Promote Your Brand and Increase Traffic with Video
The “Why” of Video Marketing
Video marketing can help support different marketing aims including lead generation, growing brand awareness, improving your search engine optimization (SEO) and social sharing, as well as increasing user engagement with your business and improving your website performance.
Why take 10 minutes to read a blog that only takes one or two minutes to consume in video format?
Video marketing has benefited from higher internet speeds, and from the fact that many visitors have a short attention span. Video has been particularly successful for viral campaigns where even the most serious message can rapidly attract a wide audience through use of humor, music, overlaid messages/links and celebrities.
As mobile internet speeds grow faster, we’re not just watching video at home and in the office, we’re spending more time watching video on the move. Mobile Internet has now overtaken desktop Internet use for the first time.
Types of Video Marketing and their Goals
There are several different kinds of videos you can use to engage current customers and grab the attention of new customers. There are now increasingly varied video types that are being used to achieve these differing business benefits:
Testimonial videos – to build trust.
Product demo videos – to boost conversion.
Web presenter videos – for engagement.
Corporate stories – to grow brand awareness/trust.
Animated “explainer” videos – to explain a concept or service..
Interviews – to boost engagement and awareness.
Comedic videos – to build brand favoritism.
Instructional ‘How to’ videos – to create trust and engagement.
The business case for video marketing
So how has video come to occupy such a major role in digital marketing? Quite simply, as the internet gets faster and attention spans get shorter, digital marketers have had to be more innovative about keeping audiences engaged. If someone is only going to spend a few seconds on your web page, they’re more likely to watch a 30 second video than read several paragraphs of text.
- You can get a lot of information across in a short space of time
- It’s easier to articulate your values and emotions on video than through text
- By seeing your staff in action, customers have a better idea of what it’s like to work with you
- It’s easier to explain how your products through visuals than through long tedious instructions
- Any businesses that are visual such as fashion, food or design can bring their products to life
But does it get results?
We’ve established that video is popular, but just because viewing habits are changing it doesn’t mean that users are necessarily watching the type of content that can help your business to grow; so what about social sharing – does video aid that too? This image shows data taken from posts on the SEOMoz daily blog and the average time spent on the page cross referenced by the type of media that was held on the page; this shows that video helps with engagement and holds attention with 25% more time spent on pages containing video content.
Final Thoughts…
We could spend hours discussing the process of making and promoting videos for your business but the goal here was to spark an interest and the question. If you have not started to use video in your business, should you start? I think the evidence is clear. Now what? Find something that will engage, educate or entertain your customers. Leverage that content to gain more traffic to your site and ultimately more interest in your business, your product or your service.
Next Steps…
The first step is to take action now. Don’t wait for your video to be perfect or have everything inline before you start. There is something genuine about not being perfect. Find a video type that best suits your goals and brain storm ideas that can help generate a storyboard. I have used a couple different types of video producing and editing software. Jing is one free option but you do have some limitations and Camtasia is their paid product. Captivate 9 is one I use from adobe although not free it is at a price point that is in reach of most businesses.
If you want to outsource a more professional video one company that is in my network is 36ixty Video Productions I highly recommend seeking the help of a professional for any sort of Corporate Story or Corporate Profile video where a polished touch might matter.
More than likely there is no harm that will come from it but you might be surprised the benefits and the ROI might be amazing.