6 Key Reasons To Include Video In Your Marketing Strategy

Video marketing is one of the fastest growing trends in online marketing. According to Cisco, online video traffic will account for more than 80% of all consumer internet traffic in 2017. But how exactly can you harness the power of video marketing for your business? Here are six reasons why you should include videos in your marketing strategy.

1. Video Marketing is the Future of Online Marketing

Video marketing is a great way to get your brand out there. In fact, video marketing is the future of online marketing. According to Hubspot, more than 80% of consumers say they’ve watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service. People are also incredibly loyal and click-through rates are up dramatically on videos compared to other formats of marketing.
Even if you’re not planning on turning your videos into a full-fledged business (yet), brand strategy and messaging is a crucial part of video marketing. Writing your message in the form of a video makes it simple for your audience to absorb and understand — trust me, I have done it more times than I can count!

According to a YouGov study, video content and its highlights beat out all other forms of online content in terms of virality. Speaking from personal experience, whenever I write an article, there’s a good chance I will publish it on my blog to share my story more broadly. But by doing so, I have to factor in my branding as part of the post title and my name in the body text. It’s a cumbersome process that makes me look lazy. With an overview of my brand above, video makes it as simple as copying and pasting the relevant information into my video content. A video also doubles as a charm campaign for your brand and highlights areas in which you excel. And since video marketing serves as both a force multiplier and a friendly reminder to your audience, your content is unlikely to get buried in the depths of the countless content served up by social media platforms. Instead, when done right, videos tend to bubble to the surface and get a lot of eyeballs, which often translates to more page views and a higher bounce rate on your landing pages and websites. The more videos that get engaged, the higher your conversion rate because it increases the number of people that see your content.

2. Video Gets More Views and Shares than Other Types of Content

Videos are more likely to be shared on social media than other types of content, so if you want to reach a large audience, video is the way to do it. To help your videos get more views, use eye-catching thumbnails and descriptions to entice people to click and watch. Thumbnails allow people to quickly jump to the content they’re interested in. To do so on your own blog or website, you can check out the latest content posted on the platform. Use this content to create thumbnails for your own content by using video as one component in a Layered Architecture marketing strategy.

Use SEO best practices to optimize your video titles and subtitles. Make sure your video is not already uploaded to YouTube or Vimeo, so that it stays higher in Google searches. Also, include metadata in your description. Images and videos with captions work best in YouTube.

Popular Instagram marketing platform Hootsuite has an “Embed” feature that allows anyone to create an embed code. Using such a code, you can reach almost any type of content on your website or blog. Hootsuite allows you to embed Instagram videos, Instagram posts, Pinterest pins, Medium post excerpts, blog posts, Twitter posts, Vimeo recordings, YouTube videos, etc. Want to host a Youtube livestream using Hootsuite? Maybe, you don’t have the technical know-how but then what’s stopping you?

If videos aren’t enough to convince people to click, text will do the trick. Movie trailers are one of the easiest ways to mail copy and capture attention for your video SEO. influencer marketing and “influencers” inside your niche tend to be the people who are most likely to overcome their initial resistance and sign up to your mailing list.

TIP: Try using Instagram captions and humanize your marketing to avoid clicks. Use videos as a part of a layered strategy so that viewers can easily jump to the part of your content that interests them.

3. Video Builds Trust and Credibility

Video builds trust and credibility. An easy way to build trust is to include videos in your marketing. When people see video content, they tend to believe it more than they believe other forms of content. In fact, people are 64% more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. This is at it’s core the principle driving search engine optimization a. If you aren’t familiar with this concept check out our SEO 101 video here.

Video marketing builds trust. On the flip side, not including videos in your marketing can put a dent in your reach. If your audience is fragmented across email newsletters, blogs, online social media accounts, and YouTube channels, are you likely to reach them all? Not likely, which limits your organization’s effectiveness. Your content includes video. Even if your audience doesn’t regularly consume video content, if they see your brand marketing or products featured in video format like webinars, forums, and social media, they are more likely to hear about it.

Video promotes creativity. In marketing, creativity trumps accuracy, which leads to missed opportunities to communicate your message. And when your audience consumes your content in video format, they will be left wondering, “What else can they do?” As such, video marketing promotes creativity, something that needs to be emphasized in today’s era of ruthless competition. Video emphasizes personality. It is also easy to see who you are speaking to by including videos in your marketing strategy. What you say might not sound impressive by itself, but adding videos in your marketing can draw on viewers’ personality rather than the facts.
Video activates emotion. Particularly when consumers consume your content on portable devices like smartphones, videos can leave viewers with a stronger emotional reaction than static text, particularly the personal touch. If your company is known for its unique ethos, and you offer a unique service or product, incorporating video format into your marketing can grab the attention of consumers who share your same values.

Video resonates with the core. One of the big reasons many consumers want to purchase a certain brand’s product or service is because they differ from the usual crowd in terms of their image of what they value.

4. Videos are Easier to Digest than Static Content

If you’re creating content for online marketing, one thing you should consider is video content. According to a recent study, 53% of executives would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. If you can create video content for your business that helps people understand your ideas, then you’ll be able to better market your business.

If you have existing web assets, then it’s simple to integrate digital videos into your website. To get started, you can use YouTube’s built-in vlogging feature. This feature allows you to add a series of short video clips to your website. When a user scrolls down your site, they’ll automatically start the video each time. For added appeal, you can also add LED flags that blink to indicate the current clip is playing. You can create similar content for your Instagram and Facebook pages. Typically, these platforms allow users to post up to 3,500 characters of a caption. To create video material, start by writing the title of the video and a one to two-minute description. For additional inspiration, choose the color and lighting effects you think will work best. It can even help to include icons, sound, and text that users can easily recognize as part of your video.

You can also experiment with using video clips from old videos. You can use footage from Facebook Live, YouTube, Instagram Stories, or any other content distribution platform that has been sitting around for a few years. When creating your page or Instagram post for video content, keep the title, the one to two-minute description, the accent colors, the logo, hashtags, music, and any other text you included in the video. It can also help if you can use one type of camera for both the title and description.

You can also use videos from your personal social media channels. This is a great way for businesses to succeed in video content. When creating content for your brand (such as one-minute stories or blog posts), take all of your social media posts and mash them together to create one video.

5. Videos are Easy to Share

If you want to build an audience, you need to make your content easy to share on social media. Videos are one of the easiest types of content to share and can be shared on any social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

A great way to increase your social media engagement is to include videos. Many people like to watch a video before sharing it on their personal or professional networks. Sharing is often more satisfying and engaging than simply reposting content.

Create a marketing strategy to grow your audience and keep your customers coming back for more. As many companies are pivoting their technology implementations toward online marketing, as an additional effort to increase visibility online, it is a good idea to invest in video to increase the value of your marketing.

Staying relevant is one of the words all marketers are constantly repeating. Good content is yet another way to stay on top of your customer’s mind and build a loyal audience that keeps returning to your website. As more people embrace the benefits of digital marketing and content, video marketing will become increasingly important. One of the most frequent questions online marketers get is: “How can I better engage my audience online?” Video is a great way to do just that and give your users a more interactive and engaging way to lead their own life.

According to Investopedia, “Companies with video-based logos see a 44% higher average increase in brand equity than companies without video-based logos. So don’t wait around and get videos working for your brand. Check out our Video Marketing page for more information about branding for your business!