• A link to all the membership content
• All the recent updates
• The upcoming episodes
• Important welcome links

As a side note, ever since the last time I came out from hiding 3 months ago, we’ve added 18 new episodes alone!

This is another reason why the retention rate for Optimizeyourvideo.com is so high.

Which leads me to why I’m sharing all this with you =)

Now that the modules are condensed, I’ve put together a new video that I “personalized” while taking you on a journey through the entire membership, quick and to the point without extra filler.

Be sure to watch this new video that covers all the elements you need for video marketing in your business at Optimizeyourvideo.com.

Dedicated to Powering UP Your Video Marketing,

The post appeared first on VideoProducerOnline.com. Read the original article: 3 Month Disappearing Video Act

Over the last two months, I’ve been adding episodes to Optimize Your Video 2.0 and wanted to give you a “behind the scenes” look at what I’ve done over the last two months with adding episodes, content, value, strategies, training, and blueprints.

Below is  a scaled down version of what all customers see when they log in before they click through to the actual modules.

Below is a screenshot of our new module for Web Video Producers and Video Service Businesses. You can see all the details of the product only version at 100k Video Biz.

Best in Web Video Success,

nigeria

The post appeared first on VideoProducerOnline.com. Read the original article: New Video Marketing Services, Updates, and Tools

Why do you see videos of people driving in their cars to sell you their stuff? What’s the deal? If you are wondering why it works so well, it’s because there are TWO layers of context going on at the same time.

1. The person talking, then constantly looking at you and the road creates a personable effect that you’re right there with that person, putting the viewer at ease.

2. The backdrop, which is the road itself,  is MOVING. Anytime you have movement such as a STREET it tends to get viewers to watch longer.

I’ve had local clients tell me that viewership, response and sales always tend to increase when they do it this way.

But what if you’re using a FLIP camera and hit a bump? Can you afford this FAIL of the camera suddenly FLYING in some other direction or the camera suddenly drops down, where all you can see is the person’s chest  or perhaps the FACE is CUT off?

Fear not… because here is an affordable tool I use when I’m out filming video or just want to create the “simulated” look of “The Office” TV show or the “prosumer” feel that creates subtle handheld camera movement without it being distracting or amateur. Here is my secret tool for creating this effect.

www.spiderbrace.com

That above link is the direct link to the website and will show you different options to choose from and the different kinds of cameras to use with.

I recommend the SpiderBrace 1 or 2 combo because you have more stability if you are out in the field shooting video. However, if you just have a small camera like the Kodak ZI8, then you can just get one of the mini-rigs. You can watch a demo of it in action below.

www.spiderbrace.com/demo.html

Here’s a photo of me on location with the SpiderBrace relaxing on my shoulder without stressing my arms out, while keeping a steady shot.

Let me know if you plan on creating any web videos this way or if you have your own video rig similar to this.

Best,

The post appeared first on VideoProducerOnline.com. Read the original article: The Handheld Camera Tool