Let’s be honest. Articles and written content is everywhere. Almost every business has a blog and in comparison, only a handful of eyeballs are reading. As of 2018, there are roughly 152 million blogs resulting an uncountable billions of articles. Yet ironically here we are, writing another article and calling for more video content marketing.
And you bet your video assets, we’ll be making a video about this.
Call me captain obvious, but my money is on the guess that you will be scanning this article, hopping briskly through the sub-headlines and only getting a sense of the majority of the points. Hey, that’s okay! I’m not offended. Time is precious and you can’t waste it on info you don’t need. I get it, and luckily it’s proving the point that video content is needed now more than ever.
Now don’t get me wrong, articles serve a great purpose. They give you in-depth information and analysis when it’s needed. Sometimes a deeper understanding of a topic is needed. Comprehensive articles also help connect the reader to root sources for more indepth research and accuracy.
But only a small fraction of the general community needs (or wants) that. So that’s why video comes to save the day and our precious time.
So let’s get into it. Here are 5 reasons why video content for your business is needed now more than ever.
1) Grabbing and Keeping your audience’s Attention
Audience attention and retention is the newly strengthened currency for ranking high on the top 2 Search Engines: Google and Youtube.
Videos are just more visual and engaging, and search engines know this. Maybe that’s why YouTube is the Second Largest Search Engine. There is a reason video content marketing has been adopted by so many of the top brands today.
If a user has to choose between text and video on the same page, 69% of audiences will choose video.
The bottom-line is a customer will always want to get to know you and your product or service on an intimate level before making a decision, and video will always win. In fact, 98% of users will watch a video to learn more about a product or service over reading about it.
2) The Internet is evolving around video
Producing and distributing video used to belong to a small club of television stations and film producers. Fast forward to today and video is not only cheaper to produce and easier to distribute, but it’s so wide spread that the Internet itself is evolving around it.
How is video being used?
Video content marketing has been used by businesses for training, how-to’s, vlogs, social impact, philanthropy, product / service descriptions and more. A rule of thumb a large number of businesses have adopted has been if the information can be conveyed in video content marketing, it should be.
Video Content Marketing in Social Media
With technology literally at our fingertips, video has been fit for all devices. 90% of consumers are using their phones to watch videos. Technologies, in general, are leaning toward supporting more video content marketing efforts. Take Facebook and it’s auto-play feature for example. Recognizing that videos grab the users attention much more than a link to an article would, Facebook put video front and center on their news feed system. Every day 500 Million People are watching Videos on Facebook.
Just recently, LinkedIn has jumped into the game, opening their door for businesses to place their own video content marketing efforts on their LinkedIn Business Page.
3) Participation and shareability
There is no escaping it. Audiences are 10 times more likely to share, comment, engage and embed video content over any blog or similar social posts. Even animated images (gifs), are more likely to be shared in status updates and posts, and are even being used in personal comments and messaging.
Meme creation, if done right, can be a huge win for any marketing campaign. Just ask Old Spice and Dollar Shave Club.
4) Front Page News
If you are wanting to raise your chances of being on Google’s front page then you better put a video on it!
That’s right, you are 53 times more likely to increase greatly improve your SEO by having a video.
Video SEO
Search Engine Optimization is no longer just for page ranking. SEO for videos is a real thing with a huge opportunity for leverage, especially for startups and small businesses. Understanding demographics, audience retention, views and subscriptions is powerful and can help stack you on top of your competitors on that coveted spot on Google, Yahoo and Bing.
5) The impact of video
Fertilizer can be used for growing a beautiful and fruitful garden or it could simply make your backyard stink. It all depends on how you use it. A quality video can produce amazing results leading toward trust in your brand, quality leads, and hitting those business goals. The exact opposite can be said about a badly executed video.
74% of users who learn about a product or service through a video subsequently bought it. 71% of marketers say video conversion beats out other marketing content. Marketers that use video content will grow their revenue 49% faster than those not using videos.
Video Content for the Win!
In Conclusion
Back in the 90’s, having a website seemed optional. By the 2000’s, it’s become a cornerstone for any business. Not having a website for a startup business today would be laughable. In the last decade, it’s been apparent that the same trend is happening with video.
To this day, many businesses don’t take advantage of the innumerable ways video can benefit their business. So the real question is not whether video is right for your business (it is), but how are you going to use it? The catch in our opinion, is quality. Good quality is going to outshine competitors and make your offering much more attractive. Bad quality or badly implemented video strategies can have the opposite effect. So use video, but take as much care as to how you’re using it.
If every picture is worth a thousand words, then one video has the potential to tell a lot of stories.
