In Part 1 of our new blog series, we look at 8 reasons why businesses should be utilising video as part of their marketing strategy.
Over the past decade, online video has rapidly evolved and grown into one of the most – if not the most – popular mediums of entertainment. The majority of people would now even choose to watch online videos over television. This demand makes video the perfect medium for delivering marketing and advertising content.
In 2020, video content will continue to be one of the most essential parts of the marketer’s toolbox. The first quarter of the year has been quite turbulent to say the least, with many businesses changing their approaches in response to widespread remote working culture and the changing demands of consumers.
What better way for brands to communicate this than with powerful, video-based content?
Businesses of all kinds can use video in a number of creative ways to tell their story, inform their audience, grow brand recognition and, ultimately, drive sales. 85% of businesses already implement video as part of their strategy1, however this percentage could grow to be even higher as videography becomes more cost-effective and readily available.
At fatBuzz, we are big believers in the power of Video Marketing. So, we’ve put together this 3-part blog series in order to explore the benefits and secrets to creating successful video content. Welcome to “Video Marketing 101”!
Here are 8 reasons why you should be making video a key part of your marketing mix:
Inform and Entertain Your Audience
Want to make sure you get your message across? Viewers retain 95% of a message delivered through video, while only retaining 10% through text alone2. This makes video a far more effective way to imprint your brand’s content in the minds of consumers. Research has also shown that 64% of consumers purchase after watching branded social videos3, so you can make conversions more likely by utilising video content.
Your branded video should aim to inform and/or entertain your audience, providing worthwhile content that engages with consumers in an interesting way or shows off what your brand is all about.
Evoke an Emotional Response
Never underestimate how effective emotion marketing can be. Appealing to viewers’ positive emotions through video content will help them invest in your brand message on a personal level.
The most recent statistics from HubSpot show that 54% of people want to see more video content from marketers4, so creating emotional engagement with your videos is sure to hook the attention of viewers and provide content they will enjoy. This can in turn lead to them becoming brand advocates that believe wholeheartedly in your products or services.
Appeal to Mobile Users
User consumption of mobile video increases by around 100% every year3. This presents a massive resource that should be tapped into by any and all types of business. Your customers watch hours and hours of video every week on mobile devices, so make sure you’re sharing your message on the platforms they’re using.
Content designed exclusively for mobile is also worth creating, as you can utilise the unique features inherent to the platform – portrait-oriented video for Instagram/Facebook stories are a good example of this.
Achieve a Return on Investment
Research from HubSpot suggests that 88% of marketers have said that video content gives them a positive return on investment (ROI)1. Having seen the response to some of our clients’ video content first-hand, we can certainly agree with this.
The user appeal of video (as stated in the points above) is so effective in driving both social engagement and conversions from customers that its relatively high cost of production is made more than worthwhile. With high quality video now more cost-effective to produce than ever, you can be sure to receive a good ROI on your video marketing efforts.
Boost Your Sales and Conversions
Did you know that marketers who incorporate video into their campaigns experience 34% higher conversion rates5? This is down to the appeal of video as a visually exciting medium, but also in how it can be utilised to educate viewers on products, services or the background of a business.
Having video testimonials from happy customers or enthusiastic employees are also good ways to show your reputation to your audience, encouraging consumer confidence in purchasing from your company.
Enhance Your Overall Marketing
It’s worth saying that video is just simply effective. Video posts on social media result in 1200% more social shares than text or image posts combined3, and adding video to an email can boost its click-through rate by about 300%.6
No matter what these figures are down to, the stats speak for themselves. If you can find a way of using video effectively in your social and email campaigns, you’ll be looking at more engagement, shares and attention from your audience base.
Climb Up the Search Rankings
As well as being a booster for your online activity, video content is also favoured by search engines when it comes to ranking your web pages. For instance, including video on your web page can make it up to 53 times more likely to reach the front page of a Google search.3
The search engines know that consumers enjoy video content, so will adjust your page rankings accordingly if you have a video embedded. This can be further boosted by optimising your video’s title and captions for target keywords. Not only will your customers be more likely to convert after watching your marketing video content, they’ll be more likely to land on the page you want them to if it contains video in the first place.
Utilise In-Depth Analytics
By far the most underrated reason for using video content is the granular analytics that are available from social media and video sharing platforms. You can gain insight into how long viewers are watching for, when they switch off, which platforms they are viewing on, how they interact and more.
This is a marketer’s dream, as you can use all this information to improve how your future videos will perform in front of your audience. Could you do with adding a hook at the beginning of your videos to keep viewers interested for longer? If you have more viewers on mobile, should you be using a portrait-orientation or square aspect ratio for videos? Where in the video is best for you to add a call-to-action?
Having access to in-depth analytics encourages incremental improvement in how you use video, or lets you make effective changes to video ads over the course of a campaign in order to maximise effectiveness.
In Summary
- Customers want to see video content – don’t let them down!
- Video content is the perfect medium to inspire emotion in customers or inform them of ideas, product uses or service information.
- Video is key in grabbing the attention of mobile users.
- You can achieve a good ROI on video, which is now more cost-effective than ever.
- Drive leads, conversions and sales with video content.
- Video improves the user experience on your website, social channels, emails and landing pages.
- Climb up the search engine rankings with optimised video content – Google loves video!
- Video sharing platforms and social media provide in-depth analytics that you can take advantage of.
We hope that this first lesson in Video Marketing has been useful, or at the very least convinced you of the power of video when it comes to engaging, converting and retaining customers!
Read Part 2 in our Video Marketing 101 series, where we look at the types of video you should be producing for your business this year…
If you need help creating impactful video content, then get in touch with us today.
You can find out more about our videography services here.
Watch the fatBuzz 2020 Showreel video below to see the kinds of content we can produce for your brand:
Sources:
1 https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/state-of-video-marketing-new-data
2 https://www.insivia.com/50-must-know-stats-about-video-animation-marketing-2013/
3 https://www.insivia.com/28-video-stats-2018/
4 https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/video-marketing-statistics#sm.0000h4rgwfoa1fouwqm23llpma557
5 https://unbounce.com/landing-page-articles/the-benefits-of-using-video-on-landing-pages/
6 https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/subject-line-stats-open-rates-slideshare