Video and live streaming are essential tools for businesses of all kinds. In the past year, live streaming experienced 99% growth in the number of hours watched. Use in digital marketing continues to increase with 85% of businesses saying they use video now, and twenty percent used it for the first time in 2019. If your business is looking to add, or to increase, your use of video, one of the first decisions you need to make is what platform you’ll use to stream and host your content. Many of the larger, most popular ones are free, which can be great for specific uses. There comes a point though, when you’ll want more options, control, bandwidth or storage than these services can provide. That’s when the benefits of white-label video platform become important.
Simply put, “white label” is a term that refers to something without branding. For example, videos posted or streamed from YouTube will have the YouTube logo on the player. The same goes for other free services. A white label video platform provides a blank player and the tools for you to add your own branding (if you choose). When people watch your content, they will associate your business with the content, and not the service you used to host or stream it.
Brand identity isn’t the only advantage. Every free service comes with some limitations, but not all of them are the same. Some offer unlimited cloud hosting, but you’re limited on the quality you can stream. Others limit how much storage you can use but support full 4K streaming. It’s a complicated landscape. The services may be free, but you’re likely spending time (and time is money) creating or converting video to meet their requirements. Switching away from these sites offers you the chance to save time and money. Below are some more reasons why.
If you haven’t heard the horror stories of live streams being shut down or video being taken down without warning, you can find them for yourself in any support forum of the major free services. We all realize copyrighted content can’t be used without permission and those pirated copies of the latest blockbuster deserve to be pulled down. But what if you own the copyright or follow fair use rules? You can still be taken down and all the work and planning you’ve put into a livestream can be thrown away in an instant. There is no warning and often no explanation given—when you finally find someone to ask. When you stream or host with free services they are obligated to “protect” content and do so using automated algorithms, sometimes followed by human review. If your content is taken down and is reviewed by a human you might have a chance to get it back, but your audience is already gone.
In addition, paid services generally don’t monitor the content in the same automated way because they are not social media platforms like most free services. They are companies offering a technological solution for streaming and hosting video content. It’s your responsibility to ensure your content meets all legal requirements. Likewise, what you do with your video is your prerogative (so long as it meets content standards spelled out in the terms of service). Your content is less likely to removed because there is usually a human involved in the review process. This stems from the fact you are a customer with the company, and not one of a billion accounts using a free service.
Like most things free, a free platform is too good to be true. Instead of a monthly fee, you pay for it by allowing advertising on your content. You have no control over what that advertising is either. It could be for your competitor, or something totally unrelated to your content. In the first case, you may lose customers. In the second case, you may still lose customers if the ads drive them away from watching. If you’ve spent any time watching sites like YouTube you’ll probably have noticed the ads come before the content and after, but now also will appear in the middle of a video with no attention paid to where a natural break might occur. Some ads are no longer skippable, so your audience might stop watching (if they ever started).
You’ve likely worked hard to produce the video you’re sharing or livestream you’re producing. Do you really want to give someone else the control to interrupt you and potentially affect your business?
With a white-label video platform, there are no limitations on where you place your video. If you want it on your website homepage, you can place it there. If you want to put it behind a paywall, you can do that too. The player you use is customizable so you can offer the exact viewer experience you want.
While many free services offer options for embedding video on external sites, they often only let you adjust a few aspects of the player like height and width. In addition, the service will probably display “related” videos at the end of yours to lure viewers away from your website. In other cases, the embedding technique is old and clunky and may not work at all. Some don’t let you embed the video anywhere.
One of the principle ways free services can support so much content is because they have limits on what you can upload or stream. For video hosting they can limit file size, bitrate, playing time, or support only certain video formats. For live streaming, they can limit resolution, bitrate, stream time or the number of viewers.
Business demands are always changing. Your video needs aren’t and won’t always be the same either. For example, a marketing company may want to show its latest creative effort in full 4k, but their quarterly video event only in standard HD. You can’t get this flexibility with a free service with limitations.
It’s clear that free services are not free, you just pay for them in less obvious ways. But if you’ve invested in creating video for your business, isn’t it worth using a white label video platform that lets you maintain control and ownership of your content? White label video streaming platforms, like Zidivo.com, can cost as little as £20/month. These affordable solutions are designed to offer businesses like yours all the options and support you need to be successful.
These days, video is perhaps the leading format out there for conveying a strong sense of brand identity to prospective customers.
As visual technology has become more and more advanced and dominant, the old adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words” appears to be more true than ever before.
Video has a way of reaching people on a deep and emotive level within a few seconds – in a way and to an extent that is difficult to match with all but the tightest and most well-crafted prose.
Of course, conveying a strong brand story via video requires a good deal of finesse, and is an art in and of itself – not just something that you can casually rush in an hour or two.
Here are some key elements of a successful brand story video – more specifically, here are a few things that you need to do in order to ensure that your video does a good job of conveying your brand story and identity in a way that will resonate with your intended target audience.
First things first: if you don’t have a clear sense of the vision you’re trying to impart and the story you are trying to tell, there is absolutely no chance that the people who are going to be viewing your video will be able to figure out what’s going on.
Every video project needs to begin with a clear message, and a clear direction. This might require spending some time brainstorming and refining your core brand identity and “USPs,” but at the very least, it will require you to identify a core motif or impression that you want to convey.
Video-making is a fairly involved and resource-intensive process – and it’s easy to try to do too much, and to end up with a jumbled and confusing mess as a result. Sidestep this entire issue by focusing your energies and cutting out anything that is likely to be extraneous.
Plan your brand video script carefully to make sure it really hits the spot, you can always make adjustments as you go but having a clear path to the end goal will help keep you on point with your messaging.
One mistake that people often make when trying to market their products or services, in general, is focusing on “features” rather than “benefits.”
In other words, it’s easy to end up waxing lyrical about the technical specs of a particular product or service of yours or to get completely caught up in presenting tables of numbers that you consider to be impressive and striking.
When all is said and done, though, this is rarely ever what prospective customers are actually looking for. Rather, they will have some problem that they need to be solved, and they will be looking for a company that can offer clear solutions and benefits.
In other words, it’s about the story and narrative of what your services can do to improve the life of your prospective customer. Therefore, when putting together a video, you need to focus on that narrative. You need to be emotionally evocative, and you have to paint a picture of how life will be better thanks to whatever it is your company provides.
This is the art of storytelling in its essence: a focus on the human element, rather than on data points. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t use references to data at all – but it does mean that you should only use those references insofar as they help to advance the narrative you’re trying to present.
If your prospective customers have particular expectations from the companies that operate within your niche – or, at least, if they have particular desires for how those companies should appear and conduct themselves – you will generally be well advised to try to meet those expectations rather than to go completely off in your own direction.
That is to say, when you’re putting a video together to display your brand identity, you should do a bit of research in order to see which sorts of motifs, images, and stories are popular with your prospective customer base.
Have a look at what your competitors are doing, get information from focus groups wherever possible, and attune your imagery to match those desires and expectations.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you have to – or should – be completely “by the numbers,” or that you should plagiarise or parrot anyone else’s content. But if – for example – a major desire among your customers is for an aura of respectability and affluence, you probably shouldn’t create an urban-inspired video featuring kids in casual-wear, with hip-hop music playing in the background.
A professional video hosting platform can go a very long way in helping you to actually optimise your video and get out there in a way that will most benefit you.
Among other things, professional video hosting platforms can help you to effortlessly stream your video wherever it might be best placed, in addition to allowing for live broadcasts and streaming, the creation of playlists, access to assorted agency tools, and more.
If you’re going to go to all the trouble of working on an effective video, the last thing you should want to do is to undermine it at the last possible moment, by going with a clunky free-to-use platform instead.
It’s often said among authors that “all writing is rewriting,” and there is no doubt something similar at play when it comes to video making, too.
You might have an excellent concept for a video in mind. You might then do a great job of choosing your setting, arranging the right motifs and elements, and all the rest.
But, you could still sabotage the entire project by being too hasty and sloppy with your editing process.
Generally speaking, all prospective customers will look for key indicators of professionalism in your content before they are willing to give you the time of day. A typo in your video, or an untidy and obvious jump cut, could therefore really sink the entire endeavour.
So finally, go the extra mile and comes editing your video carefully – and spend as much time as needed to do it well.
If you’re keen to attract an audience and promote your business using video marketing, you might be wondering why you should consider paying for a service when there are free platforms available. While social networks may lay claim to being the most popular streaming and sharing platforms, they don’t provide the perks and benefits offered by professional video hosting services. Creating high-quality video content costs money, and it doesn’t make financial sense to invest in production and not distribution. With a professional service, you can enjoy a host of features that are guaranteed to get your content noticed.
Video content has become an increasingly influential and integral part of modern marketing. More and more businesses are using a more diverse range of content to attract new clients, generate a buzz online, and get their brand name noticed. Human beings respond better to visual stimuli, and research suggests that videos are much more appealing than other types of marketing materials, for example, text. The brain processes video up to 60,000 times faster than words, and videos get more than 1,000% more shares on social platforms than both text and images. Landing pages with videos also boast higher conversion rates.
When it comes to sharing video content, there are various streaming options available. Live streaming enables you to stream your video clips to anyone in the world, providing real-time opportunities to engage and connect with potential customers. On-demand streaming gives you the opportunity to upload your content, making it available to viewers whenever they want to watch it. With live video hosting and on-demand services, you can benefit from a captive audience at any time of day, and your viewers can take advantage of the option to tune into live clips or to choose a video from a playlist or library at a time that suits them.
If you’ve put a lot of effort into creating spectacular content, it’s natural to want to achieve the best results from sharing and streaming your videos. You can use platforms like Facebook Live and YouTube to host and share clips, but there are so many advantages to investing in professional services. While social media may be adequate for individuals looking to build a following and share posts with friends and followers, it falls short for business customers. Social media platforms are not very professional, they are frequently blocked by companies and organisations, and they provide limited benefits in terms of customer experience. If you’re watching a video on a site like YouTube, for example, it’s very common to be inundated with adverts and to have your viewing disturbed by pop-ups. This is a drawback for potential clients, and it’s also detrimental for businesses, as the adverts that do appear may promote competitors.
Professional video hosting services offer a wealth of benefits, including:
The power of video content is indisputable, but sharing video clips, streaming live, and uploading content for on-demand viewing doesn’t guarantee success. Many businesses invest time, effort, and money into creating spectacular content, only for it to fall short because they choose to distribute that content via networks like Facebook and YouTube. Zidivo is a professional hosting service, which offers an array of perks for those hoping to use video content to get their brand name up in lights. With Zidivo’s online platform, users can benefit from powerful streaming features, live and on-demand hosting, custom players, and the option to create captivating webpages to showcase their videos in all their glory. With Zidivo, you can upload video files and place them anywhere on your site, you can take advantage of virtually unlimited storage, and you can create bespoke playlists. Your videos will look the business, and they will provide a sensational viewing experience for potential customers with no unwanted adverts or appearances from competitors. The process of getting your content live is also incredibly simple, and with the streaming wizard, you can get started in just a few clicks.
Video content is increasingly influential and it can be an amazingly potent marketing technique. If you’re looking to share and stream professional video content and promote your brand, it pays to consider professional hosting services. If you like the sound of Zidivo video hosting, and you’re keen to find out more, why not take advantage of the opportunity to try it for free with a brilliant 30-day trial?
It doesn’t matter what size of business you have, from
Many people simply start off filming with their mobile phone and then update their equipment and their budget for advertising as they grow. But whichever way you do it, it’s important that you start.
Why is that? Read on for the difference video marketing can make to your business clients, and that means both their bottom line and yours:
Every business would love to have a highly-involved community of fans who share their content and engage with it. With video, that’s exactly what you can create for them.
After watching a video, 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online
You can easily put across the personality of your clients’ business in video. Obviously, it’s highly visual and draws people in, and it’s much easier to tell a story or show off a product with video than with the written word.
As for sharing, according to SmallBizTrends, ‘Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined,’ and Twitter reports that videos are retweeted 6 times more than still images.
All that social sharing will definitely drive traffic to your clients’ site and the good news is that you’ll get more organic web traffic from searches too:
'Companies using video enjoy 41% more web traffic from search than non-users', state SmallBizTrends.
If you can find a way to increase your clients’ conversion rates and boost their sales, they will be utterly thrilled, and with statistics like the following, it’s clear that video marketing is an excellent tool to add to your marketing arsenal.
From Hubspot:
‘After watching a video, 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online.’
‘90% of users say that product videos are helpful in the decision process.’
Unbounce also has some insight into landing pages and the impact of
Email marketing is already very effective, if done well. Building an email list gives your clients an asset that they can use again and again, and removes reliance on platforms that they don’t have any control over, such as Facebook and Amazon.
Add video into the mix, however, and here’s what happens, according to Hubspot: ‘Video in an email leads to
Bounce rate is simply the percentage of people who visit only one page on a site before clicking away, and ideally, most businesses want people to stay on their site longer and take in more of their content. While you can reduce bounce rate with internal linking and a good look at your analytics, video is very helpful here too as it keeps people on your site for longer. Basically, more people prefer watching videos than prefer to read about products or services:
According to Wyzowl, ‘69% of users would prefer to watch
Video marketing is something you can't afford to ignore when considering marketing strategy for your clients.
You also need to consider the platform you use. With a professional online streaming video platform, such as Zidivo, you don’t have to worry about poorly placed and irrelevant ads in the middle of your content or about uptime and availability. Just create your videos, upload them to Zidivo, and reap the benefits as your audience enjoys your new content.