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Video marketing is major part of the digital marketing landscape. Online sales and digital marketing for business is the new world order. In this environment, it’s a struggle to think of any business that wouldn’t benefit from being competitive in the digital space. Websites usually represent a business’s main digital shopfront. Social media and other digital channels support and directing traffic back to this website, to drive sales. But all of these channels, important though they are, can only perform if they are populated with great content. It’s all very well having all of these digital channels set up and sitting there, but if your target audience don’t like the look of them, they won’t engage with them. This is why great content is worth its weight in gold, and video content is the crème de la crème.
The three most popular content types used by businesses for marketing include video content, image content, and written content. Compared to written content, video performs better 12-fold. What can be seen when analysing the effectiveness of these content types, is that video outperforms the other two significantly. This effect is seen across a range of industries. Studies have shown that people remember only about 10 percent of the information they hear three days after they hear it—but when a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained fully 65 percent of the information three days later. This number further increases when paired with video. Video is also the most shared type of content online. So not only are more people seeing your content and sharing it, but they are remembering it as well. The stats are certainly supporting video all the way, as are the top social media gurus, including Mark Zuckerberg himself.
Added benefits include content conversation. We already know that brand visibility is increased from the use of video content, but the engagement with this content is also increased by 86%. Which is to say, it gets people talking. This is the essence of when content ‘goes viral’, which by the way, almost always refers to video content.
So how do we use video content correctly, and incorporate it into a wider content marketing strategy to actually achieve success? The first step is to know who your audience are do your research on their general demographics (age, location, gender etc), as well as their interests, if possible. This will help you to decide which digital channels to focus on, in order to target potential customers, there and funnel them back to your website. If you customers are young and highly engaged, channels like Instagram and Twitter will generally perform better, where if you have older customers with bigger pay checks, then consider LinkedIn and Pinterest. To learn more about where to find your customers exactly check out article ‘Optimising Your Video Content’.
Once you know who you are targeting, and where to find them, you will need to familiarise yourself with the restrictions for content on your relevant channels. YouTube for example, allows you to upload video content that isn’t overly restricted on length. But Twitter and Instagram, you may need to crop or shorten your content to conform with their current guidelines (which do change from time to time – generally in favour of video by allowing longer clips).
Then it’s time to get your video content made and uploaded. This is the exciting part, particularly if you plan to give it an extra boost by adding some advertising spend to extend its reach. Ensuring your content is well suited to your target audience, suited to the channels you are using and its content guidelines, and boosting it with ad spend, with all help to get your video marketing off to a great start.
Try testing different variants, which messages and themes resonate well with your audience, as well as some basic analysis on your post performance (days of the week and time of day that perform better). A longer ‘hero’ video that explains your brand story in less than a minute is a great addition to most websites, with shorter, sharper, more engaging videos used on your digital channels to capture the attention of your target customer. These short ‘funnel’ videos simply create interest, and redirect the consumers interest to your website. The circle of digital life, using video.
If this has piqued your interest, don’t revert back to the ‘same old’ approach of marketing. Too many businesses ignore the stats and suggestions purely because it’s not ‘what they have always done’. Times are changing. People are changing. Engagement happens online, product discovery, research and purchase is happening online. We are witnessing the death of the bricks and mortar stores in favour of the digital landscape. Video marketing may not be for everyone, but be honest with yourself in asking if it could benefit your business. If the concept of change is the blocker, it’s time to shed the fear and get onboard. If you don’t, your competitors may just beat you to it.
About the Author
Shelley has a background in Psychology and Digital Marketing, with a career spanning the entire corporate spectrum, from Start-Up’s to some of the world’s largest organisations. Shelley is particularly interested in Consumer Psychology, Marketing Automation Technologies and Influencer Marketing.
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Image and article originally from smallbiztalks.com. Read the original article here.