Video is a language every audience speaks. It acts as a powerful and authentic way to tell your company’s story by providing customers a window into your team, your products, and how effective your products are.
In short, video is a powerful tool to grow trust from prospective customers by increasing transparency and authenticity of your products and services. Some current statistics further support the idea that video is becoming the most important and most widely consumed type of online content. In 2021, according to Forbes, the average person will consume 100 minutes of video a day. Consider these additional statistics:
- According to the global networking technology maker Cisco, video marketing will comprise 82% of all consumer web traffic by 2022, which is 15 times more than what was reported in 2017.
- According to Wordstream, 59% of executives said that if they had a choice of watching a video or reading text on the same topic, they are more likely to choose the video.
- According to LinkedIn, video campaigns have a 50% view rate on the platform.
- Videos are by far the most popular posts on Facebook, and one Facebook executive has predicted that by 2021, the platform will be all video and very little text.
- In a 2020 survey, 83% of markers using video said it helped them generate leads, according to Wyzowl.
In the past, video marketing has been dominated by large corporations, but reduced production costs and an increase in the marketing channels available mean videos are accessible and relevant for businesses of all sizes. If you are hesitant to add video to your marketing because it seems too expensive or work-intensive to produce, here are four more facts about video marketing that just might change your mind.
1. Video Content Helps with Search Engine Optimization
Aside from consumers, guess who else loves video? Search engines! YouTube is the third-most visited site on the Internet (Google and Facebook are the first and second), and don’t forget, it is owned by Google. When you include video on your website and optimize it properly, search engines will prioritize your site over sites with no video. Google’s algorithm rates video as high-quality content, and including video on a website make it 53 times more likely that that website will make it to Google’s front page. High-quality videos also create backlinks, which help grow Google search rankings as well.
2. Video Performs Well on Social Media
Today, strong social media strategy is an incredibly important and effective method for brands to connect with their target audience. As millennials take hold as an even stronger buying force, this will be even more critical for marketing to consumers as well as those business buyers who fall into that generation. According to Statista, millennials between the ages of 26 and 35 watch 10 to 20 hours of online videos a week. So instead of sending them a long email or PDF about a product or service, consider a short YouTube update or an InstagramTV video. And, according to research from Animoto, 93% of video marketers report that posting video on social channels leads to a new customer.
3. Video Adds Authenticity, Builds Trust
For many business buyers today, choosing which businesses they engage with depends on the level of trust they have with that business. In an annual survey of content preferences of B2B buyers, 78% of the respondents said that the trustworthiness of a content’s source is important to them. Video marketing can be used to build that trust and authenticity with B2B customers because of its storytelling capabilities. It is a way for companies to showcase the people behind the logo and connect with customers in a more human way that still photos or text alone cannot accomplish.
Companies should experiment with a variety of different video styles to discover what works as a video marketing fit. Would instructional videos showcasing your products be best? Or perhaps a webinar that discusses key issues that relate to your industry? Whatever you ultimately choose, keep in mind that a value-based approach over a pitch is more appealing to today’s buyer.
4. Video Is A Versatile Digital Asset
Video not only helps to improve trust and authenticity of your company, it’s also valuable and versatile as a marketing asset. Before the digital age, video was largely limited to expensive television ads. Nowadays, video can be used in a wide range of capacities, including:
- On-Site Video: Videos can be used on site to support user experience and to help provide online shoppers or potential leads with the information they need to take the next step in the purchasing process.
- Social Media Marketing: Videos are useful both within ads on social media platforms as well as within organic social media posting. Videos can drive brand-building, expertise, and help to give your brand an important voice in the marketplace.
- YouTube and Video Ads; Video naturally fits into YouTube’s advertising platform either as a paid advertisement, or as a standalone ad being hosted on your company’s YouTube account.
- Email Marketing: Video can be highly relevant for email updates and email marketing programs. Powerful video can be a great way to differentiate email campaigns from the usual email updates people receive on a daily basis.
- Programmatic Ads for Digital TV, Streaming, Devices: Old-fashioned television has been in the process of catching up to the digital age for the past 10 years, and the advertising process is slowly changing as more people change to streaming TV. Many streaming services (Such as Hulu, Apple TV, etc.) have television ad slots similar to traditional TV, with the exception that these ad slots can be targeted and measured similar to the way we measure paid search or social media advertising campaigns. This trend will likely continue to grow in the next decade.