Streaming ahead - should businesses use video?

Our first blog post wound the clock right back and considered the origins and thought process behind the name CreativeJigsaw, and names for businesses in general. But hold on. We've determined a name for this video production venture, a venture that's strongly focused on video production for businesses, however...

Does anyone need this service?

Well, I could potentially finish this blog post very quickly and save myself a lot of typing by just saying hey, go to Google and type in "do businesses need video" - you'll get any number of results back telling you that yes, they absolutely do! But that wouldn't be much of a blog would it? It's surely only right that this should be given some proper CreativeJigsaw consideration.

Let's take a step back...

Go back 20 years and where did you see moving images? Well, at the cinema for one, where they would mostly be big-budget productions requiring hundreds of people to be produced. And on television, which would be less expensive productions than films but nonetheless would involve some high costs and multiple individuals, and would be made by large organisations like the BBC and ITV.

As an aside, it's interesting to consider that what you'd see at the cinema were (and still are) described as "films" as they were recorded onto film and, whilst television programmes weren't referred to as "videos", the industry used (and still uses) terms such as "run VT" and "VT editor", where the 'VT' stands for 'Video Tape'; these days the distinction is certainly more blurred - most films are shot using digital technology and it's doubtful that much actual video tape is used in television these days. It's for this reason that I see no issues describing CreativeJigsaw as "Film Production", even though no actual film is ever used. But where were we...

The other place you'd see moving images? On a tape played back on a VCR of course, a Video Cassette Recorder. Apart from old TV programmes and films that had been transferred onto video tape, you might have watched some footage shot on your own tape-based camcorder or perhaps some professionally shot personal footage of a wedding, which might have been through some post-production. And you might, if you worked for a large organisation, have been asked to sit in front of a VCR and screen to gain some new knowledge by watching a professionally produced training video.

There's one more though, and you'd have to be over a certain age to remember this...

This could bring back some bad memories!

RealPlayer (another of those two-words-into-one names discussed in the "What's in a name" blog) actually first came into being in 1995, some three years before the "20 years ago" being considered here. It allowed something completely new, and a new term too - the streaming of video content across the internet, introducing a whole new way of getting moving images out to the masses. A completely new distribution model that didn't need film reels or video tapes to be transported, that didn't need a complex ground-based infrastructure delivering pictures to oddly shaped pieces of twisted metal on roof-tops, or electronic equipment in space beaming content to something resembling an upturned dustbin lid fixed to a house wall. All it needed was a telephone line, something that most people already had. Okay, it also needed a computer and a modem, but you get where I'm coming from.

The problem? It was awful! 20 years ago the only access to this newfangled "streamed" content was through a dial-up internet connection, which was about 1,500 times slower than a medium-fast fibre-to-the-street-cabinet connection today! In fact it wasn't until 2007 before more than half of all UK households had some form of broadband internet (and even that was probably about 70 times slower than our FTTC comparison).

So that little graphic above might bring back some frustrating memories for those who used the early RealPlayer - the images were necessarily tiny and of very low resolution (try making them full-screen and you'd be hard-pressed to make anything out!) and even then they'd be prone to not working at all.

And the point is?

The point is that it's not like this anymore. Streamed content is everywhere! In fact, I'd happily go so far as to say that before too long everything will be streamed - you don't see Netflix rushing to install a terrestrial or satellite service to bring their content into people's homes and Sky are just introducing an internet-only box for their channels (plus with everything streamed, the commercial channels will be able to ensure that you don't skip past their adverts!)

But never mind the likes of Netflix, the BBC and Sky - the wonderful thing about video streaming is that it's a moving picture delivery technology that's available to everyone. And it's seen everywhere - streamed videos pop up in Facebook, on Twitter, in LinkedIn, not to mention the more obvious YouTube. And of course they're used very effectively on company websites.

Which means?

It means that you no longer need to be a big broadcaster, or a company big enough to pay for advertising with a big broadcaster, to use powerful moving images to influence and inform customers and potential customers - a huge game-changer. And other technological improvements mean that smaller video/film production businesses like CreativeJigsaw are able to create highly professional, engaging and powerful productions at reasonable cost. What this means is that every business, big and small, has the opportunity to unleash the power of video.

So, some stats...

This brings us back to the original question, and to save some internet searching here's a selection of points illustrating why all businesses should be making sure they utilise video as often as possible...

• Online video accounted for 55% of all mobile traffic in 2015 and this is forecast to rise to 75% by 2020

• Adding a product video onto a landing page can increase conversions by 80%

• 64% of businesses who use video believe that it has directly led to increased sales

• 83% of businesses say that video provides good return on investment

• 96% of online shoppers find videos helpful when making purchase decisions online

• A website is 53 times more likely to show up on page 1 of Google if it has an embedded video

• Including a video in an introductory email has been found to increase click-through rates by 96%

• 75% of executives told Forbes that they watch work-related videos on business websites at least once a week and 65% visit the marketer’s website after viewing a video

• 44% of consumers said they make more purchases after viewing a video about a product

• 57% of consumers said that watching videos gave them more confidence to purchase online

• 98% of users say they’ve watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service

• An Australian real estate group reported that property sale listings with videos receive 403% more inquiries than those without videos

I could go on - this is just a selection of statistics pointing to the benefits available to businesses utilising video. To return to the question posed at the top of this blog - does anyone need this service? The answer is an emphatic "yes", businesses absolutely do need CreativeJigsaw's service! If you're a business owner reading this who'd like to unleash the power of video, get in touch now and we'll get started!

P.S. Of course, CreativeJigsaw has two sides - there's the business side, and then there's the education side. The benefits of CreativeJigsaw's education offering are significant, but of a very different nature to the points discussed above...perhaps the subject of a future blog!

See also: Streaming (further) ahead