Content marketing has become instrumental in building brand awareness. However, in the ever-changing world of marketing, everything evolves very quickly and marketers need to keep up with the latest trends in the industry if they want to stay on top of things.
Various technological advances have a profound impact on marketing, so the fact that broadband speeds have skyrocketed dramatically over the past few years has opened the door for video content marketing. The rise of mobile devices is another factor which enabled video to make its spectacular entrance onto the marketing scene.
Number Crunching
Did you know that using video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more? But not just any video. By using a poor-quality video on your landing page, you risk damaging the brand image according to 62% of consumers.
There’s no need to discuss how important social media has become in improving brand awareness as it’s a universally known fact. But, if we combine WOMM of social networking websites with a stat saying that videos are shared by 1200% more than text and images together, the math is clear. Small businesses should follow industrial giants’ lead and turn to Instagram video as an efficient method for growing their audience.
Nike just did it (and nailed it), as its Instagram audience went from 4 million to a stunning 12 million over the course of several months, mainly thanks to using an excellent video strategy on this social network.
Youtube or Go Down the Tube
It’s true that Facebook is the most popular and most widely used social platform, but YouTube beats it in terms of hours of videos watched (which is not the same as video views). People watch approximately 100 million hours of video a day on Facebook, while some estimates say that YouTube has about 650 million hours a day. It’s evident that video has taken over the world, and that jumping on the bandwagon is the only way to success.
Numerous brands integrate their YouTube channel into their website. This is a winning combination because embedding YouTube content on a website solves the problem of optimization for mobile devices, which gets us to another important issue. The Cisco VNI Mobile Forecast (2016-2021) estimates that by 2021 there will be 11.6 billion mobile-connected devices globally or 1.5 per capita. Bearing in mind that the rise of mobile devices has greatly contributed to video becoming massively popular, it’s clear that this trend will additionally establish its reign.
The same report forecasts that by 2021 more than three-fourths of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video. No doubt that video content will become even more important in the years to come.
Where Words Fail, Video Speaks
There are several factors responsible for a growing popularity of video content marketing. During the 20th century, outbound marketing and its less-than-subtle tactics were basically the only choice for marketers. Inbound and content marketing started dominating the 21st century, but novelty-hungry and strapped-for-time Millennials soon grew tired of text and images.
Apple introduced its iPhone back in 2007 and changed the history of communication and media. Smartphones provided their users with quality video playback and decent cameras, and this was a turning point in the way people used various types of media content. Nowadays each half-decent mid-range smartphone can be used for creating and sharing videos.
A younger demographic isn’t exactly keen on reading posts and articles and they just tend to skim through them. Web videos capture their attention and they’ve become a staple of any good content marketing strategy.
We’ve already mentioned how important the quality of the video is, so opting for a professional video production company such as Alexander Thomas will improve the perception of your brand and boost your conversion rates.
The Power of How to
How-to videos are among the most popular and widespread video formats on the internet. These instructional videos serve as an excellent incentive for people to select a certain product or brand. How-tos offer consumers something valuable, practical, useful for free, and at the same time the person who makes and publishes them will showcase their knowledge and establish themselves as experts in the industry.
No wonder that video appears in approximately 50% of Google keyword searches. However, in order to create a video that users will not only just click on but also watch in its entirety, it has to be short, so keeping it under 4 minutes will hit the sweet spot.
It’s obvious that any successful content marketing strategy can’t be imagined without video content.
Nate Vickery
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