It’s 2019 and video is bigger than ever for digital marketers. No matter what size your business is, you can increase your traffic and close more deals by adding video to your existing marketing strategy. Use it on your website, across your social media channels, and in your emails to engage and inform your leads and customers thru every stage of the buying funnel.
If you still haven’t adopted video as a key focus for your marketing strategy, here are six reasons why you should make it a priority.
1. Improve User Engagement
It’s no secret that people’s attention spans are getting shorter. Video can give people information faster and in a more entertaining way than text can. In short, people enjoy watching a video more than they like reading a blog post. This is true for all levels, including executives. In fact, 59 percent of executives prefer watching a video to reading text on a topic. It makes sense when you think about it. Executives are extremely busy people. Why would they read an article that would take them five minutes to absorb when they can watch a 30-second video that delivers the same information?
Now, in order to engage your viewers, your video has to be interesting enough to keep their attention. HubSpot has several recommendations for creating engaging videos, including telling a storey that sparks curiosity to hook your audience. Keep your videos short for maximum engagement, especially on platforms like Facebook which rewards engaging videos with amplified organic reach.
2. Your Competitors are Already Using It (Probably)
We don’t know what every single one of your competitors is doing, but chances are, the majority of them are already using video in their marketing strategy. We can say that with confidence because we know that 87 percent of businesses are using video as part of their digital marketing strategy in 2019. That means they’re taking traffic away from your website and potential customers away from your brand.
The number of businesses that incorporate video into their marketing campaigns is only going to increase. There’s still time to get in the game by adding video. But if you wait too long, you might end up falling too far behind your competition to ever catch up.
3. Improve SEO
Google considers a lot of things when determining what search results belong at the top of the search page. While the algorithm updates constantly, we know that the thing Google prioritises above everything else is the quality of the content on a page. One indicator that lets Google know that a particular page contains high-quality content is how long people stay on that page. If you get a lot of people bouncing (essentially, going back the search page right after they click on your page), that indicates that people aren’t finding what they’re looking for when they land on your page. On the other hand, if people stay on your page for a while, that tells Google that people have found exactly what they wanted to find by landing on your page.
Here’s how video can help with that. Studies have shown that people stay on pages that have video over two and a half times longer than they stay on pages without video. As long as your video is informative and engaging, you’ll be able to keep people on your page for longer, which can help you rank higher in SERPs. On top of that, adding a video to your landing page can make it 53 times more likely that you’ll land in the number one spot in SERPs.
4. Connect Directly with Users
It’s hard to visualise the person behind the text with a written blog post or email. When you have a video, though, people can instantly connect with the person or group of people in the video. This gives you a unique opportunity to directly engage with your users. Even in this digital age, people still want to connect with other people. Video testimonials can be more powerful than written testimonials, for instance, because you can see the person who has used the product or service.
In addition, attaching faces to your brand with video builds credibility and trust, which can improve your SEO and help you connect with leads on a more personal level.
5. Capture the Buying Journey
The options on the types of video content you can create to engage your leads and customers at all stages of the buying funnel are limitless. Consider your brand, your audience, and your current metrics when deciding what types of video you want to create.
Here are some of the most common places businesses use video:
- As demos
- To build brand awareness
- For customer testimonials
- To educate via webinars
- To answer common questions
- To speak as an expert on a topic
- To capture and broadcast events
- As explainers for their products or services
When you’re first starting with a video strategy, you might want to focus on only one or two types of videos to figure out how your users engage with them and which platforms see the best results as a result of your video.
We can recommend these tutorials to help you get started:
- How to film events
- How to record a webinar
- How to make an explainer video
- How to use video to build brand awareness
- Lots of helpful content at Video Caddy
6. Keep Up with Mobile Trends
More of the world is going mobile than ever, with nearly 5 billion people in the world (roughly 67 percent of the world population) owning a smartphone in 2019. People are increasingly using their mobile devices to watch and share videos. Video can cross language barriers, which makes it a powerful tool for international businesses that want to reach a broader audience. It’s easier to watch a video on a mobile device than it is to read a long article or blog post. In fact, 75 percent of all video viewership comes from mobile devices.
Keep up with the trend by including video into your content strategy to increase engagement and reach your audience where they are—on their mobile phones.
