6 Reasons Why You Need a Video Budget in 2016

For a lot of writers (like me) video is the last big frontier. Creating and producing a good video may seem challenging. Finding a vendor is even harder. I’ve had quotes for the same video proposal that have ranged from $750 to $20,000. For the exact same thing.  Don’t even get me started on my “dream” video producer who included a guy picking his nose in the final cut. (I know, you get what you pay for.)

We could go on and on (call me, I will!) about the challenge of video production. But the numbers all show that it is an unavoidable, and arguably the most important, component of your content marketing and IMC overall strategy. Here are 6 reasons why you need to have a video budget in 2016:

1.  According to a study by Cisco, by 2017 video will account for nearly 70% of all traffic on the Internet.  You already know how powerful it is for SEO, at least I hope you do. In just a year or so it will be the dominating force for Internet traffic.
2. A Regalix report on the State of B2B Marketing found that  78% of survey respondents identify videos as the most leveraged content type.
3. In his Forrester report How Video Will Take Over the World Dr. James McQuivey says that video content is worth 1.8 million words per minute. (IdeaBlog did a nice breakdown of how he got to that number.)
4. A Forbes article stated research that 59% of executives would rather watch video than read text.
5. Online video now accounts for 50 percent of all mobile traffic and up to 69 percent of traffic on certain networks, according to ByteMobile.
6. More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month, spending more than 4 billion hours watching videos.

Statistics like these and others show that video is a revolution for small business and B2B marketing. If you don’t have it, you’ll get crushed. Figure out a way to incorporate video into your marketing, or at least your SEO strategy in 2016.  You’ll see results immediately.

My friend Buddy Cohen describes the need for video beautifully in this video. (Be sure to check out the drone shots, they’re awesome.)