“I hate video”, is the new “I hate long-copy”…

In both cases, what the complainant REALLY means is: I hate BORING.

Hey, me too… Give a sales letter reader a dual reading path that makes it easy to skim a 40 page sales letter. Give your viewer a sensible means of navigating a 40 minute video to accomplish the same thing.

Now, I know, I know… We as marketers don’t care about making the experience better for the lookie-loos if it loosens our death grip on the buyers (at least we shouldn’t as a rule).

Giving a video “skip around” functions very much changes that “stuck watching video” dynamic. By editing and scripting your video based on a potential non-linear path, that problem is largely addressed plus you may just see a lift from reinforcing certain sections multiple times with multiple headings.

Did that make any sense? I was up late…

I am heavily of the mind that the next killer video app will be better annotation and navigation controls inside a flash player. Some sites and players already have it and more will appear. That’s a good thing.

Another way people can accomplish the non-linear path is by delivering smaller video segments “wrapped” in complete interface ala SproutBuilder.

http://sproutbuilder.com/

Internet Marketing is often on the cutting edge, but also on the barrel bottom for laziness. Shit we get away with selling to the IM market of ravenous opportunity seekers would NEVER fly in more discerning markets and through more traditional marketing channels which demand a higher degree of sophistication and execution.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE that we can throw up a keynote video with a VO recorded live on a USB headset and have traffic and sales in an hour, but that’s also our downfall in many ways.

Brian

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