In today’s digital world, video marketing has become an extremely powerful tool for businesses of all sizes to reach and engage with their target audience. But what makes video marketing so effective compared to other content formats? Let’s dive deeper into the major benefits of video marketing and how to leverage it for your brand.
What Exactly is Video Marketing?
Video marketing refers to any type of video created and distributed for marketing purposes. The goal of these videos is to engage with customers, promote products or services, improve brand awareness, and establish credibility and trust.
From social media platform videos to YouTube ads, corporate explainer and how-to videos to webinars, video can be used across channels for a wide range of marketing objectives. Video marketing provides an audio-visual experience that resonates with modern audiences.
The Benefits of Video Marketing
There are many reasons why video can be such a powerful addition to your marketing strategy.
Drives Higher Engagement
Video is an inherently engaging, immersive medium that holds viewers’ attention. In fact, viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it through video compared to 10% when reading it in text. Videos can grab attention across platforms in a way that static images and text cannot.
Leveraging video in your marketing boosts engagement metrics across the board, from shares and likes on social media to reduced bounce rates on landing pages and email click-through rates. Videos compel action in a way other formats cannot.
Increases Conversions and Sales
According to a survey conducted by Wyzowl, video marketers are 66% more likely to have converted viewers into buyers compared to non-video users. Viewers better understand products, services and the brand promise through video.
Seeing how a product works in a demo video significantly improves conversion rates. Videos also build trust and credibility, making viewers more likely to buy from your brand.
Enhances Brand Storytelling
Video allows brands to tell compelling stories that resonate emotionally with the viewer on a deeper level. This makes your brand more relatable, memorable and appealing.
Storytelling connects brands with consumers beyond a transactional level. Videos that tell a brand story establish a stronger connection and foster brand loyalty.
Achieves Higher Click-Through Rates
CTRs are one of the most direct ways to measure video marketing effectiveness. Videos in email marketing campaigns can increase CTRs by 200-300%. Product demo videos on landing pages can increase conversion rates by 80% or more.
Videos on social media also see much higher engagement in terms of clicks, reactions and comments compared to image or text-based posts. Higher visibility and improved click-through rates are a huge video marketing advantage.
Optimizes Search Engine Rankings
Video has become a must-have for SEO success. Videos increase dwell time on pages, lowering bounce rates. Google values pages that keep visitors engaged.
Additionally, video content is far more likely to appear on page 1 search engine results compared to pages without video. Videos help pages rank higher in SERPs and earn more traffic through searches.
Allows Targeted Ad Campaigns
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn all allow video ads targeting specific demographics and buyer personas. Videos tailored to your ideal audience and distributed through paid ad campaigns can be extremely effective.
Retargeting past customers through video ads is also an excellent strategy to increase repeat business. The variety of options for video ads gives marketers extensive targeting abilities.
Demonstrates Products and Services
Explainer and how-to videos are an excellent way to showcase your products and services in action. Demonstrating how a product works on video can significantly improve conversion rates on product pages.
Videos show rather than tell people about your offerings. Viewers want to see what you do rather than just read about it. Videos bring your products to life.
Easier To Track Analytics
With videos, you can track hard metrics and engagement analytics to determine effectiveness. View counts, completion rates, clicks, CTR, impressions, likes, comments and more indicate how well your video marketing performs.
Tracking ROI and optimizing based on data-driven insights becomes much easier with video compared to other mediums. Analytics empower strategy improvements.
Humanizes Your Brand
Customers form stronger connections with real people rather than faceless companies. Videos with founders, employees, and customers put a human face on your brand.
Client testimonial videos build credibility and trust by showing real customer stories. Videos make brands more relatable.
Adaptable For Many Goals
Video marketing is highly versatile and adaptable to nearly any marketing goal. From video ads to webinars, from Facebook Lives streams to YouTube channels, video can help:
- Generate brand awareness
- Engage social media followers
- Promote products/services
- Showcase company culture & values
- Highlight customer success stories
- Establish thought leadership
- Convert website visitors into leads
- Retarget and nurture leads into buyers
- Reduce churn and increase customer loyalty
The possibilities are nearly endless when leveraging video creatively.
Provides Value to Viewers
The most effective marketing videos focus on providing real value to the viewer rather than a hard-sell product pitch. Valuable videos build authority and trust.
For example, a DIY video from a home improvement brand provides practical tips for its target buyers. While subtly promoting the company’s products, the focus is on educating viewers with useful info.
Videos should aim to entertain, educate, inspire or help solve problems for your audience. By focusing on value, your videos will naturally highlight your brand strengths.
Allows Personalized Communication
Video marketing allows brands to connect with consumers in an authentic, humanized way that resonates emotionally. Audiences crave personalized communication over generic corporate speak.
Short brand story videos, employee interviews/profiles, live streams, and video press releases show the real people behind your brand. Let your brand personality shine directly through video.
Memorable and Shareable
When done well, videos are highly memorable, engaging and shareable across social media. People are far more likely to share videos than static content. One video can reach a massive audience through shares.
Videos spread brand awareness and increase visibility. Leveraging the shareability of video creates earned media and brand exposure you couldn’t buy through advertising alone.
Consistent Content Format
Once you create effective video marketing templates, you can reuse them to produce consistent content. For example, customer testimonial videos, employee interviews, and explainer videos follow proven formulas.
Maintain brand image and quality standards while increasing efficiency through video content templates. Consistent execution then allows for continual optimization.
As you can see, the benefits of leveraging video for marketing are extensive, from driving sales to building brand loyalty. Video marketing checked the right boxes for effective modern marketing across metrics.
Types of Videos to Use for Marketing
Now that we’ve covered the significant advantages of video marketing, let’s discuss the most impactful types of videos to create and distribute.
Social Media Videos
Optimized, short videos designed specifically for social media platforms perform extremely well. From quick tips to behind-the-scenes footage, showcase your brand personality on social media through video.
Videos on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter should aim to be 60-90 seconds long, entertaining, informative and engaging. Leverage hashtags and mentions to expand reach and encourage engagement through likes, shares and comments.
YouTube Videos
YouTube remains the king of video in terms of viewership totals and offers massive marketing potential. Optimize your brand channel and individual videos for maximum SEO value.
Create consistent content on trending topics related to your niche, tutorials, thought leadership videos, company culture videos and more to build a subscriber base. Promote your videos across all channels to earn more views.
Live Video Streaming
Live video on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube allows real-time engagement with your audience. Launch new products, stream Q&A or AMA sessions, share company news, host webinars and more through live video.
The real-time, raw nature of streaming makes brands more relatable. Saved streams can then be reused as evergreen video content.
Brand Story Videos
Short animated or motion graphics videos that showcase your brand story and values help build an emotional connection with your audience. Well-produced brand stories get passed around social media creating visibility.
Explainer Videos
These short, animated videos explain your products, services or processes in a simple yet engaging format. Explainer videos educate viewers effectively to improve conversion rates. Use them on product pages, in blogs, on landing pages.
Customer Testimonial Videos
Satisfied customers describing their experience working with your brand in a video testimonial builds credibility and trust with new visitors. Testimonials reassure potential customers that you deliver on promises.
Behind-the-Scenes Videos
Give your audience a peek behind the curtain of your brand through behind-the-scenes videos. Showing the actual business in action allows viewers to connect on a more personal, authentic level.
Product Demo Videos
Don’t just tell prospective customers about your product, show them! Demonstration videos that showcase your product or service in action convert significantly better.
Educational Videos
Create a video blog sharing your industry knowledge, tips and actionable advice to establish yourself as a thought leader. Educational videos engage viewers by teaching them valuable skills.
Event and Conference Videos
Recording video content at industry events and conferences then sharing allows those who didn’t attend to still benefit from the information and insights. Repurpose what already exists through video.
Training & Onboarding Videos
Engaging video tutorials and onboarding processes reduce repetitive training tasks for your team. They ensure consistency in training across locations.
Company Culture Videos
Give people a feel for your work culture and environment by showcasing video testimonials of happy employees sharing their experiences. This builds trust in your company.
Investor Relations Videos
Communicate company financials, performance metrics, achievements and growth strategies through videos tailored to investors. This increases transparency.
Recruitment Videos
Showcase your company culture and people to attract top talent. Provide video tours of offices and employee testimonials. Include management discussing your mission and values. Recruitment videos give candidates an inside look to get them excited about applying.
Sales Enablement Videos
Equip your sales team for success through training videos on products, services, target audiences, objections handling, pitching, closing, and more. Videos standardize sales processes.
Video Press Releases
Video press releases build more interest and engagement from the media than traditional press releases. Get your company news and announcements covered by media outlets through video.
Video Ads
YouTube ads, Facebook/Instagram video ads and LinkedIn video ads allow you to target your video content to specific demographics and buyer personas. Create ads that speak directly to your ideal customers.
As you can see, businesses can leverage video content for an extremely wide range of marketing and communication purposes. The versatility of video allows it to be adapted to nearly any goal, target market, and medium.
No matter what stage of the marketing or sales funnel, video can be used to attract, engage, nurture and convert viewers. The visual nature of video makes it one of the most effective digital marketing mediums.
Best Practices for Highly Effective Marketing Videos
Now that we’ve covered the many benefits of video marketing and types of videos to produce, let’s discuss some proven tips to create compelling videos that convert viewers into buyers:
Hook Viewers Immediately
You only have a few seconds to grab the viewer’s attention before they click away. Hook them immediately with an interesting first shot, surprising statistic on screen, or compelling question. Quickly convey the value proposition of the video.
Focus on Storytelling
Tell stories that resonate emotionally with the viewer, not just product pitches. Build narratives that connect with the audience while highlighting your brand strengths. Entertain or educate viewers through storytelling.
Keep Videos Concise
Include only the most important story points and information. Avoid rambling, repetition or fluff. Remove anything that doesn’t directly contribute. Video marketing is about quality over quantity.
Optimize Videos for Mobile
Over 50% of video viewing occurs on mobile devices. Mobile optimization includes vertical video format, easily readable text, and strong visuals. Avoid tiny text.
Promote Your Videos
Don’t expect your videos to get traffic on their own. Come up with a promotion strategy across social media, email marketing, paid ads, website banners, blog posts and more. Promote videos across all your marketing channels.
Include A Clear Call-To-Action
Every video should guide the viewer towards taking action. Include buttons to your website, desired landing pages, email subscription forms, phone contact, etc. Make it obvious what action the viewer should take next.
Focus on Providing Value
The best video content educates or entertains rather than hard-sells. Aim to provide practical tips, actionable advice, solutions to problems, insider perspectives or humor. Valuable videos build authority and trust.
Leverage Influencers/Collaborations
Partner with influencers in your industry or related niches to expand your brand’s reach. Cross-promote each other’s videos. Collaborate on co-branded video content that benefits both parties.
Experiment with Different Video Styles
Try different video styles and see which perform best. Test animation, talking heads, standard interviews, screen recordings, product demos, client testimonials, and more. Continually optimize based on data.
Include Interactive Elements
Boost engagement through interactive elements like on-screen graphic cues, calls for viewers to comment below, site links, end screens with dynamic calls-to-action, and cards linking to other videos.
Develop Consistent Sequels
Turn top-performing one-off videos into a series to maximize their value. A sequel video performs up to 66% better than a single standalone video. Develop consistent series based on themes and topics.
Video marketing comes with a learning curve. You won’t create perfect videos right away. The important thing is to start creating videos, test different styles and topics, have a promotion strategy, analyze performance data, then improve over time. Follow these best practices and your video marketing will convert viewers into loyal customers.
Conclusion
From increasing click-through rates and conversion rates to driving higher SEO rankings and reaching broader audiences, video marketing is an extremely adaptable and high-performing digital marketing strategy.
Videos resonate with modern consumers on a deeper, more emotional level through storytelling. Leveraging explainer videos, live streams, YouTube tutorials, social media videos, and beyond can dramatically improve your marketing results across metrics.
With platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube prioritizing video content more than ever, it’s clear video marketing is not just a passing trend, but an essential component of successful online marketing.
As you develop expertise with video marketing, aim to provide viewers with truly valuable content rather than pure product pitches. Build trust and brand loyalty through videos that entertain, inspire, educate, and emotionally connect at a human level.
Done consistently over time, video marketing can significantly grow your audience, increase qualified traffic to your website, convert visitors into leads and customers, build trust and credibility for your brand, and maximize your marketing ROI across channels both online and offline. The power of video marketing is undeniable.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the most important video marketing metrics to track?
Key video marketing metrics to track include: Views, Watch Time, Audience Retention, Click-Through-Rate, Social Engagement, and Conversions. These metrics allow you to refine your strategy over time.
What tools can I use to create videos?
Top video creation tools include both expensive and free options like Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Blender, Animoto, Biteable, Clipchamp, Invideo, Renderforest, VideoScribe and more.
What are the optimal video lengths?
It depends on the platform. On social media, videos should be under 1 minute. On YouTube, 3-5 minutes is ideal. Brand storytelling videos can be 2-4 minutes. Explainer videos are usually 1-2 minutes.
How much should I invest in video marketing?
Invest 5-10% of your digital marketing budget in video creation and promotion. The production value, promotion costs, and video types determine exact budgets. Start small and scale up as you see positive ROI.
How can I improve my on-camera presence?
Improving on-camera presence involves being natural, conversational, passionate and likable. Focus on connecting with the viewer rather than perfect delivery. Practice regularly and get feedback to improve.
