7 Reasons to Use Video in Your Marketing Strategy

Video is the perfect medium to engage, excite, and educate people on your products and services, influencing their purchase decisions.

Many of us are time-poor, and video offers an opportunity to consume helpful, inspirational and informative content that would ordinarily take time to read. Video content is also favored by internet marketing giants like Facebook and Google, helping your brand get more visibility, more reach, and higher engagement.

Here are 7 reasons to use video in your marketing strategy:

1. Compelling storytelling

Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users.

Storytelling is the heart of content marketing; sharing brand and customer stories that connect with existing and potential customers. Logic isn’t memorable, emotion is, and using video as a medium to share your stories is far more effective than text alone. Video should be used to enhance your text and to support your brand’s key messages. If you can master the art of storytelling, you’ll have a greater chance of making connections with your audience, encouraging engagement, loyalty and ultimately sales.

GoPro is a terrific example demonstrating the power of video. The American Technology company has nailed the storytelling aspect of its marketing strategy and managed to do it with the help of its customers creating video content for them. GoPro’s User Generated Campaign strategy encourages its customers to upload and share their own GoPro footage with the world. This strategy has helped them build their brand, followers and lifted sales figures.

Watch the Million Dollar Challenge highlight video from the GoPro Awards, showing the world through the lens of a GoPro camera.

2. Broader reach and better engagement on socials

Combining video with full-page ads boosts engagement by 22 percent.

We’d like to encourage you to take on an experiment. Head over to your Facebook page and post one static image every day for one week, then post a video. You’ll notice that the video gets far more organic reach than the static image. Why? Facebook wants video content on the platform so naturally favors this format.

Video content also improves engagement. A video offers so many more angles and information than an image alone, which creates more opportunities for people to engage with the piece of content.

What should I include in my videos?

• Testimonials: Use video as a medium to share customer success stories. Check out this one from Tesla.
• ‘How-to’ videos: Shoot a series of ‘how-to’ videos showing people how to use your products. Product demonstrations are a great way to showcase your products and spark interest in them too.
• Q&A videos: Start a Q&A series, filming interviews with your employees discussing trending topics in your industry or around your business offerings.
• Meet and greet: Build connections with the public by introducing them to your team. Encourage your employees to act naturally and have fun with it – the internet loves authentic content!

3. Improves your SEO

Video content is 50 times more likely to drive organic search results than text.

Source: Forrester Research

Publishing video content also improves your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). How? Video increases the amount of time people spend on your website. ‘Time on site’ is just one of the many factors Google looks at when trying to decide what website to present to its users.

Here are some ideas for videos that will boost your website’s SEO:

• A welcome video on your home page or an introduction video of your products and services.
• Customer testimonial videos.
• ‘How-to’ videos within the product section of your website.

Make sure that your videos are optimized so that they don’t affect the site’s load time. If you want to get better reach on your social channels and improve your SEO, start uploading a video!

4. Video brings out your brand’s personality

“People don’t buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories, and magic.”

~ Seth Godin.

Video helps bring your brand to life! It captures your brand and your brand advocate’s personalities, making you more likable and relatable. When creating video content, use the ‘think-feel-do’ method.

• Choose at least one thing you want your customers to think after they’ve watched your video – “I could really use that product in my house!”
• Choose at least one thing you want them to feel – “I feel really inspired to try something new.”
• Be clear on what you want your customers to do after they’ve watched your video, like visit your website or sign-up to your mailing list. Include a call to action at the end of the video when necessary.

5. Builds trust and removes objections

People don’t trust what they can’t see. Putting a face to your brand through video content helps build trust with your customers, and if they trust you, they’re more likely to buy from you. Video also gives you the platform to share a lot of useful information that can remove potential objections. Providing information empowers people with all the knowledge they need to make an informed decision. Use video to give information and to overcome potential objections in the customer’s mind.

6. Complements text

59% of executives agree that if both text and video are available on the same topic, they are more likely to choose video.

As mentioned earlier, many of us are time-poor making video our preferred source of media. We can consume news stories, brand or educational videos with ease from our mobile phones on the way to work, at the gym or while we’re cooking. Video enhances the text and often gives a lot more information. Used together, text and video are a powerful combination to increase your SEO, your social reach and lift engagement.

7. Lifts ROI

51% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI.

By proactively and strategically creating and publishing video content, your business should see a lift in conversions and ROI (return on investment). Consumers demand video content and supplying them with videos that influence, inform and inspire their purchase decisions will influence sales.