Why Video Marketing Needs To Be Part of Your Marketing Strategy in 2018
In case you haven’t noticed it, video is taking over the Internet. Everywhere you look, small businesses and brands are embracing video as the most effective way to get in front of potential customers, boost overall brand awareness and drive sales.
According to Aberdeen Group, 41% of marketers are now using video as part of their marketing strategy. Another study by Animoto suggests that 55% of small business owners are now using video, in one way or another, to drive growth. So, the obvious question becomes: Why exactly are we seeing this push to video?
The easiest answer has to do with engagement. In other words, people will watch a two-minute video clip all the way to the end and then respond to a call-to-action. In those two minutes, you have plenty of time to explain how your product works, as well as what your business stands for. Now compare that to an average text-based article: most people will simply scan the headline, or if you’re really lucky, read the first few sentences. But they won’t read it all the way to the end.
Another big reason why video is taking over the Internet has to do with the flexibility of the video format itself. If you think that video marketing just means 30-second ads on YouTube, think again.
There are at least 10 different use cases for video marketing that are popular with small businesses and entrepreneurs:
- Explainer videos
- Live streams
- Presentations
- Customer testimonials
- Tutorials (i.e. “How-To” videos)
- Product demos
- Product reviews
- Video interviews
- Vlogs (video blogs)
- “Behind-the-scenes” event videos
And don’t forget – you can still re-package some of this content into other video formats that can then be distributed across social media. For example, let’s say that your business is hosting a major event next month. You could use video in a number of different ways to help promote the event. You might do a video interview with the founders of the company in the lead-up period to the event and then post that interview on Facebook. Then, at the event itself, you could run a live feed. After the event, you could then package up video clips from different presentations and highlight them in emails that you send out to customers on your email list.
And, of course, people wouldn’t be investing so much time and energy in video marketing if it didn’t actually work. According to Aberdeen Group, video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year. And they also achieve a 54% increase in brand awareness through video marketing. Animoto reports that 76.5% of small business owners are getting results from video marketing. Those improved results often mean higher sales for your business.
If anything, the fact that mobile is overtaking desktop as the way that people interact with content only strengthens the case for video marketing. Simply put, people would rather watch a video on their small screens than try to pinch-and-zoom their way through a long text article.
Video marketing is about far more than just driving traffic to your website. It’s about engaging with prospects and customers, building brand awareness, driving results and making more sales. It’s easy to see why video marketing is one of the most important marketing trends of 2018.
~Nolan Nissle, Founder – NGN Pictures