We live in a very visual world. Audiences have come to expect a high level of visual stimulation, whether it’s from videos, TV or online. If the content being presented is not engaging enough, the audience will turn their eyes elsewhere. The tech bubble of the late ’90s and early 2000s saw nearly every company wanting a website, and scrambling to get it. Now, many companies are looking specifically to online video to best reach today’s consumer. “This is the evolution of what people are looking for now. More and more, that’s video,” said Stephan Vandenbroucke, “brewmaster” at Video Brewery, an online video marketplace that assists clients with creating custom videos. He noted that this trend will only grow. Traditional advertising, marketing and related projects can relay the same messages as video, but there are distinctions between the two types of campaigns that can make all the difference. Using just text and still images can be dull, whereas video is simply much more engaging. “Video helps to humanize a product. It adds character to the message,” Vandenbroucke said, noting that not all video marketing needs to be traditional advertising. Compelling, alluring video presents viewers with the advertiser’s message in a creative, attractive way. Incorporating video into marketing initiatives “can help people get hooked into reading and learning more.” It helps create a well-rounded, farther-reaching campaign, and it can increase message-retention rates, too. • 'Video marketing is the most effective way for you to get someone's attention and engage them for a substantial period of time.' – David Grimes II The average audience retains about 65 percent of visual information (video, specifically), a multimedia firm that provides visual content for leading ecommerce retailers and brands. And information retention leads to action. Also in the Invodo report, retailers cited a 40 percent increase in sales as a result of video marketing. In fact, those who view video ads are nearly twice as likely to purchase a product as nonviewers, according to the report. Those resulting sales and other such statistics can be tracked with a video campaign, as online viewer clicks can be traced. And video can offer a lot of information in a short amount of time. A 1-minute video is worth 1.8 million words of text, according to Video Brewery. Additionally, Cisco Marketing Velocity (cited in a report by B2B Marketing) found that employing video content can increase a company’s chances of a “front page Google ranking” by 53 times. “Video marketing is the most effective way for you to get someone’s attention and engage them for a substantial period of time,” said David Grimes II, a freelance video editor who has created marketing videos and tutorials for numerous companies. “Keeping someone engaged is the best and quickest way to gain their trust. Gaining trust is the only way to convert your audience into happy, long-term clients/customers/subscribers.”