The popularity of video as a marketing tool keeps growing and growing. YouTube, the world’s most famous online video sharing site, boasts 1 billion viewers or about one-third of all internet users. For a company just celebrating its 14th birthday, that’s amazing.
But video marketing goes beyond YouTube to using videos for content marketing, product demonstrations, blogging, and more. Let’s take a look at the popularity of video as a marketing tool and talk about how your company can use this strong and growing marketing channel for brand awareness and lead generation.
Video Marketing by the Numbers
Videos reach everyone, both old and young, consumers and executives. They watch videos to learn more about products or services, tackle how-to projects, and engage with their favorite vloggers (video bloggers) about their thoughts on the latest topics.
Video offers excellent pass-along marketing, too, which results in more people watching and engaging with video content than with many other types of content.
- 45% of people who watch YouTube watch one hour of videos or more each week.
According to WordStream, YouTube fans watch at least an hour of the site’s content each week. That’s a lot of people watching one website and underscores the popularity of the video sharing site. Remember, not all YouTube videos are home movies of kids or pets doing funny things. Brands and companies also create and share channels, like television channels, on YouTube. There’s a big audience out there using one site which you can use to share your content, too. - 70% of consumers say they’ve shared a brand’s video.
The Content Marketing Institute states that 27 million marketing pieces are shared daily. With that much content released to the world, you need something that not only stands out but gets passed along to others, thus amplifying the audience reach. This turns watchers into brand evangelists for your company, tapping into each customers’ circle of friends and family and greatly expanding how many potential viewers – and sales or leads – you’ll get from each video. - 72% of companies claim that videos improved their conversion rate.
Conversion rate refers to the number of leads that turn into sales. According to this statistic, 72% of companies say that video helps convince potential buyers to complete their purchase. More leads will close as sales with videos included on a company’s website. - 52% of consumers say that videos help them feel confident about their decision to buy.
Impact BnD cites an Invodo article in which consumers report that videos help them feel more confident about their purchasing decision. Do you sell something new to the market or something that costs a bit more than your competitors? If so, a video may help increase consumer confidence during the buying process. You can use video to showcase how a new-to-the-market product works, demonstrating the proper use of it or creative uses for it. Or, you can explain how a more expensive product offers a better value than the competitor’s products. Both examples help uncertain customers feel confident in their decision to complete the checkout process and buy a product. - 65% of executives visit a company’s website, and 39% call them after viewing a video.
Forbes Insights states that among the executives they surveyed, 65% visited a company’s site after watching their video. B2B sellers are also part of the rising popularity of video for marketing purposes. Companies selling exclusively to other businesses report great success using video marketing, too.
Getting Started the Right Way with Video Marketing
Before you rush to pick up your smartphone or video camera and create your first video marketing piece, read this next part. It’s critical to make professional quality videos to market your business.
Just because we all have access to video cameras on our phones doesn’t make us good at it. Poor quality video can derail your video marketing efforts just as poorly written content can derail your blogging efforts.
Video marketing, like most online marketing, also relies heavily upon keyword-based titles, tags, and other attributes. These keywords help sites like YouTube and Google find and share your content with people looking for it online.
A professional internet marketing agency such as Dashboard Interactive understands how to make the most out of your video marketing budget. At Dashboard, we know that you can write one video script and use it for several content marketing projects and social media posts, or film one long video and extract many useful, shareable bits from it. We understand why it’s essential to upload an exclusive video to Facebook and why it’s essential to use the right keywords on your video. And, we keep you free from tangling in copyright snares by ensuring that all work is original or licensed appropriately from the creators of the music or images used in the piece.
There’s a particular look, feel, and production value to professionally produced video that you can’t get from a shaky handheld camera and your nephew’s editing work. People do judge a book by its cover, and they will judge – and leave – a poorly produced video. By contrast, they also love and share well-produced content.
Video marketing starts with a plan that includes a strategy for your entire web presence. Talk to Dashboard Interactive today to learn more about video marketing and to start your new internet marketing strategy.