Kimbe MacMasterYou’re not creating ads for interstate billboards, nor are you sticking your logo on the side of a sports arena. And you’re not really in the business of creating high-level brand awareness through video, either.
This is content marketing. You’re all about producing high-quality content assets on an ongoing basis to attract, engage, and convert your audience.
The more you can get your content to support other content assets, the greater your impact. Which is why using video as a supportive medium is a golden opportunity. You’re already thinking about optimizing your webpages, creating social media campaigns, and drafting compelling marketing copy for your content, so why not bring video into the mix?
Believe it or not, video is actually okay with taking a supporting role. In fact, it’s pretty darn good at it.
Here are three ways video can help boost your other content.
1. Website: Boost Information Retention and Purchase Intention
Prospects retain a lot more information from videos than from text-based content—95% to 10%, respectively, in fact. Which means you’ll want to use this medium to teach your prospects all about you, what you do, and how your services or products will benefit them. Because when it comes time to evaluate alternatives and pick a solution, you want the messages you spent so long crafting to be remembered.
Video improves purchase intention, too: prospects who watch product videos are up to 85% more likely to buy.
Here are some tips for making sure your videos see results:
- Keep them short: under 60 seconds is the optimal length for top-of-funnel videos. Viewer attention span is short, and you can bet that the longer the video, the lower the retention.
- Think about your prospect: communicate your message from the buyer’s perspective, not your own. This means benefits, not features.
- Tell stories: stories keep us engaged, and we’re hardwired to love them. They’re easier to remember, too.
2. Landing Pages: Boost Conversions
It’s probably no surprise that viewers spend more time on landing pages with video due to their preference for video as a medium, but they don’t just watch…they actually convert. Video can increase conversion rates by 80%, and one company even saw a 492% increase in conversion rates after adding video to their product pages.
One of the greatest ways to capture these higher conversion rates is to add a form to the end of your video. This means that the viewer’s journey is extremely simple: when they get to the end of the video, they don’t have to go anywhere else. Instead, they just fill in their info to receive the promotion you’re offering immediately.
This also means that your viewers have to make it to the end of the video. Sure, you can add a pop-out form partway through your video, but that doesn’t make you exempt from creating engaging video content to begin with.
Need ideas? Here are ten brands that really know how to engage through video.
3. Emails: Drive More Click-Throughs
Adding video to an email increases click-throughs by 200–300%, according to Forrester. Yep, you read that right. Video is enticing and we’re all pretty much addicted to checking our email, so the combination makes sense.
Wait a minute, you say. You can’t embed videos into an email! You’re right. This just means you’ll have to find other ways to make the existence of your video clear. A few effective ways to do this are to:
- Include “video” in the subject line.
- Add a still image from your video with a play button overlay as the main image in your email.
- Make sure that the video auto-plays as soon as the viewer hits the page linked in the email.
Once you get viewers to watch your video, the world’s your oyster. Just don’t forget to keep getting them to take action by including a CTA at the end.
And remember: video doesn’t always have to be the one scoring the goals. It should assist and complement your other assets. Learn more about video and how to incorporate it into your content strategy at the Video Marketing Institute.
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