Video has very quickly gone from a nice add-on to essential in the space of a few short years. Video-streaming has improved in leaps and bounds and our personal devices, like our phones, have transformed into media consumption machines. We can now consume media wherever and whenever we like.
Now consumers are ravenous for video. It has become the expected way for brands to open up to their customers, provide them special insights, and reward them for brand loyalty with engaging and entertaining content. If you want your business to stay relevant to your audience, you will need to make video an essential part of your marketing strategy.
What can video do for you?
The abilities of video have transformed along with internet technologies. It has become more widespread than ever, in more places than ever, and its purpose has shifted with each platform it is available on. As video’s abilities have expanded so to have the benefits to businesses taking advantage of it for their marketing. Here are some key ways it benefits businesses:
Boosts conversions and sales
64 – 85% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase after seeing a video about your product. That is huge! Video has proven to have a huge impact on overall conversions when it is included on landing pages and product pages. The clear and direct impact video has on a business’s sales has made it essential in any marketing strategy.
Improves your SEO
Videos are naturally shareable content that can help boost your mentions, backlinks, and likes across social platforms, improving your organic search ranking. One great platform for this is YouTube. As the world’s second most popular search engine YouTube offers a huge potential audience to convert and use to improve your sales and organic rankings. We go into more detail about marketing on YouTube in this article.
Enhance your customers experience
Happier, engaged customers are more likely to become repeat customers, and are far more likely to recommend your brand and share your content. People need novelty and entertainment. By catering to that, businesses can keep their customers engaged with their brand. Video is significantly more entertaining than reading, to the point where users will generally opt for video content first. This makes video the perfect supplement to written content, allowing customers to be persuaded by the video and seek more information in the copy.
How to incorporate video into your marketing strategy
Video offers many different forms and locations that you can use to reach a wide variety of potential customers. However, there are certain elements that consumers expect each video to contain.
Quality
High quality video content is generally expected from brands now. Even casual off the moment content is expected to be high resolution with great sound quality and minimal shake. That shouldn’t scare you though, in fact high quality video content is more affordable and more accessible than it has ever been before.
Bigger brands generally have teams dedicated to creating video content, but for smaller brands you will need to allocate a portion of the marketing budget to video creation. For these businesses hiring an agency or freelancer will offer excellent results.
Storytelling
A key element to engaging video is the story. Video is designed to tell a story, so ensuring you take advantage of that is paramount. Don’t think that you have to write and film a complex Game of Thrones style epic, instead keep it simple. Highlight success stories from your products, help customers understand the journey of your brand, its values and attributes. There are many different simple stories that you can tell through video that will keep your audience captivated.
Keep it short
People have short attention spans. As a business, keeping customers engaged beyond the first few seconds is going to be incredibly difficult and over 30 seconds almost impossible. So, think short. There is so much content vying for your customers attention, so you need to leverage short-form video to cut through. Short-form video is excellent for hooking customers in and convincing them to visit your website or to view some of your longer-form content.
Different types of video content
There are many different types of brand video content that you can leverage to reach multiple different customers. Diversify the types of content you post to keep drawing customers back and to reach new customers. These could include: social media stories, live streams, how-tos, unboxings, product demos, testimonials, brand stories, and much more. Be creative, don’t limit yourself, and have fun.
Conclusion
Video is essential to any marketing strategy. It draws more customers in, keeps them engaged, all while boosting your sales and leads. While it does take a small investment to start, the results are well worth it. It is a good idea to hire an agency to help you create high quality, on brand content, that keeps your customers engaged. Talk to Link Pixel today about creating video content for your business.
