You know video is having a moment. Maybe you've read articles about its growing importance in marketing. Maybe you've seen your competitors invest in it. Or maybe you’ve just seen it everywhere: on every tv, computer, phone, tablet and smart display.
Despite all of that buzz, you also understand there is a real cost of investing in video: in budget, in time or both. That holds you back from making a significant investment.
That’s the old way of thinking. The most important thing to understand about video is that it’s unique as a marketing tool, being able to accomplish objectives more efficiently and effectively than any other format. You can't afford not to have a video strategy.
Here are the four unique qualities only video can do for you:
Density
Video is a natural conduit of information, allowing you to relay multiple layers of audio and video at the same time. These layers can present different messages to tell complex stories or can all be used to reinforce the same theme for maximum impact. The brain is optimized to receive video content. 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and as a result, 95 percent of consumers retain information from video, while only 10 percent from reading.
Learn more about Short Form Video Statistics and Current Marketing Trends
Speed
Video can relate a message incredibly quickly. The 30-second commercial was just the beginning. It's evolved into 15 and 10-second videos on Instagram or 5-second pre-rolls on YouTube. Visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text. So in a way, a single minute of video is worth about 1.8 million words.
Ubiquity
Video dominates our daily online activity. 55% of us watch videos on our phones every day for an average of thirty minutes. When we’re not on our phone, we’re watching an average of 4.3 hours of TV a day.
Your audience is already spending an enormous amount of time watching video. Without video content, you're missing a tremendous opportunity to reach and engage with your audience.
54% of consumers want to see videos from brands they support in comparison to email newsletters (46%) or social image (41%) based content.
We also found that video content was the most memorable (43%) in comparison to text (18%) and images (36%).
Results
Video not only produces results on its own, adding video supercharges your other marketing efforts. Consider the following:
Websites
Embedding a video on a webpage can increase time spent on average session duration by more than two minutes and lead to 800% more conversion. Embedding video also helps to improve the SEO value. Having video on the landing page of your site makes it 53% more likely to show up on page 1 of Google and companies utilizing video content experience a 41 percent increase in traffic through web searches compared to others who don’t include video in their content strategies.
Email Marketing
For email marketing, video has a similar effect. Open rates on emails that use the word "video" in the subject have 19% higher open rates and click-through rates increase 200-300% when marketers include a video in an email. Even unsubscribes from emails that regularly include video are 26% lower.
Product Marketing
96% of consumers found videos helpful for making online purchase decisions and 73% were more likely to make a purchase after watching videos explaining a product or service.
All of these reasons are why 51.9 percent of marketing experts agree video offers the best return on investment: more than white papers, photos, interactive media, sales copy, info graphics or illustrations.
Not long ago video marketing was considered an extravagance that only the most significant corporate players could afford to invest in. Now it is a necessity that you cannot afford to ignore. Whether you dream of making Super Bowl commercials or videos on your iPhone, you need to get into the video content game now or risk losing out to other players.