David Murray is a Digital Marketing Executive and Social Enthusiast. Passionate about the underworld of below-the-line marketing, David breaks the latest in Marketing, Communications and Program Management. Connect with him on Twitter @MarketVoyeur and on his website.
Is the lens cap clouding your marketing strategy? Here are five reasons why you should take it off with video marketing today.
1. Target New Opportunities
Your customers are avoiding text and actively consuming online video. 75% of executives watch work-related videos on business websites at least once a week and 45.4% of internet users view at least one video online over the course of one month.
The size of the market is also considerable. YouTube alone averages over 800 million unique users and 4 billion hours of video viewed every month from localized audiences across 53 countries.
Compared to text, videos are more memorable and 60% of customers prefer watching video over reading text. Furthermore, time-poor executives prefer to watch an online video before reading text covering the same topic.
2. Increase Conversion Rates
As an innovative sales tool, video marketing consistently delivers the perfect elevator pitch – day or night. Customers who arrive at your website and watch a product video are 85% more likely to buy products compared to those who do not watch a video.
The visual hook, strong production value and high engagement of video contribute to lower bounce rates, higher impressions and increased conversion rates.
3. Maximize Return on Investment (ROI)
Despite your budget, video marketing when done right is highly effective in boosting sales. Follow these three simple steps to avoid the 20% of online video viewers who navigate away from a video in the first 10 seconds.
First, the duration of a video should be “long enough to reach a point” or more generally two to three minutes long. Second, your video must accurately target your market. For instance, 30% of YouTube traffic comes from within the U.S. – does your video appeal to a global audience?
Third, the video itself is only 25% of the marketing mix. Equally important is the title, search-engine-optimised description and user comments. Understand that 50% of videos on YouTube are rated or include comments and build a community around your videos by managing feedback and engagement levels.
It is also important to routinely conduct trial and error to optimize your videos – what worked last month may not work today.
4. Boost Existing Marketing Channels
Throw the net wide and incorporate video into your overall marketing strategy. Your existing website and landing pages are ideal vehicles to embed videos. In fact, 76% of marketers plan to add video to their websites – making it a higher priority than Facebook, Twitter, and blog integration.
Video in email marketing adds value to the viewer’s experience and has been shown to increase click-through rates by over 96% and reduce the number of subscriber opt-outs by 75%.
Video in social media is crucial to take advantage of customer interactions – including shares, likes, ratings, and comments. Branch across the plethora of alternative video platforms and increase your social media presence on mobile as more people watch online videos on their mobile devices than non-mobile ones.
5. Position Your Brand
Finally, video marketing is a useful branding tool to confirm the soft elements of your business.
Production elements including imagery and soundtrack allow your business to position your brand, communicate core values and market your products in context.
Leverage video marketing to transform your business today!
Photo credit: Flickr user codenamecueball
