5 Essential Benefits of Video Marketing to Your Business

Every day we consume content to influence buying that would usually be described as ‘video content’. At the higher end of this scale are quite expensive and well produced TV adverts – the lovely car speeding through a French cityscape with a beautiful couple having a whale of a time, the sports brand with stars plying their trade in glorious ultra high definition slow motion footage or the pretentious perfume advert which makes absolutely no sense at all…to anyone.

You then get less well known brands with their corporate videos, promo videos, animated explainers or event showreels to influence buying tickets for the next awards evening. These are usually created by professional production companies and sit as part of a video content marketing strategy.

Then there are the low budget, high impact videos, usually user generated and designed to be pushed out on social media to help people, get them to buy your product or service or simply improve traffic to your site.

All of these have their place and depending on your budget, the volume and production values of your videos could sit anywhere on this scale. One thing that they all have in common is that they all share five key benefits of video content marketing for your business, and these five reasons are listed below:

1. It saves your customers time, which makes them like you more

It doesn’t matter if you are a B2B or B2C company, whether you sell a product, service or both, what matters is that when potential customers find you, they very quickly understand what you do and how you can make their lives better and you influence their buying decision. Unfortunately due to our ever decreasing attention spans and sheer number of things competing for our attention throughout each day we don’t seem to have much time, that means that speed of communication is key.

Let’s assume that you have a product that you sell (again it doesn’t matter if it is B2B or B2C) the product will either solve a problem that the customer has or it will improve their lives in some way. The best way to grab attention is to have a headline like “Stop snoring with our device” or “get five enquiries each week guaranteed”. One solves a problem and the other improves a business, but both are able to grab attention and resonate with their target audiences quickly. But what happens after you read the headline? Usually lots of text and imagery which tries to explain the issue in more detail, the product or service, how it works, what it costs, how to access it, who is selling it and their credentials, the type of customer that buys it, etc, etc, etc. The headline is great, but no one buys from a headline alone. The longer it takes for your potential customer to fully understand your proposition, the quicker they will try and find another option.

Ever heard the saying “a picture tells a thousand words”? Well now you have moving images they can tell those words even more quickly. A video can use actors that look like your target audience to build immediate relevance – you don’t need to explain it. You can show a product in action with product videography, or show your services – you don’t need to explain it. You can show people better off from buying from you – you don’t need to explain it.

Video content marketing makes it much quicker to explain things which in turn saves your customers time and influences buying, and in a world where everyone is time poor, finding a supplier that delivers the required solution or enhancement quickly, will make you very popular indeed.

2. Video has much higher engagement rates

Video is digital and digital activity can be tracked. What can be tracked can therefore be measured, which means we can say with absolute certainty that video content has much higher engagement rates than many other types of marketing activity. And this engagement isn’t just increased click through rates, it is all kinds of engagement. Let us hit you with some statistics:

And these are just five compelling statistics, we could have thrown many more at you (but going back to point one above, we’re trying to save you time!). People engage with video much more readily, even in areas you may not have thought of such as with utilising video recruitment, which means that it should be part of your outbound and inbound marketing activity. This ties into the first point around saving your customers time, as well as the next three so read on!

3. It allows you to explain abstract concepts

There are obvious applications for video content marketing – showing a health spa or restaurant so people can visually see the treatment rooms and food. It might be filming a doggy hotel so owners can see where they will be leaving their treasured pets, it might be showing an industrial product at work to sell more units. These all share a common theme in that we describe the process of gathering the visuals by using the word ‘filmed’ and ‘video’ interchangeably. What if you are a service based business, create software or have a more abstract offering that doesn’t lend itself well to being filmed? What then?

Motion graphics, which is often referred to as animated video, can be a great way of delivering information that can’t be captured with the lens. For example an accountancy firm can highlight the key ways in which they save their clients money and give them more time back using exciting and engaging visuals – like a presentation on speed! If you want to show diversity in your client base and areas of operation, these can be created digitally as animated characters and locations. Or perhaps you have a process that you undertake which adds value to customers – having an animated flow chart that breaks down each stage and visualises it in a simple and effective way will help people understand the application and benefits immediately.

When thinking about video content marketing, don’t just think about what you can point a camera at, there are many ways to communicate your messages and influence buying with motion graphics and animation being an increasingly popular way of doing so.

4. You can show your product in a dynamic way

This links to the other points in the blog and is directed at companies who are selling a physical product, no matter how small or large that product is. Let’s take a single example of a Grease Removal Unit. Now, why have I used something that no one reading this has probably ever heard of?

We have created video content on grease removal units so it seems a shame not to take advantage of it!
Watch the video and then imagine if I had to explain a) what a GRU is and b) why this one was better…how many words and pictures might that take?
We also have several types of video on the GRU which helps me with another point coming up
We actually think this product is pretty cool!

We don’t work in the hospitality industry which is where this product is used, but we’re pretty sure that a Grease Removal Unit is a bit like insurance, it is a grudge purchase. Now imagine having to make a grudge purchase and also having to spend ages learning about it and working out which one was better. I am only guessing, but that might increase the grudge factor quite a bit!

Alternatively you could commission a professional video to highlight all of the features, functionality and benefits, filmed in a really cool way, with motion graphics to communicate the key points and a 3D sequence to show the technology and influence a buying decision. Much better huh?

What if while you had a film crew at your disposal and everything set up, you then had an installation video filmed and edited as well as quarterly and daily maintenance videos created to make it super easy for your customers to know how to get the best from it. Lots of professional video content, filmed with really high production values, which is effective and helps your customers – a must for any product based business in our book.

5. It has a much greater reach than traditional methods

Hopefully it has become apparent that all of these benefits sort of intertwine with one another and aren’t mutually exclusive, and this last point very much ties in with benefit number four.

Take a product, if it has installation instructions or requires periodic maintenance, the traditional way of doing that would be to design and create a physical manual which needs to be printed and sent out with the product. Alternatively you can order small QR codes to stick on the product itself so when someone needs to access that information, they scan the code and watch the video there and then – much less fussy and expensive than reading through a manual and way more convenient.

With a service business you might ordinarily create a brochure or pamphlet, pay for the design and printing and then spend a fortune on posting them through letterboxes, either by hand or using the postal service. Video content marketing has far less resistance and fewer cost barriers to overcome in order to reach more eyeballs from a sales perspective, and from a training and guidance aspect is much more convenient to consumers. Not only does it cost less per eyeball than traditional methods in almost every case, but it is more sustainable and environmentally friendly than using large quantities of printed material.

Whether it is a physical product, service, event or advert, video content marketing carries many more benefits and often fewer costs and barriers to the alternatives, with the added bonus it also improves traffic to your site.

Summary

We’ve set out five core benefits in this blog as to why we feel that using video content marketing as a tool for your business should absolutely be a consideration for you.

While video used to be the preserve of only a few large companies with big budgets, the rise of more compact and affordable equipment, editing and animation software in the cloud and a range of freelance and smaller production companies, there is no reason why any business shouldn’t consider and implement video wisely as part of their marketing strategy.
If planned wisely you can create content for a multitude of purposes in a cost effective way, but you must plan your shoot in conjunction with any agency to get the very best from the investment you are making.
Don’t try and force something – if it isn’t a visual product or service you can consider using motion graphics or animation as an option too. It doesn’t have to be quirky characters if that doesn’t match your brand or the message, it can be iconography, typography, flow charts, anything – as long as it visually helps viewers to understand the proposition more quickly then it’s fine.
Video content marketing has higher engagement rates than marketing not involving video. There are so many undeniable and verified statistics which are measured to back this up. Make sure that any video projects are part of a wider strategy however, not just a knee jerk response to something, that way you will get a much higher return on your investment and be more likely to influence buying decisions.
Having video content improves traffic to your site and increases click through rates. It just does, so if you want to rank higher on Google then embed more videos on your site.

If you need any help with your video content marketing strategy, please give us a call and we’ll be delighted to give you the benefit of our years of experience helping other companies communicate effectively with their target audience.