Search online for marketing ideas at the moment and you’ll notice the overriding focus for many businesses is video. Over the last five to six years, it’s become the must-have marketing accessory that companies big and small want to buy into.
But why is it such a popular choice? Here’s our take:
We Love Visual
We are visual animals. We love to take photos, watch movies, look at paintings, draw and play video games. Yes, these media all have other characteristics like sound and dialogue but it’s the visual that counts.
Online, if we see a visual ad, we are more likely to click on it than something with purely written content. According to Forbes, we are much likely to click the link in a sales email if that message contains a video. There’s something that engages us in ways other kinds of content simply don’t
We Love Our Smartphones
Video has been around for a long, long while and so have computers. So, what has been the big change in recent years?
There are two things:
- First, our smartphones are just the most wonderful devices for watching a video. When the first iPhone came out over 10 years, various commentators said that people wouldn’t want to watch a whole film or TV series on their smartphone. How wrong they were. We love it and we consume the vast majority of online video content on our phones.
- The second thing is the connectivity. If you remember the old ADSL phone connection back at the beginning of the internet, you will know what a big change this has been. We take it for granted but we can now get a high level of connectivity, wherever we are in the world and without being attached to a phone socket.
Video Delivers ROI
One of the big worries that businesses have with using video is that it is more expensive than other types of content to produce. That’s true. But the flip side of that is video delivers a much better return on investment.
For a start, people remember a brand message on video 95% of the time compared to 10% for written content. Video is also more emotional. It engages people on a much deeper level, and it has been shown to increase conversions when included on a website or a landing page.
It Works for Your Website and Social Media
Another thing that has changed in recent years is the number of different social media sites that have adopted video.
You didn’t use to see a video on your Facebook or Twitter timeline. Now they’re every other second post. Video is highly adaptable to different platforms whether your audience is on Instagram, Snapchat or Pinterest.
It’s Shared More Than Any Other Content
Because it is the most popular online content by far, video is more widely shared than written and pictorial content. If people are engaged by a video message, they are keen to press that share button.
That’s the real reason that video delivers such a strong ROI. You have the potential to reach a much wider, bigger audience than ever before simply through the act of sharing.
It takes a lot of time and effort to put together a video production and we’re not saying it’s easy. Get it right, however, and you’ll have a marketing asset that is not only durable but will continue to work for your business across a wide range of media for some time to come. It will engage customers and it will deliver greater numbers of conversions.