Tom Ricciardone: Video for Business, The Numbers Don’t Lie

Ha, I almost had you.

Numbers lie all the time.

When not outright lying, they often obfuscate, misdirect, mislead.

Lately, I’ve been thinking there’s a reason “numb” is the root word of numbers.  Stats, factoids, graphs, charts, infographics — they’re everywhere today.

And owing to the proliferation of social media and 24/7 everything else, they are slung around with gleeful abandon.

So yeah, I’m feeling a little numbered out. I assume I’m not the only one, so it’s with some reluctance that I pile on with a few numbers of my own to share.

I share these not because I feel confident in the absoluteness of their precision or a belief in their across-the-board relevance, but because I feel confident they point us in the right direction.

With that, a few numbers for you:

In terms of audience retention, one minute of video is equivalent to 1.8 million words or 3,600 typical web pages. That’s according to Forrester Research, in a report entitled “How Video Will Take Over the World.”

I’ll leave it to others to figure out the leap from a picture being worth a thousand words to a moving picture being worth 1.8 million.

How about this one? People remember only 20% of what they hear and only 30% of what they see, but an incredible 70% of what they hear and see! (Harvard Business Review!)

That little gem has it all – exclamation points, bolded fonts and, OMG, Harvard Business Review validation. Seventy percent, people!

Needless to say, I’ve dropped that little power info-nugget in a few meetings. It gets them every time.

A report on my desk states that a website is 53 times more likely to appear on page one of search results if it has a video.  So now you know why your website isn’t getting it done.

And, for the social media crowd, engagement across the board is much higher with video attached to it. Tweets with video attached, for example, get a 28% boost on retweets.

While I present the above stats to you with a wink and a nod, I share them because they are onto something. The undeniable fact—the business value to be found in those numbers— is that video as a strategic, purposeful business communications tool is more powerful than ever.

And our ability to cost efficiently leverage it to meet business goals is getting stronger every day.

Numbers aside, we all know intuitively that video can be an incredibly effective means of communication. It allows for subtlety, control, nuance, and the range of powerful non-verbal communication that text, audio and static images alone lack.

Done well, videos engage, educate, entertain and inform.

They persuade, promote and inspire.

Videos train employees, pique interest, close sales and increase brand loyalty.

We see the business validation of video all around us. Video is increasingly taking the place of more traditional means of presenting information.

In my work with clients, I see this shift taking place every day.

Just this month, we’re producing a healthcare video as a means to educate patients. We’re producing video for employee training, video for award banquets, video for a manufacturer of heavy equipment to supplement a print catalogue, and video targeting the C-Suite of large company employers to help facilitate health insurance sales.

While big picture stats are instructive and helpful, the numbers I trust the most are hands-on results from the trenches.

One week ago, I managed an email campaign with an embedded video produced for a client. The open rates were much higher than those for typical email campaigns. Granted, the email list was uncommonly strong and contributed to the success, but it was clear from the video play rates that the embedded video was the difference maker.

Video for that business — those numbers don’t lie.

Editor’s note: Tom Ricciardone is a 20-year veteran strategic communications consultant for corporate, nonprofit and trade association clients. In 2012, he co-founded Bespoke Video Productions and Multi-Screen Media Strategy to help companies and organizations of all sizes produce and use video, digital content and original programming to meet a range of business goals. He can be reached by email at [email protected].