Video as an engaging content marketing tool
If you are an internet marketer, blogger, webmaster, and online retailer, you must be rocking the web looking for a strategy to keep your website visitors a few more seconds on your page. There are a million tips or suggestions you can try, but you can save yourself a lot of trouble by taking what advises to be a current trend: video content marketing strategy.
What is video content marketing?
Video content marketing uses video as the heart of the content marketing strategy and social media is used to support and promote video content. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube and embedding video in blog posts offer the most engaging way to share video messages with your target audience.
A message that informs, entertains or is useful can encourage engagement, spread and conversion maximized by using the content as a message. The best way to achieve this is by seamlessly integrating the message with the look, feel and taste of the video. You know you’ve got it right when your message is talked about on forums, discussion boards, and even in mainstream media channels.
The use of videos may not really be a new idea. What is new is the recognition that it can be a very effective information vehicle and a powerful strategy that drives immediate action. You’ve heard about YouTube ranking as the second largest search engine on the Internet and breaking the 1 billion monthly user mark. This equates to more than 4 billion hours of video viewing each month. With these explosive statistics, it is not surprising to see how strong it is as a source of content marketing.
Will online video be another hype and soon to be fading?
Based on current research and surveys, it seems unlikely. For example, consider data from the 2012 B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Survey titled Percentage of Sellers Using Each Content or Offer (survey compiled by Eloqua, CMO.com, and Software Advice).
What makes video the crown jewel of content marketing?
Video communication is an effective strategy to reach the target market, as it combines the advantages of “classic” television advertising and Internet interactivity. Powerful and compelling videos are more likely to motivate viewers to impulse purchases than those who simply read text ads. In a way, it seems irresistible to have a “biological” or “human” factor to it. This can be attributed to the fact that videos can simultaneously affect multiple senses. If you want to understand the science behind the web trend toward video, Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.’s explanation in Forbes’ Why Online Video Is Vital to Your Content Marketing Goals 2013 article says it all. .
According to Dr. Weinschek, there are four main reasons people are drawn to video: the spindle facial area, or face, easily captures and holds attention; voice can effectively convey rich information and meaningful content; emotions and body language are nice to see and contagious; and the movements capture the attention due to the innate power of the peripheral movement of the human being. For online marketers looking for a way to engage their visitors, the question is: How should you take advantage of this 100% human connection to video? The answer lies in which innovative option you will use to make a simple but impressive video.
If video isn’t a passing fad among content creators, how will it affect content marketing in the future?
In the Kissmetrics article The Future of Content Marketing Revealed, some ways to get ahead of the pack are emphasized. There are three main points made; content went big (long blog posts, free eBook giveaways, and multiple lead magnet offers) and two emphasized the importance of visual content, such as the use of infographics and videos.
In ReelSEO’s 2012 Online Video Marketing Survey Report, 81% of respondents/online marketers said they use online video in their marketing efforts. More than two-thirds of them (67%) use these videos on social networking sites, and about half (52%) use videos in email marketing.
Additionally, approximately 64% of these marketers indicated that they intend to spend more money in the coming years for technologies, platforms, and services allied to the use of video for business marketing programs.
Of course, there are other statistics that may say otherwise, but for now it seems that content marketing goes beyond text.
Where is the video content now?
“Video gives us the opportunity to wow our customers and this in turn delivers results. We’ve tested and shown that when someone views our video reviews, they are 120.5% more likely to buy, spend 157 .2% more on site and spend 9.1% more per order…” (Matt Lawson, Online Appliances Head of Conversion).
With all these statistics, YouTube’s sensational rise to fame, and cheap video technologies, how can you not use it as a marketing tool? Many think that video is still an underused marketing tool right now, but that won’t be the case in the days to come. Those who are interested are starting to enjoy better SEO rankings, site engagement, and customer conversion. Maybe you just found a way to make your visitors stay a little longer on your site.