5 Reasons You Can’t Dismiss Video Marketing
Video is without a doubt the media of the new age, and it’s slowly evolving beyond the realm of entertainment into new technologies, with new functions and solutions, like VR, communications and you guessed it, marketing. Below Richard Rossington, Director at Tell Your Story UK, provides insight into the potential of video marketing, the monetary opportunities it delivers, and 5 reasons why you shouldn’t just dismiss video as a great tool for your business to advertise its products and services.
Video ads are cropping up all over your feed, whether you’re browsing a news site, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or even the BBC website. Quite literally, the internet and apps are the new TV, and visual advertising has shifted to cater to that change.
Videos are understandably the quickest way to get a message, emotion and incentive to an audience. It’s proven by the proliferating profits made by YouTube and Facebook that social media advertising, predominantly through video media, is an incredibly successful way of reaching a target buyer. This applies across so many sectors and very few are exceptions.
Even older generations are now tech users, with many 3rd generations wielding tablets and smartphones at their leisure, and the younger generations are all too easy to approach with video marketing; thanks to social media algorithms, most of what they see is stuff they want to see, and will likely click on, given they are already interested. This means the ‘captivating interest’ stage or marketing has already been covered.
Whether you’re a steel manufacturing company, an independent bakery or a funds management consultancy, here’s five really justifiable reason you shouldn’t just dismiss video marketing as a potential tool in selling your services or products.
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Increased Leads & ROI
The first thing a video company will tell you is that creating and promoting a company video will create more leads and contracts, resulting in a favourable return on investment. This is 100% true. Video can make you serious money, with little input. Simply having a video on your website’s landing page can increase conversions twice fold. Gifts is the best sector this works for, but the same goes for electronics, apps, B2B and many more.
30 second videos that portray a visual explanation of a product or service answer a lot of questions a viewer might not have the time to enquire about. This in turn means they are much more easily inclined to click and buy into the service or product.
Videos are far quicker than words. 55% of users who view a page spend less than 15 seconds looking at it, so if that 15 seconds is a quick video, your chances of lowering the bounce rate is well increased.
It’s not easy and it’s not cheap but outsourcing a video company or building an in-house video team will pay off, immensely.
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Video Creates a Closer Relationship and Builds Trust
Whether it’s aimed at a consumer or a service user, another business or for a cause, using moving images to describe your product, your company or what you offer creates an understanding. It fashions an almost face-to-face relationship with the end audience, building trust and satisfaction in what they see.
Trust, in almost all cases, is the pinnacle of a sale. If you ring someone up and they only have your word to take for truth, trust is a barrier on which the lead risks being lost. A video eliminates that; the truth can be seen with their own eyes. How many people do you know look at reviews these days? What about FAQs? Using an explanatory video eliminates the need for users to leave your website, Facebook page or other platform in search of trustworthy reviews or answers to their questions.
Using a video to convey a message or emotion is also a key ingredient to video marketing. Images of a relaxed and friendly staff office easily allows a viewer to feel comfortable approaching a firm for their services, as much as seeing children playing joyfully alongside friendly teaching staff conveys emotions of safety and confidence in a mother looking for the right private nursery to send their child. For you this might look like a video dedicated to the quality of your product, the time and effort your company puts in, and an overall portrayal of the care and excellence your company is capable of, creating a sense of reliability, security, and again, trust in your brand.
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Google, Facebook & Twitter Favour Video
One of the reasons Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are ripe with videos nowadays is because the social medias prefer video and automatically favour the displaying of videos over text or photo. This is even more the case when it comes to mobile use, which in today’s tech era, is the dominant platform for social media browsing.
Equally, Google also loves video. Videos on your homepage, description pages or feature pages naturally mean people will spend more time on your site. This results in accumulated digital trust, and said exposure means search engines know to prioritise your pages because you are a trusted site. The more people come to your site, the more time they spend watching videos or browsing, and the more your brand crops up in people’s individual searches.
You’re 53 times more likely to show up at the top of a Google search if you have a video displayed on your site. Much of this has to do with the fact that one of the leading online video sites, YouTube, is now owned by Google, and consequently videos are closely correlated with search engine optimisation (SEO). All you need is the right title, description and tags, and you’re marketing effectiveness is guaranteed to improve.
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Video Encourages the Sharing of Your Brand
All you need is one really cool and interesting video to spark a discussion. Company videos aside, promotional videos that tell a story, through narration and characters, often make a lasting impression, and sometimes people will feel it’s good enough to share with their friends or others with similar interests.
It doesn’t have to be a well-made video, it could just be a really funny clip that goes viral. Though for certain videos the quality of the cinematography does matter entirely, often the story, the content, the message, is what people are buying into. Nobody will want to share a video of your new gadget, that has the latest XXXX™ technology and connects seamlessly with all of your devices… but they will share a funny video of your really expensive product being dropped from a 12 story building and upon landing scaring the heck out of a cat.
The internet’s power for sharing is a tool you should aim to strategize on. Creating something that people want to share, that in turn means clicks, web views and as a result, leads, is a key consideration to make in marketing your products. Given the above points, why not do this through the medium of video?
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Video Marketing is Now More Affordable & Widespread
Gone are the days where making a TV ad was out of the question. As previously mentioned, the internet is the new TV, and making an advert isn’t nearly as expensive as it once was. There are simpler and more manageable technologies to do the job. There are more people who can do the job. There are more opportunities to display video adverts.
You may find that using your own resources, in-house, whether it’s through expensive camera gear or a few lights and your smartphones, does the job, but there are plenty of companies well within reach that you can afford, and that will be able to meet you where you are in your vision for the business. Your best bet is to get some general quotes, get through to one of the video companies you like the look of, have a face-to-face consultation, create a storyboard or brainstorm ideas based on your advertising targets, and see what’s possible and what’s not. After this you’ll want to make sure you have a marketing strategy in place for using the videos you have created and make the most of them through Google AdWords, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other platform your audiences engages with.
There are companies that are better than others, and some that will cost more than others, but the important part of your video marketing comes from your own understanding of your business, your target audience and what you want to get out of it, so find the right guys based on the implementation of this. At Tell Your Story UK we aim to tailor our work to match your vision, and everything we do is for the benefit of reaching your goal. We’ll provide the best ideas and advice we can, but the power over your message, how it looks and how it works, is all yours.
