Call me Scrooge, but I hate online video.
I know, I’m the only one. More and more internet marketeers are relying on video squeeze pages for one simple reason: they work. Adding a video to your squeeze page can give you a measurable boost in response rates.
So, what’s my beef? Here are the peculiar, ideosyncratic reasons why I will not watch the video on your squeeze page:
I can’t skim it. I see a blurry still shot of you talking at your webcam. What are you talking about? I have no idea. What’s your offer? Your call to action? I won’t know unless I invest my valuable time in watching your video to the end. Now, if your landing page was presented to me in text, as God intended, I could read the headline and immediately scroll down to your P.S. to see if it’s worth my time to read your whole pitch.
I can’t do anything else at the same time. I spend a lot of time on hold. I can skim your sales letter while I listen to a scratchy, ancient version of Jingle Bells by the Ray Rand singers while I wait for my doctor’s office to pick up, but I have to wrench myself away from other activities while I watch your video. Video is bad news for multitaskers.
Craptacular production values. I know I’m being picky here, but a lot of the “talking head” videos out there are just painful to watch. Bad lighting, bad sound, a slightly-off-kilter tripod…it just makes you look like a rank amateur. I think it’s particularly ironic when self-described multimillionaire internet marketers post videos that appear to have been filmed by their toddler with a “My First Webcam” by Playskool. C’mon…take some of your internet millions and spring for an HD camera and real lighting!
Your video is practically keyword-free. Now this more a professional beef than a personal one. Unless you go to the effort to post your video somewhere that allows tags, and actually tag it appropriately, all the juicy keywords in your presentation have gone to waste.
So how can you get me to watch your video? It’s really, really simple. Post the transcript–or at least, a bullet-point summary–on the same page below the video. I can see it, and Google can see it. We all win.
Give me the option to consume your content MY WAY, or I hit the highway.
