Your online video marketing strategy usually consists of many parts, including branding, content creation, user engagement, and monetization. In dealing with online video marketing, the video player itself may be overlooked. Presenting a video player that is not only feature-rich but quick to load and respond on any screen is one of the greatest keys to successful video marketing.

It may help you to think of your video player as your storefront and clicking play gives viewers the option of walking inside your store. The player’s features must help to deliver a smooth experience that impresses viewers, regardless of the device they are using or their location. The capabilities of the player should inspire them to take action, watch more videos, share content or answer interactive surveys.

The features and capabilities of the software distinguish one product from another. Many video players are fairly complex, and you usually need some time to get used to the idiosyncrasies of each one.

Determining your requirements depends on various factors such as the nature of the videos you want to make, what you expect a player to be able to do, how your video will be deployed and how much you can afford to spend.

Customizable Options

It is likely that your company website has already been designed according to your brand image. The player needs to compliment this, and you need one that offers you customizable options.  You should be able to change layouts and skins, add sharing widgets and speed controls, add monetization options, and enable advanced accessibility features.

You should be able to customize the player to match your brand colors and select an eye-catching thumbnail. Adding your logo and personal branding to your videos makes them look more professional. You want your viewers to be aware that the great content you’ve given them access to was created by your company.

Exceptional Video and Audio Quality

Various technical factors such as computer speed, resolution of original content and the type of display all have a bearing on quality. You want to make sure that any videos you produce have the best video and audio quality. With standard players, built-in capabilities may not provide this. You want a video player that offers great clarity of both audio and video.

Adaptable and Flexible

Your audience should be able to choose how they want to watch your video content. They should have options such as being able to change playback speed.  The options should be user-friendly, so even if viewers are not tech savvy, they can manage easily. The more expensive players often offer a vast array of settings. Viewers are often able to easily jump to specific areas in the video, choose their own views, search for keywords or switch from single view to side-by-side with a toggle that’s easy to use.

When viewers love what they see, they should find it as easy as possible to share on social media. With social sharing options inside the player, they don’t have to even leave the video to share.

Editing tools are important. Putting a video together may not take long, but it probably won’t be perfect, and you will need tools to tweak it. Some useful editing options are the ability to remove content, adjust the length, integrate some background audio or add pop-up features such as links and text boxes. You should be able to activate and position subtitles, enable media types, insert ads and add watermarks if you want to.

Multi-device Support

Adaptive streaming is technology that enables users to watch a video as efficiently as possible at the highest usable quality. Lack of quality and buffering is common on mobile devices where connection varies according to the location of the user. Adaptive streaming allows a video provider to resolve this problem by creating a different video for each device he or she wishes to target.

Adaptive streaming has become an essential part of delivering video content because the internet is a vast network of systems and connections and performance is constantly changing. A video that takes too long to play buffers constantly and doesn’t offer any options to viewers won’t hold their attention for long.

With mobile devices being so much a part of everyone’s lives, having the ability to watch video on smartphones or tablets is vital. A video should not only be accessible everywhere, but delivery should be seamless no matter what device is being used.

For instance, viewers should be able to view videos on a screen on any size without distortion. You want to be able to automatically deliver the right stream to any device: mobile, Amazon Fire and more. A mobile-ready video player is able to detect a viewer’s device and automatically displays video in HTML5 format.

Integrative Applications

Basic video viewing boxes and controllers are all fairly similar. The best ones have more sophistication, ease of use and a professional feel. They also have the option of adding integrative applications. This is what will engage your viewers and eventually lead to them wanting to do business with you.

For instance, you can easily integrate a call-to-action into your videos. There are many other integrative options such as inviting viewers to sign up for newsletters, register for services, contact you or buy your products. This keeps viewers engaged and helps you to build up relationships with them.

Video can drive collaboration, support clients, increase sales, spread knowledge, boost corporate communication and so much more. Video needs to be fully integrated with your existing workflow, and you need to be able to easily create, edit, upload, publish and deliver quality content to multiple devices.

Make your video content work harder by adding captions, interactive quizzes, choice-based interactive branches and much more. Using a video player that gives you such options will help you to take your marketing to the next level and make your business more engaging and efficient.

 

About the Author: Having more than 8 years of writing experience, Smridhi Malhotra is a professional tech, health and travel blogger.  She loves to gather and share her profound knowledge about latest developments in technology. Smridhi is a management graduate and visual graphics artist and is currently pursuing masters in behavioral psychology. Her hobbies are practicing mindfulness, counseling children and traveling (a special love for Africa).