Along with the entertainment aspect, an increasing number of marketers are focusing their efforts on video marketing strategies due to all of the benefits they provide. Think about this from your perspective for just a second. To learn more about a new product would you rather watch a short video or read a long page that is full of text? Would you prefer to read about all of the different steps involved in a company’s sales process or have each step associated with a helpful visual aid by watching an animated video? If you are like 80 percent of people, you would prefer watching a video.
The following are some other important benefits that video marketing provides:
1. Increased Brand Awareness
Recognition and brand awareness mean that your company will be top-of-mind whenever a consumer is looking for a solution to a problem they have. However, keep in mind, that although you want your brand to be remembered and recognized easily, you also need to ensure that the name of your company is associated with positive experiences.
2. Increased Conversions
There have been many companies, including Wyzowl, that have reported that their pages with videos have increased conversions. Wyzowl reports that 74 percent of individuals who have the chance to see a product while it is in action in an explainer video will purchase it. Landing pages also are excellent places to have videos and boost conversion rates by as much as 80 percent.
Our video marketing team thinks those numbers sound quite good. Even Google is praising how successful videos are, stating that conversions from YouTube ads are up year over year by 150 percent. With this type of success, you should seriously consider testing some YouTube ads out yourself.
Whether it involves illustrating how to contact your company, explaining how a specific feature or product works, or breaking a complicated process down, explainer videos offer a great deal of value to both prospective and existing customers.
When a client of ours wanted to have a video explaining the installation process for certain HVAC equipment, our team created a video that debunked the somewhat confusing process. Rather than having to field the same questions over and over again about any necessary preparations that would have to be completed in advance, how long the process takes, and what can be expected, the company decided that having an explainer video would be a much more memorable and convenient way for customers to reference and find answers to the questions they have.
3. Improved ROI
In the past producing, shooting, and editing videos was a very expensive and time-consuming process that many marketers saw as unattractive. However, these days, it is easier than it has ever been. With programs becoming increasingly accessible, easier to use, and cheaper, more people are opening up more to the idea of being both in front of and behind the camera.
Given that costs are not as high as they were in the past (or were thought to be), there is a higher chance now of seeing some type of payoff from videos today. The video has been named as the kind of content that provides the best ROI by 51 percent of worldwide marketing professionals.
4. Increased Trust
One of the main goals of your overall video marketing strategy is building increased trust in your digital community of potential employee candidates, existing customers, and prospective customers. Picture a video marketing funnel, with the top of the funnel being the kind of videos you should use to introduce your company’s products or services and then explain how they can help to solve the customer’s problem.
Included in your video marketing strategy should be making different types of videos for various stages of your overall sales funnel.
In the next section, we will be discussing these types of videos more, but the following are a couple of examples of how you can work at building trust through the use of different types of videos:
Case studies
Customer testimonials
Product reviews
Expert interviews
Whether it is an industry expert who is explaining a complex feature or product or customer who has had positive interactions with your employees or company, providing your viewers with a look at the individuals who make up your business can help to create stronger emotional trust and build up trust eventually.
5. Improved Rankings
Just in case you weren’t aware, the search engines love videos! Stone Temple completed a study that showed that YouTube videos have the highest chance of showing up within the top 10 results when a Google Search is performed. The study also showed that videos rarely are found in positions that are lower than the first 30 results. Check it out for yourself.
If you are wondering what steps to take to get your videos ranking on the first page of Google, the following are some options to consider:
Embed videos within blog posts
Implement video schema
Use category tags
Optimize your descriptions
Optimize your titles
Add transcriptions with your videos
Whenever your videos have optimized keywords, descriptions, and titles, those things help to improve the performance of your videos, and that in turn helps that page that the video is on perform better as well. That is a win-win marketing strategy that you will want to capitalize on.
6. Increased Engagement
Were you aware that Facebook posts that contain videos have the highest organic engagement? Or that just putting « video » in the subject line of your email can increase your open rates by up to 19 percent? There was one company that even decided to test whether having video thumbnails in their email newsletter would help to increase engagement. They discovered that this was very successful. The company reported that almost 41 percent more individuals engaged with an email when it had a video thumbnail in it, instead of just text or a static image.
In the disconnected digital world that we are currently living in, people are looking for ways that they can feel a sense of connection and engagement. This is one explanation for how genuine storytelling through using video has been proven to increase engagement. So whether it is through actions such as shares, likes, or comments, if individuals are responding to the marketing content in your videos, that is a very good sign that you are headed in the right direction.
Just like product reviews and customer testimonials can help with building trust in your product, your brand, and your company, they also can help to increase engagement as well. Watching somebody demonstrate the way your service or product solved their problem or improved their efficiency is much more memorable and believable than simply reading an article on it.
If you are someone who thinks you don’t want to or can’t get videos incorporated into your marketing strategy due to not wanting to be on camera or because you don’t have enough time to get professional lighting and a backdrop set up — don’t worry.
It doesn't require having an on-camera element or interviews, and it is easier than ever to produce videos. It is important to have quality videos, but it isn’t as important as the content. People will overlook a lesser-quality video if it is more helpful, more relevant, more interesting, funnier, etc.
The following are the kinds of videos you should consider making and implementing into your online video marketing campaigns:
1. Branded/Company Profile Videos
Company profile videos should offer a high-level overview of your company’s services and/or products. It also should show existing clients and prospective customers what your company is about, and all of the ways you go above and beyond every time to do an outstanding job for all of your customers.
Branded or company profile videos that highlight your purpose and mission can help to create more interest and increase your brand awareness among your target audience. In addition, company profile videos can help to increase conversions or close sales by helping visitors visualize using your service or purchasing your product.
You will need to shoot this type of video on location and include interviews to capture your company’s daily operations as well as the employees that customers can expect to be interacting with. You should post company profile videos on your website’s home page and share them on social media as well.
2. Customer Testimonials
A customer testimonial is for showing prospective customers that your company is trustworthy, professional, and reliable — because a current customer within the local area had a positive experience with your business.
According to YouTube research, users spend a great deal of time viewing review videos where people’s unique and personal experiences with a brand or company are shared. It is shown by these studies that these kinds of videos are more beneficial and trustworthy when they feel like they are honest and personable, as opposed to being polished and professional. They can help with building trust up with your target audience as well as give your engagement a boost through comments, shares, and likes.
For this type of video, you will want to do on-camera interviews with actual, current customers and have them share their interactions and experiences with your company. Then share your customer testimonials on all possible channels: website, social media, TouTube, review/testimonial pages, email newsletters, Vimeo, etc.
3. How-To Videos
Show off your expert knowledge by building up trust with your audience online and educating them about your products, services, and/or industry. Blog and how-to videos also can help to increase your conversions by demonstrating a tangible solution to a specific problem.
Google reports that 93 percent of millennials visit YouTube to learn how to do things. Since YouTube is the second biggest search engine behind Google, and it has been shown by studies that « how-to content » gets more attention than any of the other categories, it is an excellent chance to showcase employees your clients will at some point face-to-face with. When you can demonstrate your professional expertise and allow visitors to become better acquainted with your team, it kills two birds with one stone. Those videos can also help to encourage interaction between your viewers and you if you ask them for questions, feedback, or future discussion topics in messages or comments.
Typically these videos will also require interviews and on-location shooting. You should also embed them in relevant blog posts, upload them to Vimeo and/or YouTube, and post them on social media.
4. Animated Videos
This type of video is used most commonly to convey a lengthy or complicated message visually and quickly to make things easier to understand. They are great for illustrating a series of events for a specific service to occur, explaining how a specific product works, or outlining a process. Also:
Animated videos can be a very effective way to help your audience understand different aspects of your company better — and also remember them! Whenever written content that has been optimized to rank high on Google supplements a video the page will likely convert at a higher rate as well.
It is very easy to share animated videos on social media, and that can result in increased site visits, brand recognition, and engagement. People tend to associate animated videos with times when they were a child and we all know what a powerful emotion nostalgia can be.
It is also very easy to commit to animated videos since they can be completed in-house and usually don’t require any effort or materials from the client. Elements like images, text, music, color overlays, animation, graphics, icons, and logos can be combined (depending on the type of project) to create a final product that is engaging, visual, and short and delivers the message that is desired.
Animated videos perform very well on relevant blog posts or website pages, email newsletters, and social media channels. People like animation and it can bring ideas to life that in ways that traditional videos cannot.
5. YouTube Pre-Roll Ads
You need to be on YouTube if you would like to get your company, your brand, and your message in front of your target audience. YouTube pre-roll ads, in particular, allow you to target your audience by:
Keywords
Placements
Topics
Remarketing
Interests
Demographics
This type of control provides you with a much higher chance of being able to connect with your chosen target audience. It has been proven that pre-roll ads help to raise brand awareness. They can also help you stand out from the competition in a way that is both engaging and unique.
For this type of ad, usually, you can have a team of video marketers, such as Blue Corona, edit some sound bites and clips together from online shoots or previous videos, create graphics that convey specials or discounts, or purchase high-definition stock videos and then incorporate music and text with your logo.
The ads get uploaded to your YouTube channel and are promoted and tracked via Google Ads, so to promote the ads you will need to have the budget for it.
One of the questions that I am asked quite often is how to do video marketing and how to get video marketing strategies executed.
A playbook has been put together by YouTube that breaks down all of the elements that are part of the most successful ads. In this playbook, they discuss some of the ways that brand awareness can be increased through using video ads:
Make use of familiar faces — Whether it is well-known employees, local leaders, community members, or celebrities, it is shown by research that showing recognizable individuals at the start of your video can help you begin to see an increase in your viewership.
Incorporate emotion and humor — You might be surprised but funny videos can help with brand awareness and ad recall. Humans are wired to remember experiences that elicit emotional reactions, including enjoyment, humor, or fear. It does make sense — just think about some of the ads that you remember — epic travel ads, laughing babies, talking animals, and other simple videos that may seem quite innocent, but do an amazing job at capturing the attention of your audience and retaining it.
Take full advantage of audio and video — This means it matters what audio you select to go with your video. YouTube states that you can potentially realize a 20 percent increase in consideration and brand awareness when viewers watch an ad that contains both video and audio.
Here is one more professional tip for your YouTube ads: Don’t use a slideshow or template with your log at the beginning of your video. Although you want your logo to appear within the initial five seconds, it is best to show a clip that has your logo on one of your services or products or an employee rather than simply having your logo plastered on the screen. Rather than telling them who your company is, that can deter many viewers from remaining on your ad since it loses their interest and attention.
After all that you have just read about current video marketing, we hope you agree that videos will be critical to your marketing strategies in the future. Given that people these days are a lot more willing to watch a video and remember your message from them, rather than looking at static images or reading blog posts, you will want to ensure that you are placing your brand and company in the position for reaching your target audience.
So whether you want to increase recall, recognition, brand awareness, achieve better rankings, increase your engagement or improve your conversion rates, or would just like online viewers to become more familiar with your company from a new perspective — it is a smart choice to get video marketing service from an experienced and reputable video marketing agency.
Hope you had a better understanding of video marketing.
If you need more help don’t hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly contact you back!
