With the Call for Entries being announced for the video-based 2014 Accommodation Achiever Awards now is a good opportunity to consider incorporating a video element to your online marketing strategy. Video production does require a more orchestrated effort in terms of outlay, but the results can be well worth it. CRISTIAN TRWILLO, Director at Creativecreations.tv (AAoA Silver Partner) explains why using video as an effective communication tool can provide the required level of differentiation for your online and social media profiles.

The advantages video gives as a marketing tool are the simplest and the most effective. Unlike text and a couple of still pictures, video captures two of the three ways people process content best, sight and sound. Even as you’re reading this, someone might be talking to you and so your attention is split. Watch a film or a television commercial, and suddenly the environment you see before you is around you. In that moment everything else is secondary and the amount of information that can be communicated to your audience is staggering.

While another business's clients have to wade through a plethora of text, a business that uses video communicates almost three times as much content through the visual. Adding to this the written audio element, it is no wonder text based communications rind it extremely difficult to compete on the immersive factor that is so intrinsic to video.

Facts about video;

• A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words

• The chances of getting a page one listing on google search increases by 53 times with video

• By 2017 video will be 90% of all internet traffic;

• Over 1 billion unique users visit YouTube every month; and

• Online videos are 100% more socially engaging.

Video marketing can get you:

• More click throughs;

• More exposure;

• More social engagement;

• 46% more conversion lift; and

• 139% more brand impact.

Benefits of video:

• Online video is one of the most valuable and effective means of promoting your business, no matter whether you are a small business or a multinational company;

• Video grabs attention like nothing else. People are more likely to watch a visually stimulating video about your products than they are to read a text document;

• Viewers can access video from virtually everywhere thanks to portable devices and widely available, low-cost, high-speed inter-net connections; and

• Online videos can create awareness to the viewers, online video is interactive, measurable and costs less per view than any form of print media.

While every single bit of information may not be remembered, it is this immersive experience of having engagement that also encourages behavior improving your potential new client’s click-through rate and increases chances of their consideration and awareness of your brand. However, it is also the ease of the medium that still gives video the edge over other traditional communication, tools.

The lower demand of effort on behalf of your audience, coupled with a higher engagement factor than plain text, makes video the most shareable and sociable. This promotes an emotional engagement and lends itself well to the very much prized word of mouth mar¬keting. Once you've nailed down the kinds of elements and emphases you need in a quality video, it is this kind of advantage that helps build your initial investment in video market¬ing into an even more effective, powerful (and potentially more profitable) piece of commu¬nication. Your competitors will be wondering why they hadn’t thought of doing it first.