Excellent video content is one of many ways to reach your audience. Videos can convey a wealth of information in even just a minute of time. For this reason, marketers are moving towards this medium.

“Content is King” – Bill Gates

Now more than ever before, consumers have access to a wealth of information, video content, pictures, memes, and communities. In this sea of content and information, marketers are tasked with reaching audiences and penetrating the noise.

Consumers are also watching more video content than ever before. Consider some of the following statistics shared by Hubspot:

• Video is projected to claim more than 80% of all web traffic by last year
• Adding a video to marketing emails can boost click-through rates by 200-300%
• Embedding videos in landing pages can increase conversion rates by 80%
• 90% of customers report that product videos help them make purchasing decisions.
• According to YouTube, mobile video consumption grows by 100% every year
• One-third of all the time people spend online is dedicated to watching video
• Digital marketing expert James McQuivey estimates that a single minute of video content is the equivalent of 1.8 million words.

This is why it has become more important than ever before to master the art of creating video content.

One of the amazing perks of creating content through video is the ability to craft your brand to your unique market. Need to show how quickly you can serve customers? Done. Need to show how responsive you are to customers suggestions? Done. Looking to show how you can help other businesses use analytics to reach their own audiences? Done. These goals can all be accomplished in 30 second ads that cn be shown on major social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. You can also create longer videos to go viral or to showcase more of your company’s abilities.

A company that does a great example of this is Red Bull. They have created content with one goal in mind: Creating content that people would be interested in, regardless of if it relates to their product. They are extremely creative and use a wide array of platforms and methods. By focusing on creating content that impacts people, they draw a very wide audience which brings many people to their brand.

Video however, is one of their main methods of creation. They’ve created an impressive library of video content covering sponsored athletes. You can find ads for their product in sports ranging from snowboarding and mountain biking, to sky diving and paragliding. The exciting, varied content that they have created is now synonymous with their brand.

Help build a community with video content

Community is another aspect of how video can be helpful. Vlogging has become a very popular way to share content on social media platforms. Depending on your business type, you could reach out to content creators and invite them to use your product. They can do a single vlog, or a series, highlighting how much your product impacts their daily life. Even if you have a B2B style business, customers could still make vlogs showing how your service increases sales, marketing efforts, or just makes their lives easier.

With vlogs you can directly respond to comments or feedback from your community. You can take all the time you need to adequately address any feedback from your community. You can also easily do giveaways or live videos to increase engagement through video content.

Also consider the impact of storytelling through videos, whether corporate or even videos pulled from your community. The stories told through these videos can be incredibly impactful. Positive stories from customers regarding your products can help customers be much more likely to buy. News shared by Hubspot shows that 90% of customers report that product videos help them make purchasing decisions. Add to this that 64% of customers are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video about it. This can be a gamechanger when trying to bring your product to a wider audience, especially if you can get your videos to go viral. Even if your video content doesn’t work that well with your audience at first, consistent, audience focused content will go a long way to creating a connection with your community.

Easily explain your product or service

Video is an excellent venue for showing off what your company does best. You can engage your audience through both audio and visual explanations, while also directing them to more information. Going back to Purple, they have worked to explain their product quickly through their ads and video content.

They use a technology called Hyper-Elastic Polymer that might sound confusing to the average consumer. Rather than try to explain the video via corporate press releases of long text explanations, Purple leveraged the power of video content to try and prove why their mattresses are better than the rest of the market. They created the “egg test”, where they drop eggs, attached to a human, onto a mattress. Not only does this make for entertaining content within a video, but they easily use it to show the superiority of their product. This concept can be used with any business model, to quickly connect with your audience and show the power of your services.

With this video content strategy, Purple has developed a whole suite of videos that can explain why their products are different, why they work, and why they will be so beneficial for the consumer. These videos can be customized to explain their products in 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, and longer 3 and ½ minute informational videos. This is incredibly helpful in competing in today’s fast paced marketing environment.

Engage every consumer easily

The ability to connect with other people quickly is one of the digital age’s biggest strengths. We can reach out within seconds to share a text, e-mail, or voicemail to anyone with an internet connection. This is incredibly useful when dealing with consumers who are now looking for personal connections with brands more than ever before. When you have good video content, many will often want to learn more about what you do. When they ask questions or want to learn more, you can connect with them personally through comments and likes, or more generically through Chatbots and other automated solutions.

Not only can you reach out to customers to answer their questions, you can use this engagement to pull in people that wouldn’t normally be interested in your content. Going back to Red Bull, they sponsor events such as the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, National Dance competitions, Red Bull Slopesoakers and the Red Bull Homerun. While these events may not bring in direct revenue, they provide a fantastic opportunity to create video content from these events. One event alone can generate hundreds of different clips they can then use for their advertising on Facebook, YouTube, and TV spots. They can also use them for brand building on video platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo.

Fill your sales pipeline

These events are just the tip of the iceberg for red bulls video marketing. However, the content generation is invaluable. Not only does it generate buzz, it also helps generate leads. The end goal of marketing and business in general, is sales. Video can help boost your sales pipeline in many ways. First, just getting potential customers familiar with your brand can start them down the sales funnel. The more eyes on your product and brand, the more potential customers you can find.

Not only can video help you find potential customers, it can also lead you to some of the most interested. Depending on your audience and business, designing ads or content that strikes positive emotion with customers can be a powerful way to excite them about your business. The Harvard Business Review did a study and concluded, “When companies connect with customers’ emotions, the payoff can be huge. Consider these examples: After a major bank introduced a credit card for Millennials that was designed to inspire emotional connection, use among the segment increased by 70% and new account growth rose by 40%. Within a year of launching products and messaging to maximize emotional connection, a leading household cleaner turned market share losses into double-digit growth. And when a nationwide apparel retailer reoriented its merchandising and customer experience to its most emotionally connected customer segments, same-store sales growth accelerated more than threefold.”

Video can be fantastic in helping marketers create the kind of content that resonates with customers on this scale. Think of the dozens of Superbowl ads that are created every year just for this purpose.

For all these reasons, video is a form of advertising and media that is here to stay. Video content can help you deliver your message, faster, efficiently, and more succinctly than ever before. The better we can use this tool, the better positioned you will be in today’s crowded marketing field.

References:

https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-new-science-of-customer-emotions

https://mention.com/en/blog/video-content-strategy/

https://www.responsiveinboundmarketing.com/blog/video-marketing-statistics-for-2019

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/02/03/video-marketing-the-future-of-content-marketing/#6edd40896b53

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/video-marketing-statistics#sm.0000f7ujhkwrse8sqa62aq63w23fi