Videos are becoming increasingly popular with each passing day, whether they are created for entertainment purposes or to spread useful information as a tool in a brand’s marketing strategy. They have become extremely effective for raising brand awareness, generating new leads and engaging customers in a brand. Due to their growing popularity, videos now represent crucial elements for a successful digital marketing campaign.
The year 2015 was named “the year of video marketing” and, this year, the popularity of video content is getting even bigger and it will only continue to grow. Here are some statistics to help you understand the critical importance of implementing videos to master your digital marketing strategy.
Including videos on your landing page can increase conversion rates by 80%, and including them on your homepage can increase conversion rates by 20% or more.
90% of consumers say that watching a video about a product greatly helps them in their purchasing decision process and 64% of consumers make an online purchase after watching a video about a desired product.
75% of executives watch videos related to their work on various business websites at least once a week and 59% of them would rather watch a video than read textual content.
92% of mobile video consumers share videos on social media.
87% of online marketers use video content in their content marketing strategies and, what’s more, they have generated a lot more income and ROI because of video content.
Given these statistics, it is safe to say that video content is the most important type of content nowadays and, if you still haven’t included it in your digital marketing strategy, you should seriously start.
Why All the Hype about Videos?
A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. Then imagine how many stories you can tell in a video. Videos are considerably more powerful than written text, as they can engage people more. While a text can provide you with in-depth information about a certain topic, a video can hook you in and engage you on a far deeper level.
Video content has quite an impressive effect on people, as it has the power to tap into their consciousness and influence their decisions; for instance, when it comes to purchasing a product. They are a lot easier to digest, as opposed to textual content that you have to concentrate on in order to understand and analyze.
Furthermore, a lot of people don’t have the time for reading lengthy articles and, more often than not, it happens that they decide not to read something they are interested in simply because they are busy. On the other hand, give them an interesting and entertaining video and there you go – you have succeeded in engaging them and making them want to find out more about what you have to say.
However, there’s a catch. People tend to favor shorter videos over longer ones, since the digital world is in a constant flux of information and people have quite a shorter attention span than they used to have. That is why they prefer watching shorter videos, just as they prefer reading shorter texts.
Nevertheless, being able to quickly engage viewers is the ultimate power of videos and the reason why they are changing businesses and marketing as we know it. That is the reason why you need to seriously consider harnessing their power. Read on to find out what you can do to improve your content marketing strategy by enriching it with video content.
Define Your Goals
Before you begin creating your video content, you need to determine what you want to accomplish with it. You need to know exactly what your goals are and how you are going to achieve them. Do you want to draw more attention to your services and products and increase your sales? Do you want to raise brand awareness? Do you want to use your videos as a recruitment tool? Do you want to drive more traffic to your website and generate more leads?
Only by answering these and other important questions can you know which direction to take when creating your own video content. Only then will you understand how to effectively incorporate your videos into your content marketing strategy in order to reach your ultimate goals.
When you have your defined goals, you will be able to accurately estimate whether or not your efforts are paying off and if your strategy is successful. You will also need to determine how exactly are you going to define your success. Are you going to measure it by the number of views your videos have reached? Are you going to measure your success by the number of shares your videos have received? Whatever you decide to do, you need to determine it upfront, so that you can head down the right path on time.
Tell an Interesting Story
People love stories. They love watching videos that tell an interesting story and, if you manage to tell one, you will engage your customers a lot more with that kind of video, as opposed to providing them with a video introduction about your company or the products or services you offer.
Therefore, get your creative juices going and create videos with stories, as they will greatly engage your audience. Make fun and exciting videos, as that will make people excited about your brand as well. Ask your entire team for help and put all of your minds together to brainstorm different ideas for your videos and you’ll come up with something that will instantly hook your customers.
Adding a dose of humor to your videos, when the topic allows it, has proven to get more views and shares, so try and be as creative as you can. Personalizing your videos and adding your own thoughts and ideas will further engage your viewers, so make sure you create content that drives emotions. That kind of content has proven to drive more traffic and boost a company’s reputation. By adding a personal touch, you will humanize your brand and make people absolutely love it. You will be able to bring your ideas to life and definitely drive more conversions, not to mention that you will manage to actually sell your story and values.
Create Unique Tutorials
By creating tutorials, you will capture the viewer’s attention quite easily. If you provide relevant and useful information, your viewers will be more likely to come back and check the new stuff you have for them. They will engage in your brand more quickly and easily if you provide them with interesting tutorials on a regular basis.
The key to creating tutorials is to make them unique. By making them original and fun, you will make them stand out from thousands of mundane tutorials, which will help you reach a wider audience and get a number of new subscribers to your channel. Tutorials are excellent in building trust with your audience and they can give you credibility, ultimately helping you become an expert in your industry.
Useful tip: Want to know the key to keeping your viewers engaged throughout an entire video? Make them wonder what happens at the end of it.
Include a Call-to-Action
You may create the most engaging video, but without a proper call-to-action at the end of each and everyone, you may fail in getting the desired results. By including a call-to-action in your videos, you will certainly get more conversions.
You need to think about what exactly you want your viewers to do after they have finished watching your video. When you have an answer, you will know how to get their attention and make them take certain actions.
Never end your videos with a black screen, but include a call-to-action in both audio and visual form. What you can also do is ask a question at the end of your videos, as that will encourage conversation among your viewers and generate feedback.
An excellent thing you can do to further engage your viewers is to provide them with two call-to-action links at the end of your video – one leading to your official website and the other one pointing to a related video they can watch.
Optimize Your Videos for Search Engines
You cannot reach ultimate success without letting search engines know about your videos. By optimizing your videos for search engines, you will increase your traffic and enlarge your customer base, ultimately increasing your sales and generating more income.
The greatest thing about optimizing your videos for search engines is that they favor video content over textual content. They index your videos when determining your ranking so, by simply providing quality video content on your website that creates a great user experience, you will rank higher in the SERPs.
You will improve your website’s user experience if you optimize your videos for mobile viewing, since the majority of users are browsing the Internet on their mobile devices.
The best way to optimize your video content for search engines is to use transcription. You can make your video content available to search engines with the use of indexing and using transcriptions in the HTML of the pages on your website that have videos. By managing to do so, you will get a number of new viewers and drive quite a lot more traffic to your website.
Since video content is becoming more and more popular as we speak, you should definitely take every aforementioned step into consideration and create an effective and successful video content marketing strategy that will help you drive more conversion, raise brand awareness and generate a lot more income and ROI. Make a strategy that will ensure you achieve your ultimate goals and reach success, not only in 2016, but for many years to come.
The author is highly qualified and writes blog posts weekly.
