Did you know that over 8 billion videos are viewed on Facebook every day? When you throw TV, in stream ads, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and the many other ways in which people are consuming video every day, that’s a whole lot of opportunities to reach your target market. Video is no longer an option for marketers, it’s a must-have. If you’re still not convinced, here are nine powerful reasons to include video in your marketing mix.
1. Deep Emotional Engagement
Since the stone age, humans have engaged with inventive, memorable, creative stories. While our lives are more high tech’ now, not a lot has changed. Only 20% of people remember information they read, 10% remember what they heard and 80% remember what they saw. Many consumers have found ways to block out traditional advertising content. These days, the most effective way to reach your market is by creating content of use to them instead. When you create content your target market wants to consume, with memorable images and stories that appeal to their emotions, they won’t just watch it, they’ll amplify with likes, comments and shares.
2. Easily Accessible
Video makes it easier to communicate complicated things. It’s widely accessible to people of a variety of education levels. You don’t need to be able to read to understand a video message. Video gives you the chance to show and to tell your audience about yourself on a deeper, more meaningful level. People want to learn what you have to teach them. ‘How To’ videos are the most commonly searched for videos online. Almost every business you care to mention could provide a video on how to use or care for their products, how to make best use of their services or even how to ‘hack’ a product with a fun DIY project.
3. Reach Far and Wide
It doesn’t cost a lot for a video to go a long way. Video works on so many channels both as organic and boosted content. Think beyond free to air TV to freeview services with in stream ads, YouTube channels, Google advertising and social media advertising. Videos can be placed into native content sites such as news or trade related sites. You can drive traffic to videos from your direct emails. You can target your videos to specific regions or let them go all around the world. Quirky, amazing and hilarious videos can go viral extremely fast.
4. Cheaper Than Ever
Yes, you can still break the bank on video production if you want to, but these days you don’t have to spend $50k + to have a good looking piece of film. Quality digital cameras have gotten smaller and more affordable. Some forms of animation are very cheap to produce. There’s even a high volume of good quality stock footage available to flesh out your video content. Editing and post production software has also become cheaper and more user friendly in the last 10 years. Get your pre-production planning done right and your production doesn’t have to break the bank.
5. Shareable is the New Word of Mouth
You may already know how powerful word of mouth advertising is for conversions. In the digital universe, sharing is the new word of mouth. Video is the most shared material online, hands down. When a user shares your video with a friend, it can act as a word of mouth endorsement. If people share your video with multiple friends, it can have an exponential effect. If you create a video worth sharing, before you know it, the public is doing your advertising for you.
6. Save Time Saying More
On average, human beings process visual information 60,000 times faster than text. That means your videos can convey information in less time than it would take to read it. In a busy, modern world, the faster you can get your message across the better. It takes around five to ten seconds to catch and retain someone’s attention. Those critical seconds are amplified when you choose video over the written word, allowing you a better chance to win someone over.
7. Give Your Website a Boost
If you’ve ever wished you could drive more people to your website and keep them there for longer, video is the answer. Informative videos such as those that explain how to use or care for your products, how to prepare for your services or make the best of your services or how to DIY using your products or services have been proven to boost websites average visit times from eight seconds to two minutes – that’s a 1,500% increase! More visitors to your site helps to improve your SEO, pushing you up the list of relevant results on Google searches.
8. Go Beyond Google
Everyone knows Google is number one, but did you know YouTube is the second biggest search engine using the English language? It’s bigger than Bing, Yahoo!, Ask and AOL combined! YouTube processes more than three billion searches a month. 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Your company’s YouTube channel acts as a marketing vehicle on its own, as people can read more about your business in the description section of each video. YouTube videos are easy for consumers to share and if your video is hosted on YouTube you can create Google Adwords and YouTube advertisements from your video.
9. Strong Call to Action
Video inspires with a strong call to action. Last year 61% of people who researched a product or service on social media completed the purchase online. Video allows you to quickly build trust without a face-to-face salesperson. 58% of consumers are ready to trust the companies that are providing videos about their products. Video viewers are 1.6 times more likely to buy and 96% of customer believe video helps them make purchasing decisions. 73% of shoppers are more likely to buy a product after watching an explanatory video about it.
Pre Production Matters
Now you’re excited to get shooting, it’s time to plan and prepare. Jumping in before you’re done planning will waste money and resources. Brief your script writer on:
- The company’s vision and the purpose of the video
- The goals you want the video to achieve and success metrics
- Your style guide and brand personality
- Your consumer and client research
- How you want the video to make your customers feel, think and act
- The kind of content your target market finds useful, entertaining or educational
- If you want to offer a discount, special offer or exclusive
- The total budget for production
- Style of production (e.g. live action, animated, testimonial, how to etc.)
- Where you intend on placing the video
- The total budget (if any) for paid video placements (e.g. Google Adwords, Instagram Advertising)
Then take the time to ensure the script is exactly as you want it before engaging a video producer. While more money will buy you a higher standard of production, even a lower budget video can work for you if done well. Check out these memorable ads by Rhett and Link to see how even low budget videos can be hilariously sharable.
If you’re interested in engaging a script writer and video producer for your brand, get in touch on our contact page or 07 3180 1416.