The Power of Video Marketing
Reaching Your Audience
Why your organization needs video
Since the creation and popularization of YouTube, video has become the definitive method for successful online marketing. Since the ‘viral video’ entered the public consciousness, all businesses and organizations – local and global – have sought to create the next big hit of the social media platforms. Video has a unique power to captivate the audience, and our new digital-centric world is built to compliment marketing video’s capability to engage millions in their stories, to better achieve their goals.
1. Video is King in evoking emotion
In creating video content, organizations tend to be looking for either of two outcomes: an increase in awareness or an increase in sales. In order to convince individuals to remember, share (or even part with their money for a cause), organizations must make an emotional connection. To increase awareness or income for their brand they must amuse and delight, or conjure excitement, hope or desire; a charity might seek to evoke pity, or even revulsion on behalf of people (or nature) and a desire to help and enact change. Both types of organization must spark an interest to a degree that the consumer not only remembers, but wishes to share this emotion with others. Through facial expression, tone of voice, emotive music and powerful visuals, video is able to captivate the audience in a far more influential way than any other medium– viewers can hear, see and feel the story behind the film. A profound emotional visual experience stays in the subconscious longer than an article. Evoking emotion in marketing has been proven to positively impact consumer decision-making – there is also evidence that video content, as opposed to text-based marketing, is ten times more likely to be shared, embedded, and commented on.
The video above is a fantastic (and fairly meta) example of using emotion to drive narrative, for a very clear goal. Adobe successfully uses a funny story about misinterpreting data to evoke a fear and imply we’re all missing something if we don’t use the advertised product…which in this case is marketing software and analytics!
2. Increased reach – The “Viral Video”
Viewers sharing, commenting and embedding marketing videos creates a positive spiral, when it comes to reaching a greater number of people. Not only are individuals actively enabling others to watch the video by physically posting on their own social media platforms, or on their friends, they are creating greater Search Engine Optimization for the video. The number of likes, shares and ultimately views increases the likelihood of more people finding the film. Research shows that video content increases the chance of a front page google result by up to 53 times! If it is seen enough, online blogs, social media platforms and trending summaries will link the video and the positive spiral of the reach of the film increases dramatically – the video has gone viral! Click here to read about an incredibly successful marketing campaign that went viral – I bet you’ve heard of it.
3. Technology as an enabler
The suitability of modern technology to video marketing works dramatically in organizations favor. Not only is YouTube the second most popular internet search engine after Google, but social media platforms are adding more and more features that makes video content easier to see. Facebook and Instagram’s autoplay removes the basic consumer decision of having to ‘click!’ As a social media user examines his or her feed videos begin to play automatically. What’s more, these platforms offer sponsored options, so that a much greater number of users will be exposed to the video content (we will explore this in our following blog posts when we discuss what to do with finished films!).
4. Feedback Loops
So we know that video can have a powerful emotional effect on its audience, causing a greater number of people to share and link; this in turn can get scooped up in the rollercoaster of social media, which is built on sharing content. The final reason for using video marketing is purely logistical, and it’s called the feedback loop. Research shows that only 36% of text based marketers believe they’re being effective with content marketing, and less than half feel they’re producing engaging content. How do you know if the content produced was actually consumed? Did people read it all or just the beginning? Did they read it multiple times? Did they share it with their friends? It’s almost impossible to tell. Video, however, can tell a far more accurate story. The number of clicks informs whether there’s interest in the content and the data will also show the demographics of your audience. The time, or attention-span data, establishes if the video content was actually compelling and engaging. If people are only watching the first ten seconds of a two-minute masterpiece, the organization can know and adjust accordingly. If 80% stayed and watched to the end, they know that too! The bottom line, is that video converts more customers, whether that’s members or donations for a charity or non-profit, awareness for a cause, or product sales for a business. 71% of marketers say that video outperforms all other marketing content.
If you’re thinking about improving your digital marketing strategy with video, you’re in the right place! Our next blog post covers the process of video production in depth, so you know exactly how to go about beginning the creative process with One Story, and working with us to creative an emotive and effective tool to bring your story to life.
The video above is a fantastic (and fairly meta) example of using emotion to drive narrative, for a very clear goal. Adobe successfully uses a funny story about misinterpreting data to evoke a fear and imply we’re all missing something if we don’t use the advertised product…which in this case is marketing software and analytics!
2. Increased reach – The “Viral Video”
Viewers sharing, commenting and embedding marketing videos creates a positive spiral, when it comes to reaching a greater number of people. Not only are individuals actively enabling others to watch the video by physically posting on their own social media platforms, or on their friends, they are creating greater Search Engine Optimization for the video. The number of likes, shares and ultimately views increases the likelihood of more people finding the film. Research shows that video content increases the chance of a front page google result by up to 53 times! If it is seen enough, online blogs, social media platforms and trending summaries will link the video and the positive spiral of the reach of the film increases dramatically – the video has gone viral! Click here to read about an incredibly successful marketing campaign that went viral – I bet you’ve heard of it.
3. Technology as an enabler
The suitability of modern technology to video marketing works dramatically in organizations favor. Not only is YouTube the second most popular internet search engine after Google, but social media platforms are adding more and more features that makes video content easier to see. Facebook and Instagram’s autoplay removes the basic consumer decision of having to ‘click!’ As a social media user examines his or her feed videos begin to play automatically. What’s more, these platforms offer sponsored options, so that a much greater number of users will be exposed to the video content (we will explore this in our following blog posts when we discuss what to do with finished films!).
4. Feedback Loops
So we know that video can have a powerful emotional effect on its audience, causing a greater number of people to share and link; this in turn can get scooped up in the rollercoaster of social media, which is built on sharing content. The final reason for using video marketing is purely logistical, and it’s called the feedback loop. Research shows that only 36% of text based marketers believe they’re being effective with content marketing, and less than half feel they’re producing engaging content. How do you know if the content produced was actually consumed? Did people read it all or just the beginning? Did they read it multiple times? Did they share it with their friends? It’s almost impossible to tell. Video, however, can tell a far more accurate story. The number of clicks informs whether there’s interest in the content and the data will also show the demographics of your audience. The time, or attention-span data, establishes if the video content was actually compelling and engaging. If people are only watching the first ten seconds of a two-minute masterpiece, the organization can know and adjust accordingly. If 80% stayed and watched to the end, they know that too! The bottom line, is that video converts more customers, whether that’s members or donations for a charity or non-profit, awareness for a cause, or product sales for a business. 71% of marketers say that video outperforms all other marketing content.
If you’re thinking about improving your digital marketing strategy with video, you’re in the right place! Our next blog post covers the process of video production in depth, so you know exactly how to go about beginning the creative process with One Story, and working with us to creative an emotive and effective tool to bring your story to life.