It’s too soon to say how much the global pandemic will impact prior forecasts, but video as a marketing tool is so effective that 99 percent currently using it said they would continue to do so in 2020, and 95 percent indicated that they would increase or maintain their budget. Of those who haven't yet jumped on the video marketing bandwagon, 59 percent said this was the year they planned to start.
One of the exciting things about video marketing is that new opportunities continue to present themselves. TikTok has jumped out of nowhere, while mature platforms such as LinkedIn have proven themselves to be highly effective. Here are more reasons why you need to include video in your marketing strategy – if it isn’t already.
Let’s all get on the same page first. Video as a tactic was something that marketing departments did five years ago. It was new-ish, expensive, and frankly, few of us were sure how to demonstrate ROI because analysis was scarce.
Today video is pervasive, which means it’s extensively measured. That means we can integrate an objective for it into our overall marketing efforts. This has come about because of the public’s voracious appetite for video – beyond entertainment. HubSpot research shows that 72 percent of prospects or customers would rather learn about your product by way of a video. This is important for you as a marketer because viewers retain 95 percent of a video as opposed to just 10 percent of a text-based article.
Our thirst for video is so strong that it’s made YouTube the second most popular website and search engine after Google. More than half of consumers say they want to see more video content from a brand they support, and 88 percent of them spend more time on a website that offers video.
See an example of a blog repurposed as a video.
The ability to measure activity such as play rates, shares, click through rates, and watch time allows you to measure Video ROI. This powerful tactic now has a comprehensive strategy behind it. When integrated with your overall marketing, you can determine answers to important strategic questions such as:
Video marketing doesn’t commence with a script. It’s a result of strategy that helps your brand utilize visual storytelling to move people from the state of discovery to purchase. When you approach it this way, you also address one of the biggest challenges of including video in your marketing strategy: cost.
Video production used to be prohibitively expensive. It’s no longer the case, and it turns out that it doesn’t really matter. Wistia spent $60,000 creating a video ad three different ways – with a $1,000 budget, a $10,000 budget, and a $100,000 budget. They discovered that the $10,000 ad performed best overall.
However, Wistia also concluded that it wasn’t the budget, but the creativity put into producing the $10,000 version that made it the most effective of the three. It had the strongest overall narrative and connection to the product. It told the best story.
Organizations using video as part of their marketing strategy are discovering the association between cost and objective is more important to measure than the correlation between production value and popularity. Starting with a strategy allows you to produce video more efficiently because the production phase can capture video elements that can be used as building blocks for entire campaigns, or to be used for different video platforms.
Plays well with others – it’s an attribute marketers really appreciate about video. 65 percent of senior executives surveyed said they visit the website related to a video they viewed on YouTube. Traffic and click through rates are key Google ranking factors, so video can have a positive impact on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Keep in mind, too, that Google and other search engines prioritize pages with video content in search results. The objective is relevance, and public preference is for video content. Make video SEO work in your favor by:
There’s no lack of statistics-backed information about the need to include video in your marketing strategy. Download this report from HubSpot if you’re still on the fence. Consumers want more, and the adoption of 5G will accelerate this appetite for video content.
How many videos do you need to feed the growing demand? The jury is still out, but we can certainly assume that frequency impacts traffic. Neil Patel discovered that adding just one more blog post weekly increased his website’s traffic by nearly 19 percent. We already know that video is more effective than a text-based blog post, so it’s also safe to assume you could see an even bigger increase by posting a weekly video.
If your head just exploded at the thought of producing 52 videos, we’ve created an easy and affordable way to turn standard blog posts into compelling videos you can use on your website, social media, email campaigns, and landing pages. Learn more and see samples.