For years I’ve been stressing the need for companies to use more videos in their overall marketing and communication strategy. Statistics* continue to show the importance of video use. A landing page for one of your digital ads has an 80% higher chance to convert a reader to a lead if that landing page has a video on it.
Any non-video type of content on your website is always outperformed by pages with videos on your website. Millennials, now outnumbering baby boomers, and even younger generations are quick to choose a video for information but are less likely to read in order to get the same information.
Even in the face of these statistics, companies continue their hesitation to put money into video production. For example, if I ran a medical practice, I would capitalize by spinning out videos on a monthly basis—patient testimonials, health tips, PSAs, opinions on current events like COVID, or maybe a monthly video blog (VLOG). The benefit of doing this is huge:
- Website: Place your video on your website, but have the opportunity to place at various other places.
- YouTube channel: A new video of your business should be added to your video channel/library on YouTube, which becomes a catch basin for potential leads.
- Social media: Post your video on social media channels.
- Promote it: Videos are great to promote on social media to reach bigger audiences. Even with small budgets, such as $50, you can boost a post and get significant engagement.
- Newsletter: Send out a newsletter whenever you have a new video. Even if it only includes the video, it will be very effective for very little effort.
- Advertising: If you create video commercials, you can also utilize them for digital advertising and still use them for all other media channels.
- Video library: Over time you can create a library of video footage that can be edited and combined allowing you to create new videos for very little expense.
The bottom line is that investing a little bit more in video allows you to very quickly and flexibly repurpose video content across all your marketing channels.
Companies that already had a video strategy and process for producing video content going into 2020 have fared much better than those that did not. Here are the facts:
- Retail and marketing video views grew 159% year-over-year, which was mostly driven by the shutdown in the month of March, so it is fair to assume that the numbers will be even bigger for Q2 2020.
- The time people spent watching videos grew 68% from Q4 2019 to Q1 2020.
- Smartphones are the device of choice with an increase of 253% in views and 83% growth in time watched. Computers grew only marginally and views on tablets dropped.
- The completion rate (50%) of videos is highest on computers.
All of this caused a rapid rethinking of the advertising strategy. Companies with a strong video communication strategy shifted where they spent their dollars:
- Advertising on TV was drastically pulled back.
- They reacted by quickly producing videos that were current and in context with the COVID crisis.
This shift resulted in marketing content being seen more, which is key for a brand. The last thing you want to do is go silent. Choosing the right channel and format to get your content and message out is always challenging, but not making video a major part of your strategy is an outright mistake.
*All statistics from Brightcove’s Q12020 Global Video Index report.
