24 July 2024 |
By - Sudha Mariappan
Winning and holding the attention of your target audience is the key to business success in today's fast-moving, digitally connected world. When you notice the growing number of distractions for human brains, traditional marketing techniques are no longer as effective as before.
Nowadays, we’re only patient enough to watch 30-second videos, or even less than that. So keeping this in mind, how can businesses effectively market their products?
Wouldn’t this fast-paced generation either ignore or mindlessly look into your content? It totally depends on the content you produce.
How will you produce such compelling content?
This is where video marketing comes in.
Video marketing can be used to accomplish everything from creating videos that will be shared on social media to promote products to sharing longer-format explainer videos. Today, video is literally a piece of any full-functioning marketing strategy.
The impact of video marketing cannot go unnoticed. It is proven that videos are digested by the brain more quickly than text, so they are more engaging and memorable. Besides, with the rise of YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and other video-sharing platforms, video content has never been more accessible.
What is Video Marketing?
Video marketing is just the act of using videos to meet your marketing goals. It's quite a generic term that can refer to everything from animated explainer videos to live streaming and User Generated Content (UGC).
We’ve been seeing video content everywhere. From 30 second reels to hours of YouTube videos, what your challenge will actually come down to is to make video content that speaks much to your target audience, engages them, and finally converts them into customers.
Here are some common video marketing types:
Explainers: Such videos just simplify complex ideas or products and explain them in easily understandable terms. Mostly, they are used to teach viewers about a product or service.
Product Demos: Product demos are basically aiming at revealing the features and benefits that the product has. They can be really effective in explaining exactly how a product works.
Testimonials: Customer testimonials can help a lot in developing trust and credibility. Video testimonials let customers in on their positive experiences with your brand.
Brand videos: This category focuses on building brand identity and relating the audience emotionally to the brand. They mostly narrate a story of the values propagated and the mission behind them.
Behind-the-scenes videos: A view from within your business that can humanize a brand and build a feeling of authenticity. Behind the scenes videos help get more reach and interest to your customers.
Live videos: Interacting with your audience in real-time can be a very effective way to engage and build community.
Essentially, video marketing is the process of storytelling with your brand, done in a visually captivating way. This can be done by using the power of video to deepen that connection with the audience and build trust in order to drive results for a business.
7 Benefits of Video Marketing:
1. Increased Engagement:
No doubt, among the best advantages of video marketing is the way it grabs and maintains the interest of its viewers. In a noisy world, videos are to break through the noise and make users engage in their business offerings.
Videos are digested by the human brain 60,000 times faster than text alone.
Thus, they are more likely to remember and share. Compared to any other format, videos have significantly higher engagement rates. Meaning, users are way more likely to watch a video compared to reading a blog post or looking at an image. This is because videos work multiple senses to improve the content and make it more immersive and pleasing.
For example, the video format can combine visuals, audio, and motion to tell a story or deliver information in a way text simply can't. Its multisensory experience will be formulated with the viewer emotionally, and that produces higher engagement and brand recall.
2. Improved SEO:
Video marketing can also work to improve your search engine rankings. It is a fact that Google and other search engines give importance to websites with rich media content, which includes videos. You will stand much higher in the likelihood of being ranked top in search results simply because you have videos on your site.
By optimizing your videos for the search engines, you’ll most likely stay at the top of the page. Use relevant keywords in the video title, description, and tags.
There might be some times where creating transcripts for the videos will be handy. It lets the search engine understand the content and further improve your search visibility.
In fact, videos can help you rank for both text-based and video search queries. In case people are searching for information to do something or to solve a problem that your product could fix, and a video pops up in their search results, it automatically opens the door of your visibility and gives you the best chance of attracting prospects or potential customers.
While creating video content, you need to keep in mind that adding captions might save you from bounce rates from your video content. People watching might be scrolling through your content while at a public place.
Read Also: How to Create Engaging Video Content that captivates your audience
3. Higher Conversion Rates:
Ultimately, every marketing campaign aims to drive conversions such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a contact form. Video marketing is generally very good at converting the viewer into a customer.
Videos are capable of creating trust and credibility, which are the ingredients for driving conversion. It will let your customers see the value or the benefits that they'll gain with your products or services by showing it in action. In addition, video testimonials can be highly effective because they are able to share experiences from customers with others.
According to Hubspot, placing a video on the landing page can increase conversions by up to 86%. This will be because videos provide more detail about the product in an interesting way and clarify most of the concerns the customer may have, hence building trust in the brand.
4. Increased Brand Awareness:
Video content can be a very influencing factor for improving brand awareness along with some great impressions. With interesting, highly shareable videos, you can increase your reach and visibility a lot more.
Storytelling is the bedrock of great video marketing. As we humans are simply wired to love stories, through a well-crafted storyline, you can easily establish an emotional connection with the audience. A well-told story humanizes your brand, builds trust, and leaves a memorable impression that separates you from others in your niche.
For example, Apple Corporation uses meticulously crafted videos to captivate their audience. Their consistent launch of new products and appealing visual tricks brings in more and more customers annually.
How can you build your Brand Identity?
Consistency: A consistent visual style, tone which are all unique to you, and messaging in all your videos will build your brand identity and make your brand more recognizable.
Brand Values: Brand value and mission should be expressed through the videos. It helps in building a great emotional attachment to the target audience.
Personality: Add the character of your brand while making the video to make it more engaging and memorable.
5. More Social Shares:
Videos are more easily shareable across social media compared to text. Their unspoken nature encourages viewers to share them easily across their networks and, therefore, enhances brand visibility and reach.
Maximizing social shares by creating a visually compelling video that resonates emotionally and is easily digestible is one way to achieve it. Get an attention-drawing thumbnail, a compelling title, and a good CTA for a shareable content.
For example, a clear call to action at the end of a video will increase shares through the roof. This could be as simple as "Share this with a friend who would love this!" This will definitely increase sharing. Other ways in which you can extend your reach and boost your engagement, inter alia, could involve social media contests or giveaways which incentivize sharing.
Adding a visually appealing thumbnail will captivate your audience in such a way they’ll be pushed to watch your content willingly.
Ways to Encourage Social Sharing
- User-Generated Content: Invite customers to create their own videos using your product or service.
- Collaborate: Work with influencers to create shareable video content.
- Optimise for Mobile: Ensure your videos are optimized for mobile since much of the social media consumption is on-the-go.
6. Better Understanding of Your Audience:
Video analytics are very critical in giving you information regarding the behavior of audiences. When you track metrics like view and share counts, the levels of engagement can give you an insight on your target audience.
You can use this information to sharpen your marketing and create more targeted content. You can also build out more content in that direction if a particular style of video always seems to work and find out why a video underperforms with data.
For example, if you observe that behind-the-scenes content attracts the most engagement, create more such content that gives a peek into company culture. This will tremendously up the engagement and drive more conversions since the content will be customized according to the viewers.
7. Cost-Effective Marketing:
Contrary to a general belief that video production is a heavy investment, video marketing per se can be very cost-effective. If done well, video marketing really pays back in the form of driving conversions and creating brand loyalty.
Video marketing can be cost effective in the following ways:
Increased Sales and Conversions: As pointed out earlier, capturing interest through relevant video content can really increase conversion rates. This quite directly translates into a payback of your investment.
Brand Awareness: Video marketing allows new consumers to be attracted by the brand through more significant exposure and reach and cements your brand in the market. Long-term growth and sales are, therefore, realized through video marketing.
Lower Marketing Expenses: Compared to other traditional mediums like print advertising, video content can be pretty cheap in the long run. One good video can be used a number of times across all avenues, thereby giving it maximum reach.
Read Also: What are the 7 C's of digital marketing?
Cost Comparison of Video Marketing with Other Channels:
Traditional channels for advertising include print ads or television commercials, which are highly expensive and have very narrow reach and measurability. Video marketing could be an attractive alternative in terms of reach and measurability, yet quite possibly more cost-effective per conversion.
While video production is hinged on parameters such as length, complexity, and animation requirements, it is possible to create really good videos with low budgets if one knows the right strategic approach and creative planning.
Conclusion: Video marketing is going to be king in the modern digital world. The benefits of adopting it into your strategy mean that you can capture and retain audience attention, drive better search engine ranking, drive higher conversion rates, and gain more reputation for your brand.
Increase social shares and engagement, gain valuable insights on your audience, drive higher returns on investment these are compelling enough benefits to make it important to have video marketing as part of your strategy. Begin experimenting with different video formats to find out what works best for your audience, and see your brand reach new heights.
Want to tap into the full potential of video marketing but not sure where to start?
Subscribe to our blog for more valuable insights and tips on video marketing strategies. Reach out to us at info@otogendigital.com to discuss your needs and find out how we can help you create your dream video content.
- Video marketing effectively captures attention in a fast-paced, distracted digital world.
- Videos enhance engagement and recall by being processed 60,000 times faster than text.
- Video content boosts SEO, improving search engine rankings and visibility.
- Videos drive higher conversion rates by building trust and showcasing product value.
- Video marketing increases brand awareness and social shares, making it a cost-effective strategy.