On today’s internet, video content is king. Video already accounts for over 80% of web traffic, and is only growing - according to a survey by Hubspot, customers want to see video content more than any other kind. In the past few years, video has risen from a marketing tactic to an integral part of modern digital marketing.
The Benefits of Video
Making a video can seem like a lot of effort, so it’s important to understand the benefits. Luckily, video marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing tools you can use.
Organic Traffic
One primary benefit of videos is that they generate organic traffic. First, videos are great for search engine optimisation (SEO). Because they promote user engagement - visitors are likely to spend longer on a website with multimedia than one with written text alone. Embedded video boosts metrics that search engines use to rank pages, like session duration and bounce rate, by retaining attention longer than pages without video. This has become especially important as, for many searches, Google has started to put videos in its main search page.
Videos can also boost organic traffic through the description or links in the video if the user is watching the video on YouTube or another video hosting service. YouTube has become a vital search engine in its own right. It has over 2 billion monthly logged in users, making the YouTube search bar one of the Internet’s most used. Without a video presence, you could be missing out on your share of these users.
Social shares
Social media should already be an important part of your marketing strategy, and video has an important role to play in this. Social media users are far more likely to share videos than other type of content. This helps your brand organically spread while also generating a social proof.
Conversion rate
Videos on a landing page can increase conversions by 80%, while individual product videos can make customers up to 85% more likely to purchase the item.
Brand Awareness
Videos are a very effective way to pitch your business to new customers. You can easily convey your core values, the benefits you offer, and your products or services in a video of only a couple of minutes. A good video sticks in a viewer’s mind, dramatically improving name recognition.
Engagement
Underpinning all of this is that videos promote engagement. Information in a video is understood about 60,000 times faster than text and is much more readily retained, so your audience is far more likely to pay attention to a video than to text. Importantly, they’re more likely to remember it as well.
Videos also convey emotional nuances that text can lack. Voice tones and facial expressions engage viewer’s subconscious emotional system, building a personal connection in a way that is impossible with text alone. This rapport helps build the trust necessary for a potential customer to feel confident ordering from you.
Types of Video Marketing
The benefits of video marketing are clear. The next step is to integrate them into your existing content. Marketing videos are all different, but there are six key types to keep in mind when designing your strategy. These primarily vary on the intention behind the video.
1. Brand Videos
Brand videos are the most obvious type of video marketing. They are intended to introduce viewers to your company by giving them an overview of your vision, history, and values. This type of video helps build awareness and name recognition around your company.
2. Demo Videos
While brand videos concentrate on your company as a whole, demo videos focus on a specific product or service. They showcase your product, displaying a software service or demonstrating a physical product, letting potential customers know what to expect. The benefit of videos for this purpose is that you don’t have to describe the product - you can simply show it.
3. Customer Testimonials
Customer testimonials can take many different forms, from case studies of how your product or service helped solve a specific challenge, to a collection of reviews. Either way, the goal of these videos is to build the confidence of potential future customers.
4. Tutorials
Tutorials or explainers help your audience use or understand your product better. ‘How-to’ videos can demonstrate how to use specific parts of the service or product to new or existing customers, boosting satisfaction.
5. Educational
Educational is a very broad topic but refers to anything produced with the intention of teaching the audience something new. Unlike tutorials, which focus on solving specific problems, educational videos can be about anything that your audience may find interesting. A form of content marketing, they can take any form from a one-minute animated explanation of a topic to a long, in-depth interview with an expert.
6. Vlogs
Vlogs and other behind-the-scenes content help show the human side to your business. While not appropriate for every company, many customers enjoy being able to put a face to the name. Vlogs are about building an emotional connection with customers.
Effective Video Marketing
Video marketing can be an effective tool, but a successful video doesn’t happen by accident. Taking some steps at the start can maximise your chances of achieving your goal.
Start with a goal
Thinking about the purpose and form of your video is an essential first step - rushing it can cause issues further on. Before you start anything, determine what the video is aimed at achieving. It could be growing your website visits, increasing conversions, or social media shares. Bear in mind your target audience.
Once you’ve got the goal, use it to come up with an idea for a video. Don’t do this in reverse and try to fit a goal to a video idea. It’s tempting, but effective marketing is about achieving targets, not simply for its own sake.
Make a plan
A good video isn’t just the result of a good idea. Making a quality video is about translating that video into reality. This means making a thorough plan beforehand.
Spend time perfecting the script. As the fundamental element of the video, it can be the largest reason behind the success or failure of the video, so it’s worth spending time on. It can also help to create a storyboard for the visuals so you know how the video will look.
Once you’ve got the script and storyboard, the second part of the planning process is working out how to make it. Working out the requirements and budget you’ll need to make the video is better done at the start than halfway through.
Optimise the metadata
Just like normal SEO, the metadata of the video should be used effectively. If you’ve planned effectively, you should know the keywords to target, but like normal SEO, keyword stuffing won’t work. The title, tags, and descriptions should instead be written naturally, using variations on the key themes rather than endless repetition of the same phrases. Remember as well that you aren’t just writing for the search engine. The title also needs to draw in the attention of human viewers.
Use an eye-catching thumbnail
Don’t leave the thumbnail for an afterthought. This image is what most people will see first when the video occurs in search results, and it only has a split second to capture the audience’s attention and make them want to click. Rather than leave this up to chance, create an eye-catching custom thumbnail to use.
Embed the video
If you’re using the video on a site and not just on a video platform like YouTube, you’ll want to embed it in a prominent position. The benefits of having a video only happen if people see and watch it - there’s no point burying it under a mound of text that people must scroll past. Put the video at the top so it’s the first thing your audience see.
On the other end, the video also shouldn’t be the only thing on the page. Surround the video with high-quality content which reinforces the message, so that interested users can see more information. The video and written content should reinforce each other, rather than compete.
Using these steps, you should be able to create a high-quality video which should work synergistically with the rest of your marketing strategy. If you want more information, get in contact with us to discuss integrating video into your digital marketing strategy.