The advancements in technology have made some major changes to the world of business and marketing. The days of just using standard marketing practices are gone. Today, it is essential to incorporate video content into your content marketing strategy.
What is video marketing?
Video marketing means incorporating the use of video content into your marketing strategy in order to promote a brand, product, service or message. Video marketing today has become important on every platform and is now the dominant form of communication.
A video marketing strategy is an essential marketing tool used to effectively educate an audience and increase engagement across both social and digital channels. Creating a video for your business offers the opportunity to show personality by creating videos that show the company’s culture, values and purpose.
Ignoring video marketing is no longer an option for businesses that want to excel. If you don’t jump on the video marketing trend, you risk being left behind and becoming irrelevant.
Why is video content important?
Video content generates higher clickthrough rates and conversions and is used for landing pages, social media channels, emails, webinars and to introduce brands. High-quality video content can increase engagement, spark customer interest and lead to traffic to your site. Traffic and clickthroughs are both ranking factors for google and can make your page easier to find for customers.
Below we will talk about some important video marketing statistics to explain the importance of using video as part of your digital marketing strategy.
Video content now accounts for 82% of all internet traffic and is now the best way to reach a wide audience. The rise of smartphone technology has made it more convenient for consumers to watch and share videos. Video marketing is the future of marketing and provides a way to build stronger connections with customers.
People process videos 60,000 times faster than text according to a Management Informations Systems Research Centre study at the University of Minnesota. Most of the information that comes from our brain is visual.
Humans are able to remember 95% of a visual message or an entire video compared to just 10% of a message in plain text. This means that video marketing is a much more effective way of delivering a message to your customers and creating a memorable image of your brand in their minds.
What are the benefits of video marketing?
Video content gives an abundance of creative freedom and allows businesses to create unique content to stand out from the competition. This makes it easier for small businesses to compete with some of the biggest companies.
As technology continues to become simpler and easier to use, creating video content is a very cost-effective form of digital marketing and is becoming increasingly popular with small businesses. Video content doesn’t have to be complicated and expensive. You can even use your smartphone to create videos and quality, engaging content. There’s no need for a proper video camera!
Audiences now crave shorter, engaging videos. Through these videos, you have the opportunity to teach complex concepts to make things clearer for your target audience. You can even share stories and customer testimonial videos.
Not only this, but video also allows you to easily influence buyer decisions. According to Forbes, 90% of customers say a product video helped them to make a decision about a product.
Customers use different methods when they consider buying something and want to explore their options. The usual tactics include using search engines to compare products, reading reviews, visiting the official product website and watching videos. By incorporating videos into each of these tactics, you can dramatically increase your chances of getting a conversion.
Videos are also easy to track and measure engagement. You can link your videos directly to products or deals and see which assets are resonating the most depending on content engagement analytics. You can then identify the most engaged leads faster and improve their value.
Videos help you to rank higher on search engine results pages. This is because the amount of time a customer spends on a page, known as dwell time, is a google ranking factor. Videos significantly increase the dwell time and therefore increase your likelihood of ranking on the first page of google by up to 53 times.
Not only this, but embedding a video into a page also triples the average number of linking domains to your page which is also a google ranking factor.
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What are the different types of marketing videos?
- Branded videos – these videos showcase the company and its products and services. It can be an ad, introduce your viewers to the company, its mission or values. This is a great way to make a good first impression and build trust and loyalty as well as build awareness for the brand.
- Explainer videos – a high-quality video that explains what a product or service is and to help your target audience understand why they need your product or service. This could also be in the form of animated videos.
- Customer testimonials – a video featuring customers talking about their experience with your product or service. This helps create brand trust.
- Behind the scenes – gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look and is a great way of humanising your brand, creating a brand story and giving potential customers an idea of what goes into running your business.
- How-to videos – teaches viewers how to do something related to your business or a product or service. This is a great way to show potential customers your expertise. These educational videos not only teach the viewer something new but also helps them gain an understanding and appreciation for your business.
- Interviews – an interview with an expert or leader in your industry to provide insight to your customers
- Livestreams – a more dramatic way to get your viewers attention is through a live video. Often in the form of behind-the-scenes footage, interviews or a demo. Making a live video is a really easy way to create video content.
- Event videos – create a highlight reel of a past event, conference, discussion or fundraiser. This is a great way to show customers what your business is all about and show your involvement in the professional community.
What are the top trends to create videos in 2023?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well imagine the value of a video and what it can do for your business. Here’s the top trends you need to follow and incorporate into your video strategy.
Vlogs
Brand storytelling is a very effective way to connect with your customers and get your audience engaged with your brand. It’s also the perfect opportunity to create tutorials or give product information which leads to conversions.
Social media stories
Similar to vlogs, social media stories help show your company’s personality and create more of a connection between you and your customer. Stories are more casual and take the form of a day to day vlog rather than a long properly edited vlog.
Social media offers ways for your audience to interact through these stories including the option to add poles and Q&As. This is a perfect way to get your audience involved in the brand and get their opinions on brand decisions.
Silent videos
People are watching video content wherever they go including on public transport, in classrooms and even in meetings, which is why silent videos are becoming increasingly popular. In fact, 85% of videos on Facebook are played without sound!
This means, to get people to stay on your page and watch your content, you need to optimise it for silent viewing including creating closed captions as part of the video creation process.
User generated content
Customers place a huge amount of trust in user generated content compared to branded content. User generated content comes across as more authentic and trustworthy.
A great way to get user generated content is by getting happy customers to act as brand advocates and post video content of their own on social media by offering incentives.
Atomizing videos
Atomizing is when video marketers repurpose the same video content for different channels and platforms. This will help you get the most out of your video content and will save time. An example is using the audio from a YouTube video and uploading it as a podcast episode.
TikTok videos and Instagram Reels
Not only has TikTok continued to grow in popularity, but Instagram has taken a similar approach with Reels. This means social media platforms are beginning to prioritise video content.
For brands, there are many ways to utilise this and engage with your customers including working with brand ambassadors or following the fleeting trends that come and go but can gain huge amounts of views quickly.
Youtube videos
YouTube is the wold’s second largest search engine and has billions of people watching every month. It’s a great place to advertise your business. You can upload videos on your own channel or use YouTube in-stream ads.
Work with us
Promoting content online is a big part of what we do for our clients. Whether you want to promote your content through organic or paid options or need help planning out your content, our Search Marketing Managers can help. If you’re interested or want to discuss your options, let’s chat!
Frequently asked questions about video marketing
Video marketing is defined as incorporating the use of video content in your marketing strategy in order to promote a brand, product, service or message.
Some benefits of using video marketing include:
- Creative freedom to create unique content that stands out from your competition
- It’s cost effective and easy to create
- It allows you to create more memorable content
- It results in more conversions
- It is easy to track and measure conversions
- It helps you rank higher on the Google SERPs
You can use video marketing to promote your business by creating branded videos, explainer videos, customer testimonials, behind the scenes videos, how-to videos, interviews, livestreams and event videos.
Our top tip for creating a successful marketing video is to create unique, engaging videos and to follow the latest trends in order to get the most out of your content.