Fired Up About Video Marketing

The use of online video as a powerful marketing tool is turning the internet into a virtual social campfire on steroids. While communication technology has changed over the years, the human brain has remained pretty much the same. We humans still respond to and retain information best when it appeals to our multiple senses and emotional “middle-brain”. While our ancestors used to sit around fires to communicate with their social networks, we fire up our computers, smartphones and tablets to share our stories far and wide.

Brands who are leveraging video in their marketing are being rewarded.  The numbers show that text alone is no longer a match for the stimuli-rich video that consumers are hardwired to prefer. According to Cisco’s forecast released last month, internet video will play a major role in the quadrupling of internet traffic over the next four years. Cisco projects that by 2016, 1.2 million video minutes (that’s more than two years worth!) will travel the internet every second.

Here’s why:

• Video engages us with movement, color and sound so we become more quickly engaged than with a page of text and we spend more time on sites with video.  Online retailer Living Direct found that videos boosted conversion as well as increased the time consumers spent on a website by 9%
• Video appeals to our emotions through relatable audiovisual elements such as the human voice, human form, facial expressions, and social clues that help to establish trusting relationships.  This goes hand in hand with social media, which is all about transparency and authenticity.
• Video visually clarifies where consumers may have difficulty interpreting pages of text so it’s perfect for product demonstrations or applications.
• Video improves website search engine optimization, with Google favorably calculating video content among its scoring factors. Providing video content alongside text is a good way to ensure all bases are covered.
• Video is easy for viewers to share through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and Google favorably calculates a brand’s social media influence among its scoring factors.
• Video includes thumbnail pictures in search listings which act as markers to draw attention to results that may be halfway down the page.

There is no denying that consumers have quickly warmed up to online video as a primary information source.  Consider supplementing text with video for things like product demonstrations, customer testimonials, company backgrounds, employee introductions, tutorials, and case studies. In this digital era, creating video doesn’t have to be expensive or have high-production value. Take a look at your budget and rearrange some items if you need to and remember that you can always start small.  Having some video is better than no video at all.  It’s time to stoke the fire!