Video delivers the experience that most customers prefer, which makes it a must-have for marketing.
Authenticity, storytelling, engagement. These are all terms that marketers now attempt to incorporate into their campaign strategies to really connect with and motivate audiences.
All those are attainable with good video content. That is what makes it your secret weapon for engaging your audience.
Hand someone a whitepaper, and you have to pay them to read it. But everyone enjoys a good story. If you can bring that story to life by showing it through video rather than merely telling it, so much the better.
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That’s why video use keeps growing among marketers who recognize its effectiveness.
When you put out content that engages, you’re directing your audience toward the first step of the customer journey.
According to Wyzowl’s 2020 State of Video Marketing Survey, 66% of us identify video as our medium of choice to learn about something. That’s far ahead of the second most popular category – articles, posts, or text on a site – that is the choice of 18%.
In anticipation of this year, 86% of people said they would like brands to serve more video content. Among these, 36% prefer to see explainer videos, and 14% would like product demos. Customers find good videos more relatable and are more apt to share them than other forms of content.
As Vidyard, one of the video services available to businesses, reported, “Campaigns incorporating video routinely have higher engagement than campaigns with static assets and video-based assets have proved to be easier for customers to digest and share.”
More marketers have gotten on board
That’s why over the past few years, more marketers have come to recognize its power to engage their audiences and deliver more effective branding impact. They realize that video marketing has shifted from a possible addition to a central component of a comprehensive marketing strategy.
Seeing its ROI certainly contributes to the adoption. Back in 2015, only 33% of marketers believed they were getting a positive ROI from video, according to Wyzowl. By 2019, 88% were on board for the ROI. This is not just about general awareness.
In fact, 80% attribute increased sales to marketing video content. On the consumer end, 84% report that watching a brand’s video is what made them decide to buy what it’s selling.
Why isn’t everyone using video leads?
As using video content in marketing delivers such obvious benefits in terms of engagement, driving more traffic to your site, and even increasing conversions and sales, the question is what’s keeping everyone from adopting it?
The answer emerges from those who explain what made them take the leap. Close to half of those who only began to use video in 2019 said they did so then because the technology is now in place for quick and easy video content creation, according to Wyzowl.
It’s possible the other half was hesitating about adopting a medium that calls for having a story to tell. Businesses often make the mistake of thinking their brand doesn’t lend itself to an interesting story.
How to show – not just tell – your brand story
Every business has its own unique stories to tell. You don’t have to limit yourself to what you sell; you can bring out your one-of-a-kind nature with a feature on your people, your culture, or even the customers you serve.
Here are four different angles for marketing videos that convey authenticity and establish a connection with your audience that were produced with Wistia’s service:
Tell your product’s story
Niche Modern, a lighting fixture fabricator, uses video to show the creativity and craftsmanship that goes into each hand-blown glass lighting pendant. The video opens with “Every handmade product tells a story. This is ours.”
Demonstrate your product in action
Wipster is a video review and approval platform that removes the tediousness of annotating frames. Rollo Wenlock, Wipster’s founder not only talks about the features but brings in dancers, music, annotations, and suggested cuts, making the most of video’s capabilities to show what his product can do in just 30 seconds.
Tell your people’s story
David Delmar, Founder and Executive Director of Resilient Coders, introduced Soapbox to his students to allow them to showcase their work and who they are with the split screen feature: “You get a sense for who each student is as a person and as a potential colleague, something a faceless GitHub profile could never do,” Delmar observed.
Tell your customers’ story
Stephanie Capouch, Senior Director of Corporate Marketing at Conga, used Soapbox to launch her company’s podcast, Agents of Change. She explained that while most companies that feature client stories give themselves the starring role, they decided to take a different approach:
“The role Conga plays may come up, but that’s not our end goal. It’s really about them, the work that they’re doing, and their story.”
Using video to track the customer journey
For marketers who think that engagement is nice but doesn’t necessarily translate into conversions, there are integration tools to track your audience through every stage of the funnel. Vidyard outlined how that can work in How 5 Videos Drove $6M in Revenue for One Construction Tech Company:
Though the first video and the teasers are not gated to extend reach as much as possible, the ones beyond that are to enable the business to track the customers. In the case discussed, the gating allowed information taken in through Marketo forms to be paired with Vidyard’s viewing data.
The integration is key to being able “to apply a lead score for MQLs in Marketo based on length of video and percentage viewed.” They also would follow up on the top leads through a Marketo and Salesforce integration to follow up with a Salesforce campaign. That would then be tracked within Salesforce.
Now a number of companies offer various levels of marketing integration that allows businesses to derive meaningful analytics on their audience’s video consumption. As the base price of some of these is free, there really is no reason for any business not to capitalize on the engagement potential of marketing videos.
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