Video is taking over the world. Over the next five years, video traffic is expected to grow by 26 percent annually. By 2021, it will make up 82 percent of all internet traffic, according to Cisco. Currently, about one third of all internet users (about a billion people) regularly visit YouTube. Among 18- to 49-year-olds, the reach of YouTube is greater than the reach of any cable network. The popularity of video makes it an excellent tool for marketers to use. Learn more about video content marketing, including the specific benefits and how your brand can put it to good use.
What Is Video Content Marketing?
If content marketing is the creation of materials such as blog posts, infographics, and ebooks, designed to create interest in a brand but without being as explicitly promotional as a traditional ad, then video content marketing is the use of video materials to boost interest in and awareness of a brand.
In recent years, marketers have come to prefer visual content over more traditional forms such as articles and blog posts. The 2017 State of the Creator Economy study (SOCE) found that video and other visual content were the top gainers in terms of use in 2016. For example, 44 percent of marketers used a sponsored video as part of a social media marketing plan in 2016, up from 24 percent in 2015.
Benefits of Video Content Marketing
Video content marketing has several benefits for marketers. The major benefit is that people watch a lot of video. According to YouTube, people watch one billion hours of video content on the site per day.
Along with getting lots of attention, video content tends to work. According to Brightcove, having a video on your website increases the time spent on your site by 105 percent, and leads to twice as many conversions compared to no video. Including video on your website can also boost your ranking in the search results by 157 percent.
Video also tends to hold more sway over an audience than other forms of content marketing. “Psychology Today” reported that people are nearly 40 percent more likely to share content if it’s a video, and 56 percent more likely to “like” videos than other forms of content. Perhaps even more importantly, a study from Vidyard found that video was better at converting leads into customers than other forms of content.
Examples of Video Content Marketing
What do great examples of video content marketing look like? Here are a few:
Android “Friends Furever”
Android’s “Friends Furever” video had little (or nothing) to do with the mobile operating system. It had everything do to with adorable animals, though. And if you want to win the internet, you need adorable animals. It was the most-shared video of 2015. To date, it has more than 30.5 million views on YouTube.
Blue Bottle Coffee
Gone are the days when it was enough to pour some Folgers into a drip coffee maker and press the “on” button. Today’s coffee drinkers are a bit more sophisticated, and want more from their coffee experience. Blue Bottle Coffee has tapped into that. In addition to its cafes, if offers a coffee subscription service. The brand has also made good use of video content to educate consumers about how to brew their coffee. It used video to promote a Skillshare class, and also created a video trailer ahead of the release of its coffee book.
Advanced Auto Parts
Advanced Auto Parts has dedicated an entire section of its website to videos. The videos cover basic car repair topics such as how to fix a flat and how to change the oil in a car. The brand has seen a dramatic uptick in customer engagement thanks to its videos, Internet Retailer reports. The typical video gets shared up to 70 times within the first 24 hours. Additionally, people who watch videos on the site spend twice as long there, and look at more pages than people who don’t watch any videos.
How to Use Video Content Marketing
If your brand is ready to give video content marketing a whirl, it helps to have a plan and a strategy in place. You can’t simply toss together a video and hope for the best.
The first thing to do is think about the type of videos your audience most wants to watch. Usually, helpful videos, such as how-tos and tutorials, get the most traction, as they give an audience information, and show the audience the value or use of your brand’s product.
If you’re not going to create how-to videos or tutorials, you need to think about how your video will resonate with an audience. Android’s video was so successful because it showcased cute animals, and there are very few people on Earth who don’t squeal with delight when looking at pictures of adorable critters.
You also want to think about where you’ll put the video, and how you’ll get people to actually look at it. Posting on YouTube is one option, but it can also be useful to post on your brand’s website, so that people clicking through your video end up directly on your site.
The sky is really the limit when it comes to promoting your video. Two options include sharing it on social media and putting it in an email newsletter. Asking influencers and other members of your audience to share a video will also increase its reach.
Video isn’t going anywhere soon. To boost engagement with your audience, it’s time to give video content marketing a try.
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