Video marketing needs to form part of your content strategy – at the very least in the new year, says Rogerwilco’s head of content, Michelle Jones. She says brands are put off by the cost of producing video content, and they’re uncertain about the ROI, but statistics show that consumers retain far more information via video than they would with text.
People just aren’t paying as much attention as they used to. This means that people will retain more in the two minutes it takes to watch a video than the many minutes it would take to read a 1 000 word article. And who could blame them?
Since television became part of our lives in the 1970s, we’ve become far more used to watching moving and speaking characters on a screen in a corner of our lounge than reading pages in a book or even on a small device in our hands.
Thales Teixeira, associate professor at Harvard Business School, talks about the limited attention economy of consumers, which always comes at a price. A skyrocketing price in recent years.
“Every single day, there are more companies with more brands and more products to advertise, which means there’s more demand for consumer attention than ever,” says Teixeira.
“The problem is, the supply of consumer attention simply hasn’t kept pace with this demand. There’s no evidence individual human attention capacity is growing. Nor has the population grown as fast as the number of brands has,” he adds.
It’s important, Teixeira says, for brands and marketers to ask whether they’re spending their budget on the right platforms and in ways that’ll attract their audience’s attention.
All video platforms are different
Small budgets work well for the more relaxed vibe of Snapchat and Instagram Stories. Bigger budgets and more polished videos work best on Facebook and YouTube. Not all video platforms are created equal and they shouldn’t be treated as such.
To convince brands of the importance of video, here are some numbers:
- Seven out of 10 businesses which use video say it’s increased website conversion rates; and
- A massive 74% of all Internet traffic this year is expected to come from video.
Recently released figures from Think With Google indicate:
- 81% of video-watching moments get all or most of people’s attention. Compare that to the multitasking that all of us tend to do when we’re watching television or listening to the radio;
- 68% of YouTube users watched YouTube to help them make a purchasing decision; and
- On mobile alone, and in the United States, more adults are watching YouTube during prime viewing time than any cable network.
Consider for a minute that YouTube is either the most or second most used search engine in the world, depending on who you ask. That’s right, it’s just about overtaken Google as the search engine used most often. That means that when consumers are looking for products to buy or how to use the products they already own, they’re often more likely to turn to YouTube than Google.
Brands can use videos to answer questions
Two years ago, a lifetime in digital media, entrepreneur, investor, and marketing professional Gary Vaynerchuk sang the praises of video and urged businesses to get involved. Already then, he could see the impact that video was having on business and marketing.
“The single most important strategy in content marketing today is video. Whether it’s video on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or Youtube, the content you need to be thinking about creating and marketing on social for your business is video. Period,” Vaynerchuk says.
“No matter what you’re selling, no matter what your company does, if you don’t have a video marketing strategy for the biggest video platforms, you are going to lose,” he adds.
So, implementing video in your content marketing strategy is essential. Brands might be hesitant to embrace the idea of video now, but they will soon learn it’s essential.
Courtesy: www.mediaupdate.co.za
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