Why your business needs a video marketing strategy

Lights and camera for business action

It wasn’t too long ago when we wondered whether video marketing was on the rise in the marketplace. Today, there’s no question about it: 81 percent of businesses use video as a marketing tool, a statistic that’s up from 63 percent over the last year. Because video continues to be such an effective element in a digital marketing and beneficial for small, medium and large businesses, it’s worth considering a video when plotting out a marketing strategy.

Types of video

Want a mind-blowing statistic? According to YouTube’s company data, 1.9 billion logged-in users visit the site every month. That’s half of the Internet. With billions of viewers watching a billion hours of video, if you aren’t yet producing video for your business, you are missing out.

There are many different types of videos that can be effective and can be incorporated into an overall content marketing strategy. These include:

• Explainers or tutorials:These help to educate consumers about your service or product and can be used in conjunction with written instructions or other applications.
• Interviews: Conversations with C-level or mid-level executives, special guests or influencers.
• Presentations and webinars: These videos present extra value by allowing customers the option of viewing the event again.
• Customer testimonials: Using past or current satisfied customers to share stories about your product or service.
• Brand videos: These showcase a product or service. For example, shows how a client use your product or service.
• Branded documentaries: Using emotion and telling true stories about people’s lives and how they are entwined with the brand.
• Live streams: Live video allows presenters to get more personal with the audience. This works particularly well on social channels.

Why use video marketing?

Video is engaging content and 72 percent of customers would rather learn about a product or service via video than other methods. It’s also very versatile and can be put on websites, into emails, on social media posts and more. Videos that are entertaining and easy to digest are easily shared, making it a very real possibility to exponentially enhance your reach by going viral.

While having a high-quality video looks more professional, it is very easy for businesses to create a video using mobile phones and laptops. Thus, even businesses with smaller budgets can get in the pool with the big brands.

Benefits of video marketing

Investing in video can increase traffic, drive sales and deliver some great ROI to businesses in these ways:

• Improved SEO: Search engines like Google don’t just look for text when assessing websites. They also look for other media that may be relevant. Video is seen as high-quality content and incorporating a strong title, effective keywords, a good meta description help improve optimization. Additionally, adding a video transcript helps search engines even more (and it helps viewers, too).
• Better target audience attention: With so much in the marketplace trying to grab the customer’s attention, brands have to use the best methods possible. Compared to other content, 55 percent of people play close attention when consuming video.
• Higher engagement: Video grabs attention with sound and images. Audiences are 10 times more likely to engage, share, and comment on video content. Twitter reports video on the platform is six times more likely to be retweeted than photos. Live streams on websites or social media pull even higher engagement rates with viewers spending up to 8.1 times longer with live video than with video on-demand.
• Higher retention rates: According to comScore, visitors who watch videos stay on web sites an average of two minutes longer. Research shows the average viewer remembers 95 percent of a message when it is watched compared to 10 percent when read. But it’s important to remember, shorter videos have a higher completion rate than longer videos. Videos longer than 30 minutes keep only 14 percent of viewers.
• Better email click-through rates: Emails that include videos have 5.6 percent higher open rates and, according to a report published by Forrester, including video in an email increases the click-through rate by 200 to 300 percent.
• Stronger emotional connections: Using emotion to attract and encourage response from your target audience is very effective. Video is a very powerful way to evoke emotions online. For example, U.K. retailer John Lewis created a moving video for Christmas 2018 about Sir Elton John.

Ready to roll?

Once you recognize the great benefit video can be for business, you’ll likely want to move forward to incorporate it your marketing strategy. Deciding to do so doesn’t mean your staff has to head to film school or purchase fancy equipment.

At T.E. Digital, our team not only understands the impact video marketing can have on businesses, we can help you create one that best showcases your brand. Just give us a call. We’ll start by working together to understand your target audience and your goals to see how video can be incorporated into your overall marketing plan.