We all know that video is big business. From cute cats and sneezing baby pandas to lonely men on the moon being sent department store gifts – video is big business.
But what compelling reasons are there to suggest video should form a strong part of your marketing plan?
(1) The stats that speak for themselves!
Its often forgotten precisely how big online video has become and how many companies are dedicating larger and larger proportions of their marketing budgets to this channel in the quest for the highest possible return on investment (ROI).
- Cisco have predicted that by 2019, over 80% of all consumer internet traffic will be video content with nearly a million minutes of video content being uploaded every single minute [source]
- YouTube has over a billion users, representing a third of people on the Internet!
- On mobile alone, YouTube reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year olds than any cable network in the United States [source]
- The number of YouTube users watching on mobile devices has increased by over 100% year on year [source]
Whilst the above represents some incredible stats primarily based on YouTube, Facebook has also witnessed staggering growth in the use of online video content meaning it surpassed YouTube for desktop video views in August 2014. In fact it is estimated that Facebook are receiving over 8 billion video views per day – up a staggering 100% since April 2015 [source]
Whilst Facebook seems to own day one views, YouTube seems to own the long-tail! 50% of Facebook video views comes on day one versus 20% of YouTube video views [source]
What this tells us is that video content has both the reach and the exposure that other marketing channels crave – backed with the precise level of targeting that make it a marketers dream. It also highlights continued growth and demand with a high propensity for an audience to engage with the videos on a variety of platforms.
(2) Accurate and insightful reporting
Whilst digital marketing enjoys the type of measurability that traditional methods can only dream of, this has been enhanced by Facebook, who initially stole a march on YouTube with its intelligent and insightful video reporting metrics. This includes reach, views, completion rates narrowed to date ranges and including shares. YouTube also provides annotation click through rates and close rates, average view duration, subscribers gained/lost and much more besides, giving marketers a really insightful and useful set of data to analyse the effectiveness of their campaigns. And justify the outlay
(3) Strong ROI
Marketing Managers are often challenged on creating a marketing plan that delivers ever increasing levels of ROI and justifying spend in every activity they engage with, and rightly so. Its therefore interesting to know that after a survey conducted by Reelseo and Flimp Media asking 350 B2B marketing agencies and management professionals whether video has positively impacted their ROI and marketing results that 73% confirm this is the case, whilst an impressive 96% are currently using video content marketing [source]
Whilst 52% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content that returns their highest ROI [source]
(4) Increased Website Engagement, dwell time and conversions
In a survey carried out by Merchant Marketing Group having video content on your website means, on average, an extra 2 minutes dwell time versus those that do not feature video [source]
This is a significant amount of time for a visitor to become more engaged with your brand, your products and services and to make a conscious positive purchase decision based, in some part, by added emotive engagement.
Ice.com reported a 400% increase in conversions after viewing video and a 25% drop in returns [source]. Whilst Shoeline.com quoted a 44% increase in sales and Pegasus Lighting quoted conversion increases of 27% when the product was accompanied by a video [source]
(5) SEO benefits
Using video can increase the likelihood of being found by perspective customers. For example being listed in more search engines – video search engines. Particularly important when you consider that Google owns YouTube and that by adding video with relevant titles and keywords will mean you are displayed more prominently as well as in incremental Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). In fact research by Three Motion suggests that including video on your website, you’re 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of a Google search [source]
In order to maximise your own SEO benefits from each and every video, be sure to:
- Label it – give it a keyword label or short description; use an <h> tag in the HTML around your label
- Description – give it a relevant and longer description with keywords
- Name it – Use keywords in the videos file name and URL
- Link to it – create new links from your site and other sites that link to the video
- Tag it – use keywords, including ‘video’, in your page’s <TITLE> and DESCRIPTION tags
- Submit – add the video to your site map and media RSS feeds
Finally – try to embed the video rather than using pop up players, as the latter are often missed by search engines.
Conclusion
The above points add significantly weight to the inclusion of video in a well thought out marketing plan. Whilst it is not possible to draw definitive conclusions for every business – each marketing channel has its own benefits and drawbacks after all – what we can determine that with mind blowing stats, insightful reporting, SEO advantages, increased engagement and dwell time and often a strong ROI, video should very much be at the forefront of your mind when planning out your tactical activity.
Martin Newton is a Director at Energise Media Ltd, a video production company specialising in corporate video located in St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK.
For any video production or corporate video requirements or to find out how video can be an integral part of your marketing plan, contact Energise Media.