We live in the video age, as a society we are surrounded by films, TV adverts, YouTubers and all manner of other video content. Video is on the rise and it is not going to slow down anytime soon. We wanted to breakdown 8 reasons why video needs to be a key consideration for any businesses digital marketing strategy.
1. The Facts & Figures
As I said, we are in the video age. Statistics show that in 2020 almost 80% of all content consumed on the internet will be video. Simply put, a business can miss out on a huge amount of internet traffic and as a result a huge amount of leads and customers if they don’t implement video into their digital strategies. On websites, adding a product video on to a landing page can increase conversions by 80%. As for social media marketing, the numbers don’t lie. In a 2019 study NewsWhip discovered that the average engagement for video posts on Facebook was much higher than that of any other content. It is important to note however that this is native video, which refers to video posted directly onto Facebook, not embedded links to YouTube or Vimeo etc.
Quick Tip Number 1: We would always recommend posting content natively on social media platforms. The algorithms on socials always favour native content over links which will take the audience off the platform.
2. Using Video To Start Conversations
Digital marketing is about starting conversations with potential leads and target demographics. This is especially impactful on social media platforms, the key word there being Social… As a result, companies need to be posting and sharing content which will spark conversations, spark interactions and get people talking. This can be content based around the company’s products, services and offers, or joining in broader conversations around your industry or the interests of your target demographics. Video is one of the best ways to start these conversations and have a much higher chance of becoming viral sensations than other forms of content.
A brilliant example of video marketing being used to start conversations, as well as promote a new product in an interesting way, and remain in line with the brands overall values and ethics would be Apples recent Christmas video ‘Shot on iPhone 11 pro – Snowbrawl’. The video received over 20 million views on YouTube as well as countless shares on other social media platforms and a raft of additional exposure from 3rd party blog articles (like this one) and even TV promotions. Obviously, this is an extreme example, Apple is a humungous company with an abundance of recourses and money to make any idea a reality. It does however show the power of video in starting conversations and generating shares and brand/product awareness in an interesting and way, targeted particularly at the company’s key demographics.
3. ROI & Engagement: Social Media Platforms Love Video
Social media platforms love video. In NewsWhips 2019 report they highlight some of the best performing channels on Facebook. LADbible top the engagement list with an average of 30 million engagements every month. LADbible is a key example of a company who have harnessed the power of video and used It to maximum effect on social media.
Social platforms and the algorithms which determine what each audience member sees are wired to maximise each individuals time spent on the app. Their key prerogative is to keep you scrolling for as long as possible. This is the reason why native video engagement rates are much higher than that of external links, and is a main reason why attention capturing, and more importantly, attention keeping video content does well on socials. Simply put, the average user will spend more time watching an engaging video than they will looking at even the most beautiful photograph, and because they spend more time watching the video, the algorithm notices and pushes said video to the top of other people’s feeds. The most engaging content gets more engagement. It is like the saying ‘The rich get richer’, but in terms of content marketing. As a result, finding the best and most engaging video content for your business is a huge deal.
Because of this, many companies have begun to use video in their marketing on social media. A recent survey conducted by TubularInsights.com found that 96% of B2B organisations use video in some capacity in their marketing campaigns of which 73% report positive results to their ROI. The return on investment offered by video marketing is, in many cases, vastly superior to other digital marketing options, but this is a bit of a blanket statement many companies can use to promote themselves, it is not simply a case of spend X on a video and get X+Y back straight away. Video marketing is a long term game, it is a marathon not a sprint. The real key to getting good ROI is having the right video, going to the right audience at just the right time, and then repeating that as often as possible. That is how you build a trusting audience, and that is how you increase leads, conversions and sales.
Quick Tip Number 2: You have to know what length of video is right for each platform. It isn’t one size fits all, each platform is different. Here’s what Hubspot recommends:
Instagram: 30 seconds
Twitter: 45 seconds
Facebook: 1 minute
YouTube: 2 minutes
4. Diversify Your Brand Identity Using Video
The possibilities are endless for video marketing. This can be a daunting point, but it is an important one. All different types of video content can and do work for different markets, this means you do not have to do exactly what the competition are doing to succeed, with video in fact the opposite is often true. Video is the perfect playground to diversify your brand and business from that of competitors, to branch out and use your creativity to bring something new and bold to the audience. Or to subtly change what the audience is used to and project it to them in a new way.
A great example of a company who harnessed video to diversify themselves would be CompareTheMarket.com. Everyone knows where I am going with this… That damn meerkat. It is a valid point, before 2009 comparethemarket.com was like every other price comparison website. Then they enlisted the help of a marketing agency and production company who devised the Compare The Meerkat campaign and the two ‘lovable’ characters at the forefront of it. I’m fairly confident everyone reading this knows of the company and this campaign, and I am also fairly confident that if I asked 99% of you to tell me the first price comparison website to come into your mind it would be comparethemarket.com (either that or Go Compare, who have gone down an equally creative and different route to diversify themselves… You all know the song…). These campaigns were implemented on TV but the concept of diversification through video can, and has been, replicated through other digital mediums.
As I said, the possibilities are endless, who would have thought a meerkat would be advertising a price comparison website to us? Or a gorilla playing the drums would be promoting a chocolate bar to the nation? In some cases, the only option is to get those creative juices flowing and think outside the box, Cisco.com predicts that it would take over 5,000,000 years to watch every video that crosses global IP networks in a single month. In that crowd of content, you have to diversify and stand out.
Quick Tip Number Three: Never copy, never rip off and never claim something as your own if it is not. Be inspired by other companies’ content, use elements of what they have done, then mix that with elements from other sources and throw in some of your own innovations, that is where you will find the best way to diversify yourself and your brand.
5. Create a Brand Experience
“Brand experience is a type of experiential marketing that incorporates a holistic set of conditions created by a company to influence the feeling a customer has about a particular product or company name. Through a combination of various modes a consumer uses to interact with a brand, companies attempt to create a general atmosphere of goodwill, dependability or trust to create an association between the brand and a specific need or emotion.” - whatis.techtarget.com
How very concise and marketing-y. The way we think of brand experience with regards to digital marketing is that it’s about alluding to the experience the customer will have if/when they want to go onto that next stage of working with you. This means, promoting who you are, what you do, why you do it and what it will be like to work with you/your company. Almost like a teaser trailer to a film. If the trailer is good and shows you that the film is likely something you will enjoy, then you will go to see it at the cinema (or stream it I guess… it is 2020 after all). In a marketing sense, the combination of your online presence, your social media accounts, your website and other digital platforms make up this brand experience, this trailer for what being a customer of yours will be like.
Video is brilliant for building brand experience; it is superior because of the fact you can pretty much show a potential customer what working with you will be like through video. What are the products or services you offer? How about a video breakdown of exactly that? How is the customer service? Here is a video of one of our customer service employees answering our frequently asked questions. What does your company stand for? Here is a video showing where we came from, our roots and history, and here is where we are now… How would you like to be a part of our journey?
Brand experience is built on storytelling (more on this in a later Blog post), video is the best means for telling impactful stories. A quick example of using video to build on and promote a brand experience is Apple (again… sorry but no one can deny they are masters of this). Apples ‘Perspective’ video campaign from 2014 perfectly summarises what the brand is about, and perfectly alludes to the type of person you can become (with the help of Apples products of course). The video encapsulates the brand and what they stand for in under 3 minutes.
Quick Tip Number 4: Under promise, over deliver. If we keep with this film trailer analogy, how many times have you seen a trailer to a film which has been amazing… Then, when you actually go to see the film it is completely different to what was advertised? This is exactly what we need to avoid! The brand experience needs to portray the truth of the business, the real tangible qualities the business has to offer. Otherwise, those disappointed people will never come back, and might even leave negative reviews to highlight their dissatisfaction. Be real, be true, be you.
6. Show Off Your Brands Personality and Build Trust
One of the great advantages video has over say photography and blog posting is the potential to put a face or a personality behind a brand. These days trust is everything. The best way to gain trust is through face to face interaction with potential customers. But we are talking about digital marketing, so what is the digital equivalent of face to face interactions? Video. Highlighting your company’s personality through video is an amazing tool when used correctly. Social Media Today report that 90% of consumers claim a video will help them make a purchasing decision. I wager that is down to trust. Whether that be seeing a product demonstration and trusting that the product works as intended, or a video which promotes a company’s personality, builds on the brand experience and as a result builds trust. Putting a face to a brand can have monumental impact on how customers feel about the brand, and how much people trust what the company offers. Household names like Richard Branson and Alan Sugar have built businesses off the back of their personalities and promoting them through video… Technically ‘The Apprentice’ is just an elaborate form of video marketing content for Lord Sugars other businesses, and his personal brand.
On the other side there is building personality through associating with others who represent what your brand stands for. NIKE do this better than anyone, using the latest and greatest athletes to promote their products and brand, always ending with the ever quotable ‘Just Do It’. Seeing these athletes at the top using the products immediately injects a sense of trust and reliability into the brand for potential customers.
On a smaller scale a way to build trust and introduce some personality to your online presence is simply to help customers or leads. Answer any questions they might have, any worries they could be dealing with regarding choosing your company. Educating an audience is one of the best ways to build trust, and if you can build a sense of personality whilst doing that, then you are really on the right track, video content is the best way to do that. This can be seen even recently during the Corona Virus outbreak of 2020 as many personal trainers turned to video to help them keep their audience and customers engaged and educated. This tactic has likely been employed through necessity, but in reality, it is a natural step in marketing for small businesses. Now the audience for these personal trainers can stay connected to them, and more importantly new customers can see what the PTs offer, see what their personalities are and slowly but surely becoming trusting enough to subscribe or join classes.
7. Video & SEO...
Hubspot say that 85% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. Without being too dramatic, if businesses don’t start to implement video into their digital marketing strategies, it is highly likely they will be left behind. Video is becoming increasingly important and relevant in the area of Search Engine Optimisation. As stated at the start, in 2020 almost 80% of all content consumed on the internet will be video, knowing this, the search engines have changed and advanced their algorithms to promote and pull out valuable video content. More often than not these days if you type a query into google, not only will a number of web pages and blogs come up, but, many video options are likely to appear near the top of the search (as long as the videos are on google owned platforms… YouTube for example). This has changed the way many SEO strategies are devised, now video needs to be a key consideration to increase presence at the top of internet searches.
Marketing guru Neil Patel states “If used correctly, video can be an extremely powerful form of content and make a significant contribution to your overall SEO strategy, in more ways than one.” - neilpatel.com
Video can help with SEO for a number of reasons, a big one is the shareability and linkability (I think I’ve just invented a word) video content offers. It is so easy to embed videos onto websites these days, so if you have created some really stand-out video content it is possible that many reputable domains would embed or make links to your video on their sites, this adds to your SEO and helps increase brand awareness and reputation at the same time.
Any old video won’t do. Especially for SEO it is important to make a concrete plan of exactly who the video is for, who you want to share it and who you want to link to it. The video needs to evoke an emotional reaction from the viewer, so much that they will feel obligated to share it. This is not easy, and it is why video marketing needs to have a thought-out approach. You can experiment with different types of video, test different markets and mediums, be innovative and new…. And to be honest that is where all the fun is.
The big takeaway here is that for SEO, video content is only going to get more and more important, and ascend higher and higher on the google search results page, so the best thing to do is start the experimenting now.
8. It Is More Accessible Than Ever To Get Going With Video
In the olden days of marketing, back when Don Draper and his colleagues ruled the marketing landscape, there was very little opportunity for your smaller businesses to implement video content. With TV as the only real medium to get your video out there and the airtime being taken up by the biggest cigarette and cereal companies of the time, there was little or no chance any small or medium sized businesses could make an impact with video. Times have changed. Now any business, small or large can implement video content and the internet provides a much more level playing field. In essence your video is just as likely to go viral as that of some of the biggest companies in the world. If the content is good, valuable and entertaining people will watch it. YouTubers filming themselves in their bedrooms are getting more views than high budget, star filled TV adverts. With digital marketing anything is possible these days, and video is one of the biggest areas of opportunity for businesses of any size in any sector. This is why we believe it is an essential component of any companies digital strategy for 2020.
To hear more about video marketing, or to see how we can help you get started with a video marketing strategy: