By now you’ve heard how you need to be using video in your marketing strategy. But really, how big of a deal is video marketing?
Consider this from tech conglomerate Cisco: An individual would need more than 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will come across global internet provider networks each month in 2020.
5 million years. That’s a lot of pets doing silly things on video.
You can write word after word, sentence after sentence and fine tune that skill until you’re running out of wall space in the office for your Pulitzers. Through video, you’re forced to focus on brevity. Sixty percent of viewers stop watching after two minutes, according to Visible Measures. But don’t dive into making a video one afternoon and upload it to your website for the sake of having it. Like any project, minor or major, having a plan before you begin will save time as it moves along.
Ask yourself what the purpose of the video is. Is it to promote your brand or be a question-and-answer session for your customers? Dig around and watch other marketing videos to determine which style will best fit your goals for video marketing. But remember quality over quantity. If it takes a minute and 47 seconds to get the message across in a video, don’t drag it to the five-minute mark.
How Can Video Marketing Help My Lead Nurturing, Customer Retention, and the Buyer’s Journey?
Lead Nurturing
You’ve spent the time and effort creating several customer segments. Now it’s time to reach out to them in a personalized and engaging way. Think of video as yet another way to reach out to prospective customers and answer their questions, the foundation of content marketing. But remember, with an engaging video that will help your customer, you should also make it personal. Using a customer’s name within the first 10 seconds has been shown to retain a viewer longer than an un-personalized video.
Customer Retention
At the end of the day, the numbers back up having videos on your website. Funnel Science found landing pages that use video have 800 percent more conversions than pages without.
For social media, a video could be the ticket to engaging customers. According to Link Humans, the average social media user maintains five accounts. Statistica found 70 percent of the United States population has at least one social networking profile. Though its role in online video isn’t nearly as big as it once was, YouTube has still seen a 40 percent increase in the number of viewers year-over-year since March 2014. And likely unsurprising, Facebook stated in its 2015 third quarter earnings call the amount of video from people and brands has increased 3.6 times year-over-year.
So what does this mean for your customer retention efforts? A video is a great way to liven up the FAQ sections of your website. If you have a new product or offering coming out, drum up excitement with a short video exclusive to your current customers.
Buyer’s Journey
If you align the buyer’s journey with the sales funnel, it should be no surprise only 50-60 percent of people watching a video actually complete it in the awareness stage, according to Vidyard. Remember that when in the awareness stage a consumer is only looking for information, not to be hit with a sales pitch. By the time they reach consideration, consumers are looking for how a product or service works as they still keep in mind their original question or situation that needs to be solved.
Finally, a consumer wants to know why they should spend their time and money with your company by the decision stage. Reach out to loyal current customers and ask if they would like to be part of a video testimonial or customer story. Every company has at least one or two evangelicals, otherwise, you would not be in business.
Tips for Creating Your Own Video
- We know the best ideas can strike at the spur of a moment, including for video. Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook Live, and Video on Twitter give us the chance to record those ideas. Except, as with the home videos your family took on vacations when you were a kid, they can be full of bloopers. These are great for showing the human side of your company. But for a professional connection to a potential customer, you’ll want to spend time producing any video.
- While people think of shooting video with a smartphone, many companies either have or have access to a DSLR camera that can record video. Wistia is a great resource for learning about producing videos on any budget, and we found this tutorial particularly useful. But it doesn’t matter if you’ll be using a smartphone, DSLR, or video camera for video production – always use a tripod if one is available. Though people have said since you were young they’d trust you carrying a stack of bricks through a china shop, even the steadiest of hands can use an assist. Keep the camera close to your body when shooting without a tripod. This minimizes the bounces and shakes.
- Keep the microphone as close to the subject as possible. Borrowing someone else’s phone for a voice memo or two is best to record clear audio. Make sure it’s positioned above their head to pick up the sound. During recording, check the sound and picture quality and don’t be afraid to yell cut to make adjustments. Even if you’re working with a script, take time to read through before hitting record. Remember practice makes perfect.
- As for editing video, it is possible to do so on your phone, but we recommend using a computer. Not only will you have a larger screen to view adjustments, tools, and the video itself on, video editing software for computers tend to be more robust than apps.
- Jake Coppinger’s YouTube channel show us how to get that professional look if you have a DSLR camera.
How to Achieve a Film Look – DSLR Film Making
But We Have a Small Staff, How Can We Still Produce Videos?
Easy, well, sort of. A trend in video marketing content is whiteboard animation. A combination of time-lapse and stop-motion, whiteboard animation produces a creative story as if the artist is drawing it as the video plays. There are several web tools that now allow anyone with an internet connection, a few ideas, and some time to produce an animated video.
Conclusion
The adage is a picture is worth a thousand words. An average video is made up of hundreds of pictures or frames. It’s no wonder marketing with video content grabs attention faster, nurtures your customers, and can create more sales and connections. Video helps us visualize emotion, therefore making a personal connection with customers more quickly. And making a connection is what it’s all about.