Video marketing has become one of the most sought-after content marketing trends for brands today and it continues to grow at a rapid scale. Cisco’s research1 estimates that “Globally, 70% of all Internet traffic will cross CDNs by 2021”. Moreover, the exponential increase in mobile and tablet users, paired with sufficient availability of distribution platforms, have made it convenient for marketers to drive audience engagement through videos. However, it is imperative to get the technique right to obtain maximum engagement from it.
Here are 3 things you must do to drive maximum audience engagement through video marketing:
1. Explain Yourself
Videos such as tutorials, demonstrations and ‘explainer’ videos are a great way to share helpful and engaging content about your products or services. These videos enable you to showcase how your consumers could benefit from using the product or service and establish you as an expert in the field. Sharing free and helpful information can encourage users to return to your website/channel as a hub of useful content and increase customer engagement. Google AdWords’ channel2 on Youtube would be a great example of this.
2. Personalize
This makes your videos considerably more valuable, since it drives engagement of your audience while they are consuming your content. Personalization lets videos resonate better with your audience, thereby increasing your chances of achieving your desired outcome. For example, Marketo invited people to its Marketing Nation Summit with personalized video, putting their names on the famous Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada, sign. After the event, they estimated that the video was directly responsible for 50+ registrations worth more than $70,000 in revenue.
3. Add a Call-To-Action
A CTA can be a smart way to ending your videos, as it persuades your audience to immediately engage. Including pop-out calls to action, or embedding contact forms at the end of your video can help you in quick lead generation, app downloads or getting sign-ups of free trials. Alternatively, a simple persuasive message at the end of the video also works well. For example, Dropbox in its initial days made an interesting and relatable video3 explaining the pain of transferring data from one computer to another and how Dropbox could solve that problem. The video ended with a ‘download now’ message.
The biggest advantage of video content possibly lies in the interest consumers have shown for it. According to Hubspot research4, 53% of people want to see more video content from marketers. This proves that videos resonate better with your audience. 90%5 of users believe that seeing a video about a product helps them in making purchase decisions. So in a way, videos enable marketers to subtly participate in their customers’ decision process too. Lastly, videos hold a lot more scope for creativity and interaction as compared to other content types.
Taking all these things into account, video is arguably the best way to scale audience engagement and share compelling brand stories, if done correctly.
References:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/complete-white-paper-c11-481360.html
https://www.youtube.com/user/learnwithgoogle/featured
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4eTR7tci6A
https://research.hubspot.com/content-trends-preferences?
https://www.inc.com/gordon-tredgold/20-reasons-why-you-should-boost-your-video-marketing-budget-in-2017.html
