It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Now, imagine just how much more valuable a video filled with hundreds and thousands of pictures must be? This is why video marketing is continuing to grow in popularity.
Over the years, it has been found to be a more productive marketing tool than direct mail and print combined. Maybe this explains the huge shift to the use of video as a vital marketing tool across social media platforms.
The use of video to appeal to consumers isn't a new trend or one that's going away. If you haven't tried it, your brand could be missing out on the millions of people who love watching videos.
Understanding Video Marketing
Video marketing is simply a strategy used to promote or market your brand product or service. It's a strategy that integrates engaging and captivating videos in your marketing campaigns. You don't have to stop any other marketing strategies, but video is a perfect addition to an omnichannel strategy.
Video marketing helps you:
- Build a great customer rapport
- Promote your brand, services or products
- Present how-to’s
- Promote customer testimonials, if you have any
- Live-stream events
- Deliver viral content
- Create shareable content
Think about when you're starting a new relationship or friendship. You want to get to know the person. What would help better - a picture or a video?
Since more consumers want to build relationships with brands and not just buy from them, it's important to give customers something more to help them understand your brand better. Show off your personality and make your brand far more relatable. It's that simple!
Consumers Love Video
Video is a versatile and engaging form of content delivery. It is easy to digest, share across multiple platforms, entertaining and very accessible to anyone with access to the internet. These are just some of the reasons why consumers love video and video marketing.
If you don't believe that, let these statistics about how consumers consume video change your mind:
- Over 500 hours of YouTube videos are watched daily
- YouTube has over a billion users
- Facebook users watch 8 billion videos a day
- 10 billion videos are viewed by Snapchat users daily
- 82% of Twitter users watch video on Twitter
- 54% of consumers want to see more videos from brands
That last number is particularly important. Not only do consumers enjoy video, but they want to see more from brands. Give your consumers what they want and enjoy the benefits.
Videos Convert Better
Every brand would love to see all their marketing efforts convert viewers into consumers. The great thing about video marketing is videos convert better than text-based marketing.
Google loves videos and you definitely want to impress Google to lead to more organic search results. According to Moovly, your brand is 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of Google if your website has a video.
Facebook loves videos too. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook intends to transform Facebook into a video-first platform. By 2021 Facebook will be an “all video” application.
It gets even better. Just look at some of these stats gathered by Oberlo:
- Increase leads by 66%
- Videos are consumers' favorite type of social media content, leading to more conversions
- Site visitors stay on a site with video 88% longer
- 95% of video viewers remember calls-to-action better this way
- 88% of marketers are satisfied with the ROI
So, it's a great way to reach more consumers, keep them better engaged and encourage them to take action. It's a win for everyone.
Types of Marketing Videos
There are a variety of different marketing videos you can create. Each type is designed to engage your brand's audience in a different way. The key to creating more effective marketing videos is to first understand your audience and their needs.
Your audience wants educative, entertaining and engaging video content. While entertainment is important, oftentimes, a viewer wants a video that helps them to learn something. This can be about your brand or something useful they can use in their everyday lives. You can satisfy viewers by offering the following types of videos:
- Explainer videos
They educate your audience about why they need your product or services. Show your product in action and how it solves a specific need. Seeing something makes it more real and makes consumers want or need it more.
- Interview videos
They help start or create a conversation, boosting engagement. An interview feels more like a friendly conversation. Consumers get their questions answered and it seems like less marketing and more education.
- Product reviews and demo videos
These videos show the inner workings of your product and guide prospective users through using a key feature. Prospects are more likely to buy if they see real-world examples of how a product solves their pain points. To create such videos, you need to first create an interactive product demo using a tool like Reprise or an equivalent Reprise alternative, then export those demos into gifs and videos you can embed into your marketing materials.
- Live videos
They help you engage personally with your audience. They tend to be longer and attract higher engagement rates. This also gives consumers a chance to participate and ask questions too. When considering longer videos, particularly for live streaming, it's essential to provide additional support for accessibility and engagement. Integrating video to text transcription services can serve this purpose effectively. By offering real-time captions or providing post-event transcripts, you ensure inclusivity for viewers who may have difficulty following audio content, thereby broadening your audience reach.
Best Video Marketing Practices
To get the best out of video marketing strategy is key. Use the following best practices to get a much higher return:
First, define your audience
This helps you avoid creating generic videos that may not produce desired results. By defining your audience, you get to create targeted and effective videos. Such videos come out with authentic and relatable stories.
Clarify your message
Avoid cramming everything in a single video. For example, use an explainer video to convince your audience why they need your product or services. Use a demo video to show how your product works. Educate rather than confuse. If you need to do more, create a series of shorter videos. This is much easier to digest.
Determine your budget
As a brand, your video's quality is just as important as quality content. Statistics show that:
- 62% of consumers have a negative perception with brands advertising through poor quality videos
- 23% would hesitate to purchase from a brand with poor quality videos
- 57% are less likely to share brand videos of poor quality
- 60% wouldn’t even engage with the brand on any of their platforms.
Spending a little more for a higher quality video will yield better results. It's also more likely to get shared than a grainy, hard to hear video. Remember, the quality of your video reflects on the quality of your brand.
Get to the point in the first 8 seconds
The average attention span of human beings is 8.5 seconds. Therefore, you should aim to deliver your point within 8 seconds before the consumer’s attention waivers and clicks away from your video.
Consider the lengths of the videos
Platforms vary with the acceptable lengths of videos. While YouTube accepts longer videos, other platforms are limited to shorter videos. However, remember you have only two minutes to hold your viewers’ attention. Therefore it is safe to say a shorter video is better for content marketing.
The main exception is live video. If you're streaming, consumers don't mind a longer video. Just make sure they have a chance to participate.
Be transparent and authentic
Show your consumers that you are an expert in your field. This will create trust and reliance. You can do this by engaging with your audience. To keep track of your customers' questions across multiple platforms, you can use social media aggregators. Simply ask your customers to tag their questions with a specific hashtag.
Analyze
Last but not least, you need to track your defined video metrics to monitor performance. This helps you know why some videos are doing better than others and how you can improve. Also, don't be afraid to actually ask for feedback. This is especially true if you're posting videos on social media. Pay attention to any complaints on these posts to see how you can improve.
Advantages of video marketing
- Video improves conversion rates
Your conversions rate increases by 80% if you have a video on your landing page. 74% of users who viewed an explainer video have ended up buying the product.
- Videos show great ROI
83% of businesses have seen a good return on investment (ROI) from video marketing.
- Video marketing boosts email response
An email with the word video written on its subject line has a 19% increase in open rates and 65% boost in click-through.
- Video boost information retention
65% of the information delivered visually can be retained after three days. 10% of the information delivered aurally can be retained after three days.
- Video builds trust
57% of consumers have gained more confidence to purchase products online after watching marketing videos.
- Videos command attention
Consumer attention is in great demand and capturing it takes effort. However with videos, capturing consumer attention has been simplified, making it easier to increase your brand awareness.
According to a heat map study published on Moz.com, tracking consumer eye movement and attention on the search page, it was seen that videos powerfully captured the eyeballs than static ads, regardless of the position of the video in the results.
- Video Appeals to Mobile Users
By 2020, online videos are expected to account for 75% of all mobile traffic. Currently, 90% of consumers use their mobile phones to view videos. As a brand, it is vital to ensure that your videos are mobile-friendly to widen your market.
People who view videos on their phones are more likely to watch and share ads than those who don’t. Smartphone users are more likely to share in person about the video content they are watching than TV viewers.
Final word
As you can see, video is the future of marketing. Videos are not only entertaining and engaging but when used prudently they can also boost your return on investment.
As a business looking to exploit this marketing tool, research is always paramount. Understand your audience, how to entertain them, while also selling to them.
Over to you. Have you tried video marketing before? How do you create an emotionally charged video to accompany your marketing initiatives? Contact us here.