By Hildur Smaradottir, Varnish Software
These days, the central and often most effective tool in your marketing kit is video. The reason? It works. A recent eyeviewdigital.com story reports that simply adding video to a landing page will result in an 80% conversion rate. The website Animoto concurs in an article that says 60% of Millennials would rather watch a company video than read its newsletter. In fact, a recent Hubspot infographic shows that there are endless advantages to video marketing.
While the average marketing professional has mastered the art of producing great videos that draw viewers into a site, many are not aware of the background technology behind their video delivery. This technology may not seem sexy, however it is essential to fast reliable video delivery and a positive viewer experience. Just think about this: How long will a web site visitor wait for that fabulous video to load before they become frustrated and move on to another site? Not long at all.
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Why Is Content Delivery Key?
Before the first video is shot and mounted for viewing, a content delivery platform capable of serving up vast and reliable video and other digital content must be in place. In the past, marketers leased a platform from a commercial content delivery network (CDN) provider. Today, big Internet companies such as Comcast, Netflix and Facebook are building their own CDNs.
These companies have discovered that it can be a whole lot less expensive to go the DIY route. After all, if the goal is to generate leads from a video, why should you be paying a commercial CDN provider for bandwidth. A third-party CDN provider will also assume control over your content and its performance while the DIY approach puts control back into the marketer’s hands.
Let’s say you are running a campaign where you want to ensure the same viewer experience across a continent, but the CDN provider has black spots where your message cannot reach. In this case, the user experience is dictated by the placement of their servers. This can be especially vexing when you realize that no commercial CDN provider reaches into every corner of the globe, and you may be challenged to deliver a consistent feed into crucial areas. Building your own private CDN may be the best way to gain control of your own content.
A Private CDN Platform Is Now Available
The good news is that there are now alternatives to commercial CDNs. A pre-packaged CDN “kit” that includes software, blueprints and services makes it quick and easy for an organization with limited staff to build a private content delivery infrastructure that meets their needs. In addition to being less expensive than a public CDN, a private CDN includes technology that avoids slow loading times or web site downtime by copying the content on various distributed servers. This enables a user who wants to watch a video to access it from the closest and fastest available server. As a result, the marketer is ensured optimal speed for video loads, which also increases the probability that your content will have the intended effect of converting your visitor to a lead.
Today, any organization can emulate Netflix and implement a content delivery solution that provides a solid foundation for video marketing, and they can do so without hiring an in-house army of engineers and developers.
Hildur Smaradottir is vice president, global marketing, at Varnish Software, a pioneer in caching software and high-performance content delivery. Varnish Software’s solutions enable organizations worldwide to provide fast and reliable digital content delivery at any scale while giving them the flexibility to maintain control over their content and make the technology their own. Varnish Software products power the world’s most popular web sites and brands, such as The New York Times, Vimeo, Tesco, Nikon, and Tesla.
