“Business decision makers LOVE online video because it gives them the most amount of information in the shortest amount of time.” – Robert Weiss
Each year the same thing is said repeatedly when it comes to making videos for your business or product. “This year will be the year for video.” It’s a farce. There’s never a specific year that’ll be a break-out year for video – every year is the year for video. And there’s a good reason for this too. According to a recent Cisco study, 82 percent of consumer internet traffic will be done via video by 2021.
The use of video among small businesses is hitting a stride and solidifying itself as the “must-have” marketing tactic. This might come as a surprise, but 61 percent of all businesses are using some form of video content in their digital marketing plans. Granted some of these videos can be one-offs with no other purpose than to portray one product and nothing beyond that. But, the use of video among marketing plans is more readily becoming a must.
Conversions and Sales
Straight up, videos can garner you some serious coin. Adding product videos to your landing page can increase conversions by nearly 80 percent. Videos have also been proven to lead directly to an increase in sales. Around 74 percent of users who watched and explainer-video about a product, bought the product being featured.
Think about it, vision is one of our most dominant senses next to sound and smell. Most information is transmitted visually to our brain, therefore seeing a video on a product helps consumers connect to it more readily.
About that ROI
Around 83 percent of businesses say that video provides a good return on investment. Even though video production can take some serious time, the benefits still outweigh the negatives. Plus, online video editing tools are constantly being improved upon making them more user-friendly as well as adding more features to improve viewing experiences.
The best news too that increases your overall ROI is that your videos don’t have to be perfect. Content matters. Recent data shows that viewers are put off by videos that don’t clearly explain a product or service. Low quality or poor designs didn’t throw viewers off nearly as much as videos that didn’t have a real explanation. Look at some of the most successful Youtube channels out there. The top ones all started with a person literally talking into their computer cameras and nothing else. No over the top cinematics or Michael Bay explosions. Literally, a person in their PJs talking to their computer on a couch.
Trust Factor
Video builds trust. The whole idea of content marketing is creating long-term relationships with customers. Pump and dumps aren’t going to create successful campaigns or successful business partnerships. But, having a video campaign engages viewers on another level beyond a text document or still photo.
Moovly gives us whopping statistics: You’re 53 times more likely show up first on Google if you have a video embedded on your website. Since Google now owns YouTube, there has been a significant increase in how much videos affect your search engine rank.
On the Move
Video and mobile views go hand-in-hand. Around 90 percent of consumers watch videos on their phone. Youtube itself reports video consumption rises nearly 100 percent every year. Mobile growth means viewers are twice as likely than TV views to feel a sense of personal connection to brands and are more likely to buy their stuff.
Plus, it engages even the laziest of buyers. In today’s age and rapid pace, we don’t have the time or care to read long-winded product releases. If you sent a bunch of millennials a thousand-word post on a product, they’d ask if it was the 1950s or something and sigh right back into their phones and dreams of being the next Insta influencer. A video makes it easy. You watch, you digest.
10 Tips for Your Videos
When it comes to making your videos, it’s good to have a little bit of a plan and the right equipment. Katie Freiling, co-founder of The Creative Portal, created a list of best practices that are a perfect example to follow when creating your videos.
- Use Good Equipment – This does not mean that you need to use Hollywood director A-level equipment. A simple $120 Flip cam will do the trick.
- Good Lighting – Badly lit videos are a good way to get your viewers to move to something else. Proper lighting – which can be as simple as a lamp pointed in the right direction – will make a world of difference to our videos.
- Eye-Grabbing Title – Use the keyword you are targeting in your title. Titles need to be catchy and interesting. It must grab your viewer’s attention immediately. With all the noise on the internet, the quicker you get the information about your video out, the better the likelihood that it’ll be clicked.
- Outline Key Points – Unless you are doing a professional production for a product sales pitch you don’t need to write out an entire script or use a teleprompter. However, don’t wing it. Bullet-point your main ideas and base your conversation off that.
- 15 Seconds – State the main benefit of watching the video in the first 15 seconds. With so many other options out there, it’s imperative to get the main purpose of your video to the viewership, immediately.
- Look at the Camera – It’s as simple as that. Look at the camera. The camera is your viewers point of view, look at them when your talking. Much like talking to a person directly in front of you, it’s odd to not look at them when you’re talking to them.
- Act Like Yourself – We get enough reality TV as is. There’s no need to put on a persona when you’re in front of a camera. Be yourself. Be comfortable.
- Clear CTAs – This is one of the most important things you can do. You need to tell people exactly what you want them to do because of watching your video. Do you want them to go to your blog or website, click on a link, share your video on Twitter or Facebook, leave a comment? Your call to action needs to be clear so the viewer knows exactly what they are supposed to do.
- Edit Your Video – Editing a video is generally better. It is possible to really go crazy with the editing. Resist that temptation and just keep it simple. Windows Movie Maker or I-Movie for the Mac are both sufficient video editors. There are many other programs you can purchase that have a lot more capability, but you don’t need to be too dramatic. Also, make sure you include your call to action as a written credit at the end of your video. Upload your video to YouTube.
- Blast Your Video All Over – Your goal is to have your content syndicated all over the internet. You can do this yourself, but it is incredibly time consuming, or you can use other sites to do this for you. Traffic Geyser is one of the better ones and will automatically upload your video to about 40 different video and social media sites for you. Getting your video all over the internet allows it to continue to work for you 24 hours a day for as long as it stays on the internet.
To Conclude
Video marketing is extremely important for your business. Not only does it offer up the easiest quantifiable ROI, it helps build trust in your brand as well. Viewers will quickly relate to you and your business since it’s so much easier to digest information via video rather than a text-heavy document. For any other questions, contact us and we’ll run through the techniques you need to create a successful campaign.
