4 Reasons You Need Video Content Marketing
A Key Ingredient for Success
In an ever-evolving digital landscape where thousands of businesses are competing every day, standing out online has become more important than ever. One of the main priorities for businesses of all sizes and across most industries is to establish an online presence – as it can be extremely difficult to find more customers and communicate effectively with existing ones without it.
So then, the question becomes, how do you stand out online in a large sea of whales, sharks, dolphins and octopuses who are all competing for the attention of your customers? The answer is content – but not just any content. There are tons of boring, low-quality content out there that doesn’t entice users whatsoever. What you need is content that does a good job of getting people’s attention and maintaining that attention for an extended period of time.
If you want the ultimate winning formula for standing out online, the answer is video content marketing – where you prioritize creating valuable content that your audience will love and using video to keep them hooked.
We’ll dive into the power of communicating effectively using content later on, but for now, we’re going to share with you the top four reasons why you need video, and why leveraging it to the maximum will propel your business towards lasting success.
Reason #1: Opportunity to make a lasting impression
Say you’re a recruiter at a University, attending a job fair for students who are about to graduate. You’re being approached by multiple students for a high-paying position with your company straight out of college. Two weeks from now, you will be way more likely to remember the student who made the best first impression among the dozens of other students who you shook hands with.
Do you think the student who was shy and introverted made a stronger lasting impression, or was it the student who was friendly, made great eye contact and spoke with a strong tone of voice? The answer is obvious. The same goes for businesses creating content online.
Countless businesses are creating content that is shy and introverted (or at least, boring and forgettable). If you are leveraging video, however, the latter won’t be the case for you. The second someone comes across one of your videos, and it is a well-made video that speaks directly to that person while showcasing your product or service, he or she will be very likely to remember you one week, two weeks, one month and even a year from now.
Show that same person a different video once a week that highlights your business from different messaging perspectives, and chances are you’ve got yourself a customer. Multiply that effect times a thousand. More than well-designed graphic images, professional photography or written content, a well-produced video will highlight your message and connect with your audience a whole lot more effectively. Customers will remember you – and they’ll likely consider you over competitors who didn’t resonate with them the way you did.
Reason #2: Establish an Emotional Connection Faster than Other Forms of Content
Retail companies don’t go from being a small direct-to-consumer brand to an internationally known brand just because people like the product they sell. A customer doesn’t become a regular at a restaurant simply because the food is good. Take any product or service that a person pays for on a recurring basis, and they all have one thing in common; they make the customer feel good.
As human beings, we all want to feel good – because feeling good gives us a sense of happiness. With video, businesses have the opportunity to make people feel good before or after they make a purchase, which is a win-win situation. Videos can compel someone who has never bought from you to make a purchase, and they can compel someone to become a returning customer.
A video that showcases an experience or product usage for a specific problem can instantly make a potential customer relate to what they’re seeing in the video. If your video is not so much product-focused but instead showcases a different aspect of your business or communicates one of your core values, and you manage to stir a positive emotion from your viewers, you’ve officially hit a homerun. If you can make a video viewer laugh, feel motivated, feel pride or joy, amused or hopeful in any way, you are probably making a sale.
Video content marketing should be at the very core of your overall marketing strategy if you want to establish an emotional connection with customers, build relationships with them and maximize their lifetime value. The right visual messages, put in front of the right people, can make your audience feel a connection to your business while building trust from people who don’t know your business yet, which brings us to our next point.
Reason #3: Build Trust with Potential Customers
The most effective marketing strategy for customer acquisition is one that is built around gaining trust from people who don’t know about you yet, and then asking for the sale once they trust you. How do you gain trust among people who may think your product’s value won’t live up to its price? Or among people who think you’re just another company who wants their money? You need a way to prove that they can trust you, and video does it best.
There’s a good reason why the good ole fashion infomercial was so successful at exploding sales via television back in the day. You have a good-looking guy who is smiling at the camera, explaining the ins and outs of how his product solves a problem in the most authentic way possible, sometime even being humorous and witty.
The infomercial was a winning ad for many types of businesses, and you can replicate virtually the same effect using modern video tactics that either show the faces behind the brand or clearly illustrates how the experience of using a product or service can enrich people’s lives. In fact, you can still use an infomercial-style video.
More than static images or other ad types, video ads will always garner higher engagement and establish more credibility – while giving you a higher perceived value from the eyes of the user.
If you want to leverage digital marketing for your business and achieve a significant return on ad spend, then there’s no question that video ads will become your most powerful tool. Examples of video ads you can try that are guaranteed to bring you results include:
For brands: humorous depiction of a common problem, and then your product or service to the rescue in a superhero/crime-fighter-style sequence.
For brands/restaurants/local businesses: Passion and purpose – company founder describing motivation behind the brand and the work that goes into bringing the product or service to life.
For brands/restaurants/local businesses: The process behind creating quality products, serving delicious food or building a unique service, in which you showcase the fine details of your product. This video would show how you live up to standards of quality and the process you go through to ensure such requirements are met.
For service-based businesses: Company vision video – how your mission as a service provider is to help avoid headaches, time wasted or tedious, energy-consuming tasks in the future based on negative experiences that you, your friends and family members or colleagues went through time and time again. Your video showcases simplicity, speediness and convenience.
Reason #4: Video Makes Your Business Fun and Exciting
There’s a reason major Hollywood studios release trailers for their latest film ahead of their official release; they do an amazing job of building hype. It starts with the teaser trailer, then a full-length trailer and sometimes, a third and fourth full-length trailer.
If you want to get some ideas for building hype around a new product launch, a restaurant grand opening, an update on your business or a specific promotion that you plan on using to maximize sales, then simply watch some of the trailers for the most popular movies.
What do all these trailers have in common? They built suspense around the upcoming horror film. They made the latest comedy seem like it will be the most hilarious movie of your lifetime. The trailer for a new action thriller gave you goosebumps. And the new Marvel superhero movie? It will be way too good to miss out on.
Your business can cause the same exact emotions no matter what your objective is. You don’t have to be a Hollywood producer to do it, and with the right messaging strategy, you can make your product or service look like the coolest, trendiest, most exciting thing that people can buy.
Remember this – in today’s day and age, boring kills business. You don’t want to be easily forgettable, or else no one will be excited about you. Make yourself seem fun and exciting, and you’ll have customers flocking to you.
Conclusion
Based on the 4 reasons we’ve gone over; you can draw one conclusion: video is playing a vital role in the decision-making process, which is ultimately your bottom line. The growing statistics on the increasingly popular use of video are endless.
8 out of 10 users who see a video online for a software or app are returning to make a purchase. Statistics for the effectiveness of video marketing are growing. Video marketers are getting 66% more qualified leads and are also seeing an 88% more positive ROI from video. People are spending an average of 6 hours and 48 minutes a week watching video online.
The marketing landscape is evolving, and content has become the most critical component for businesses to stand out online. You need content so that you never bore your audience, continuously get the attention of potential customers and showcase every aspect of your business.
Videos are the most powerful way to connect with your audience, and if you aren’t already doing it, it’s time you to start! In fact, you should have started a while ago. It’s not about creating one or two videos per year – it’s about creating consistent video content that runs the cycle of your entire marketing funnel.
We hope you make some killer videos for your business, and we hope we see some of your content soon! Or, if you don’t have anyone to create that content for you, feel free to reach out to us.