Video Content: Why You Must Use It In Your Digital Plan

Videos have been the most in-demand form of content ever since their conception. As known as video content. Ever since its breakthrough in 1830, motion pictures have been in high demand by society. Back then, the main purpose of videos was entertainment for the higher-ups.

Fast forward to 2019, motion pictures or videos already hold an even larger portion of the market. Not only do videos serve as the world’s most expensive entertainment in the big-picture format, but they also serve as a medium to transmit information.

This information could be purely for educational purposes, or they could have another purpose in mind, the latter being video marketing.

We’re living in the days where we’re usually surrounded by devices that are connected and able to play videos. We use computers, smartphones, television – heck, even fridges have displays now.

From a daily user’s perspective, this might be something trivial. But from a brand’s perspective, the fact that every device is connected and able to play videos is a huge opportunity for an integrated video marketing campaign.

The Significance of Video Content Marketing in 2019

Video marketing has been a steadily growing branch of marketing since the early days of the internet. In a Statista report, 50% of internet users in the United States watch online videos on a daily basis.

The high demand for online video content forces brands to adjust their market approach. In 2018, 81% of businesses used video in their marketing scheme — this number went up from 63% over the last year.

It’s obvious that the demand for video content plays a significant role, but what other significance is offered by video marketing?

Online Visibility and Search Engine Optimization

These days, people look up everything they want to know about by using search engines. Back in the early days of search engines, videos weren’t as popular because the crawler bots couldn’t “see” the videos.

However, as search engine crawlers got smarter, videos became considered as significant content which can boost a brand’s visibility online. Aside from showing up in main search engine results pages (SERPs), videos also have their own tab in various search engines.

Increase Audience Retention Rate

Audience retention goes by many different terms depending on the context in which it’s used, such as dwell time (website) and viewers’ retention (videos). Audience retention is the duration a viewer spends on a website page before they decide to step out of the website.

Dwell time is known to be one of the 200+ metrics that Google uses to rank websites in SERPs. According to a blog post on Ahrefs, search engines may interpret dwell time like this:

• 2-second dwell time: This is not what I wanted to look up. I’m going back to SERP to find something better.
• 2-minute dwell time: This content is pretty useful for me. I’m sticking around for a couple of minutes.
• 15-minute dwell time: This is what I was looking for, and I find it super useful.

With that in mind, it makes sense to have videos on your website. Videos are natural attention-grabbers, and with a properly tailored video, you can increase the dwell time.

Better Analytics Data

Websites with a bunch of text stuffed with keywords might have better visibility to search engines, but videos are in a whole new stratosphere when it comes to collecting analytics and engagement data.

Having an entire video marketing campaign with a proper setup means you’ll be able to know at which point in the funnel a conversion happens and where people drop off.

With the help of video marketing platforms like Wistia and Vidyard, the results of your video marketing campaigns could easily topple other marketing channels.

Increased Engagement

Because of their visual nature, videos are more engaging compared to other forms of content. By using videos in your marketing strategy instead of only using text in your content and email marketing, you’ll be able to generate more interaction with your audience.

According to an infographic by Renderforest, emails that have videos receive a 200% to 300% increase in their click-through rate (CTR). It also states that 40% of users take some form of action after viewing a video ad.

It’s also easier to generate social signals using video because they are way more shareable compared to text-based content like blog posts or ebooks. It only takes one spot in your timeline, and most social media platforms don’t require you to open up a separate browser to watch videos. That’s why you see more viral videos compared to viral articles.

The Demand for Video Content is Rising

Back to the basics: the demand for digital video content is going through the roof. It can all be credited to the fact that cheap smart devices are getting good, and good smart devices are getting cheap.

Take, for example, the iPhone. The first iPhone was released in early 2007. It has a 3.5-inch display with 320 x 480 resolution. It was priced at around $500. In 2019, you can get a OnePlus 6T which has a 6-inch display with 1080 x 2340 resolution.

This just shows you the rapid rate of technology development, especially smart devices. In only 12 years, you can get a device that’s more than a hundred times better for the same price.

It Helps You Stay in The Competition

Rapid technological advancement is one of the factors that makes video marketing as relevant as it is now. The public is more familiar with displays in their everyday lives, and brands are changing their approach in order to adjust themselves to the situation.

When brands are competing to update their Instagram Stories, upload backstage vlogs to their YouTube channels, and posting pop-culture references on Facebook, others are kind of forced to do the same.

How Videos Can Help Boost Your Business

“Okay, video marketing is good. But how is video actually helping my sales and conversion?”

It Shows Your Products, Not Sells Them

The video is not the first medium used to showcase products — brochures, posters, and flyers have been doing it for years.

What makes videos better is the concept of motion. Videos are moving pictures that can show your products in action. It can help you show that your product actually works, no more empty promises.

The popularity of product explainer videos and demo videos are the perfect example of how videos are just better at presenting your product to the market.

Videos Convert Cold Leads into Hot Leads Faster

About 55% of shoppers do research on their mobile phone of places where visual content inform them about a product.

As great as mobile devices are, they are still handheld devices. The screen real estate is not the most comfortable for reading a wall of text about a product.

Using visual elements like product reviews, app demo videos, and product explainer videos instead of writing a bunch of text glorifying your product proves to bring in more results. About 65% of shoppers decide to purchase a product after viewing a video about it.

Videos Help You Create a Brand Persona

When brands are just brands, people are likely to see you as a greedy corporation whose only after their money. This is why brands create mascots and stick to a certain brand persona.

By presenting your brand as an entity with a certain personality, you’ll be able to close the distance between you and your target audience.

Videos play a big role in showing your brand’s persona to the world. The elements in a video, such as dialogues, characters, tones, and sets, are useful in shaping an environment that suits your brand persona.

The World is Falling in Love with Videos

• 61% of customers are more likely to choose a brand that creates personalized videos.
• 82% of social media users prefer viewing live videos over other types of social media posts.
• Video content earns 1200% more engagement than text and images combined.
• Short-lived video content like Stories and Snaps will increase in popularity.
• Bite-sized clips will become the new standard for mobile video marketing.
• Global video traffic will amount to 82%of all IP traffic by 2022.
• Live Internet videos will make up 17% of all video traffic by 2022.
• Video-on-Demand (VoD) traffic will grow to nearly 200% by 2022.
• The size of VoD traffic in 2022 will be equal to that of 10 billion DVDs per month.

You Can’t Afford to Not Use Videos in Your Content Strategy.

YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and other major platforms are dominating the digital world right now. Guess what all of them have in common? Videos.

Many of those platforms want their users to watch more videos because that’s where they can charge advertisers more. Their algorithm is being slightly tilted to favour videos every single day. Without publishing videos on your website, Facebook page, Instagram account, or YouTube channels, you are losing the race gradually.

Independent creators with massive follower bases are being made every day. These creators are the trendsetters that can potentially boost your brand exposure. When your competitors are collaborating with them to create creative content, and you’re not, you’re falling behind—big time.

Start improving your video marketing knowledge now so you don’t fall behind your competitors.