Advantages of Video

Advantages of Video for Marketing Purposes

The growth of online video consumption continues to be exponential. Video is now the most popular medium for consuming and sharing ideas. Advances in communication technology combined with increased broadband speed have enabled companies and organisations worldwide to promote their products and services as well as to educate, entertain and inspire. In marketing terms, it has been shown to be much more effective than relying on purely text-based communications.

The statistics for Online Video clearly demonstrate that there is a consistently increasing demand for video content online. According to Cisco Networks, in 2018 video accounted for 80% of all consumer internet traffic. This reflects the stellar growth in video consumption through internet usage.

It is generally understood by all marketing practitioners that all companies should have an online presence these days. The importance of visual content is increasing on a daily basis. Adding video to your website (and social media platforms) will dramatically increase traffic to your site from all major search engines such as Google and YouTube. Recent figures indicate that having video content on your website increases the chances of your page being listed on the first page of Google by 5000% when compared with text only websites. It has also been shown that engaging visual content such as video results in more time being spent on your site, which further improves search results page ranking with major search engines.

‘Video is unsurpassed as a tool of both engagement and persuasion’

Video is an extremely versatile marketing medium

Promotional Videos offers a wide range of potential marketing uses. The options include creating Company Introduction Videos as well as a range of other types of Promotional Company Video including Product Promotions & Demonstrations, Product reviews, Social Media Adverts, Training (for Clients and Staff), PR Videos, Company Event Promotional Videos, Special Offer / Promotions, Client Testimonials and Industry Expert Interviews.

Wide Range of Video Hosting & Distribution options

There are now a whole range of options available for Video Distribution & Promotion. As well as embedding the company video on the company website so that it can be seen by all visitors to your website, you can now upload the video to a whole range of video sharing platforms. The biggest and best known of these is YouTube, which is now itself the world’s second largest search engine after Google. There are a range of other options including Vimeo and Metacafe, and recently Facebook has begun the process of promoting video content to the huge community of Facebook users.

Utilising all of the relevant video hosting channels together with promotion of the video on social media will result in the maximum reach for the company’s marketing message.

Multiple Video Hosting Platforms now available online

Content Marketing is all about reaching the widest possible target market. Written marketing content including blogs are limited in terms of their reach because they are usually only available in one place (eg. on a website or blog hosting site). Video Content however can be syndicated across multiple platforms. Video offers the following wide range of channels to reach the maximum possible audience.

Video can be ...

Hosted on your Company Website.
Uploaded to YouTube (now the world’s second most popular search engine).
Uploaded to Vimeo (another very credible video hosting platform for high quality video content).
Posted on other Video aggregators using TubeMongul (eg. Veoh, Blip, Metacafe).
Uploaded to Facebook directly or embedded on your Facebook Business Page. You also have the option of promoting your video content to a specified target market through utilising the FB ‘Promoted Posts’ option.
Linked to by (or embed on) any other relevant Facebook Page.
Linked to from Clients and Partner Company Websites (or it can be embedded directly on their company websites if the content is relevant to what they do)
Linked to by (or embedded on) relevant Industry Blogs online.
Listed on iTunes as well as on other Video Podcast content websites.
Promoted through Email Marketing Campaigns and scheduled email newsletters.
Shared on various Social Media Websites. (Most of which now offer the ability to easily ‘Share’ content)
Run as an Advert on YouTube.

YouTube is now the world’s second largest Search Engine (only Google is bigger) with well over 300 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every single minute!

Differentiate your Company from the Competition

Video is continuing to grow exponentially and is set to dominate online marketing content as companies move away from relying solely on traditions outbound marketing techniques. Having professionally produced video content for your business has never been more important and it will help differentiate your company from your competitors.

A well-produced Promotional Video has the potential to demonstrate the features and benefits of your company’s products and services in a way that marketing communications relying on text and photos simply cannot match. It has been shown scientifically that individuals can process information that they see and hear at a much faster rate and to a deeper level than information just presented in text and photo formats alone.

Promotional web videos are an exciting internet marketing tool for businesses large and small. Like a traditional TV commercial, a promotional web video will advertise your business’s advantages to potential customers. Unlike traditional TV commercials, promotional web videos can be broadcast directly to your target audience for free through email, search engine marketing and video sharing sites.

Producing a promotional web video doesn’t have to be complex or expensive. With a little bit of planning, you can produce a promotional web video that becomes a priceless marketing tool for your business.

Video sets your business apart from the Competition

Although the use of Video for Marketing Purposes is growing at an incredible rate, there are still some companies out there that are behind the curve and have not yet adopted the use of Web Video Marketing. Using video to promote your company will therefore help differentiate your company and enable it to stand out from your competitors. Promotional Video also differentiates your company from competitors by demonstrating what is unique about your services.

The use of Promotional Videos, Educational Videos and Marketing Videos is now critically important for any company that is serious about marketing in an advanced up to date way, using the internet as a central tool in the marketing mix.

Promotional Video creates Higher Levels of Engagement

Using a professionally produced Video that relays information in a quick, engaging, informative and enjoyable way will enhance your businesses bottom line. Research indicates that information delivered in this way is more persuasive, remembered better, and makes it more likely that the viewer will engage in buyer behaviour such as seeking further information about the product / service or proceed to make a purchase.

Video offers the unique advantage over other forms of marketing content because it does not just tell visitors about your company, product, or service – it shows them. This is the difference between passive and active engagement. As a rule, people learn and remember information better if they are actively engaged. Video accomplishes this goal by actively engaging viewers and communicates more information in a shorter time frame than purely text-based marketing content. For example, product demonstration videos will result in a much more thorough understanding of the product and the potential utility and benefits it can offer the viewer.

Most buying prospects are more likely to spend two minutes watching a video online than they are to read a full 1000 words of text. Videos can help grab viewers’ attention and hold it for longer than purely text-based websites. Having professional Video content on your website will also ideally keep viewers coming back for more. This is where the content of the video becomes so important.

A professional Company Video can also help your company to establish credibility as well as assisting with the important task of gaining the trust of the potential customers for your company’s products and services. A professionally produced corporate video can help create an emotional connection between your company and the viewer. Videos Increase the viewers understanding of your Product or Service and how it can be of benefit to them.

"People remember 20% of what they hear and 30% of what they see - but an incredible 70% of what they hear and see." Harvard Business Review

"90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text." 3M Corporation & Zabisco

Increased Engagement with your clients can generate more sales

The more a prospect can learn about your company and the product & services on offer, the higher the level of engagement and emotional investment on their part. This results in the development of trust in your company leading to a higher likelihood of converting them into a long-term customer for your business.

71% of consumers say video leaves a positive impression and increases trust in a company (Source: Animoto)

Unlike traditional sales and marketing methods, online Video is working to promote your company 24/7 and potentially worldwide. It is available to interested potential customers ‘on demand’ all day, every day, 365 days a year. This represents the ideal marketing scenario for any business. Your sales proposition is available to your potential customers – even when the sales team have gone home for the day!

Videos that demonstrate a product offering, (which are ideally backed up with some customer testimonials) makes for a very persuasive sales pitch allowing you to clearly demonstrate how the features of the product can benefit the customer. This convincing communication method has been clearly shown to have a positive influence on buying decisions.

Video can be great for Lead Generation. For companies that offer a service (as opposed to selling a product) using an ‘Introduction Video’ can save time and means that you do not have to physically meet every potential client - that might be interested in your services. If the client calls you after viewing the video, they will have already decided that they are interested in acquiring your services.

Video reaches Business Decision Makers

A study commissioned by Forbes indicates that 75% of corporate executives watch work related video on a weekly basis. This shows that as well as reaching consumers, video is a great way for Business to Business companies to benefit from video marketing. The study also indicated that consumption of video is on the increase and that B2B marketers are using video more and more to reach decision makers in their industry.

Increasing ‘Video searches’ online

Google, the world’s leading search engine has recently begun the process of separating the different types of search available to the user. As well as doing a general ‘web’ search, you can now search Google specifically for ‘images’, ‘news’ and (most importantly for our purposes) users can now search specifically for ‘video’ content. (You can see all these options on the Google search homepage – as well as on the ‘Bing’ and ‘Yahoo’ search engines). This means that it is now possible for users to log on to Google and do a search exclusively for video. If all of your business marketing materials online (including your website) are text and static images based – then there is zero possibility of your services showing up for this type of internet user.

Don’t get left behind!

So, if your company does not have any videos online, you will be completely missing from any ‘video’ search your potential customer might carry out. If you do however have relevant video content on your website, that is optimised with the relevant keywords etc. your video content will display in the search for ‘video’ as well as on the ‘web’ search results pages and will be available to drive users to your website. Similarly, if you do not have any video content on YouTube (the world’s leading Video Search Engine) your company will not ever show up even if the user is searching for services that your company or organisation specialises in!.

Online Video's is perfect for Mobile Marketing

delivers the information necessary to make buying decisions. Smart Phone users are unlikely to spend time reading through volumes of text and detailed product or service descriptions. However, video is perfect for mobile.

At ImageLink Film & Media, we create Video content that is organically optimised for the mobile experience, as it automatically resizes to fit mobile device screens. More and more users are utilising their Smartphone or tablet (iPad etc) as the only device by which they access the Internet. Due to their physical screen sizes, these devices are best used when viewing video content as opposed to detailed text and graphics etc. It is therefore now incredibly important for businesses to produce relevant Video Content in order to effectively reach & engage prospects, consumers and clients as quickly and effectively as possible.

Improved Search Engine Ranking - for websites with relevant Video Content

Hosting video on your company website offers considerable SEO Benefits, meaning that the search engine ranking of your website will improve considerably on the leading Search Engines because you have relevant video content available. All major Search Engines are now beginning to focus intensively on Video Content.

All search engines reward engaging content (through higher page rankings for relevant searches). The time a visitor spends on each page of your website is a key determinant of how Google ranks the quality of your website when assigning it a ranking position. Well produced Relevant Video Content has a unique ability to be highly engaging and so having video on your company website will result in keeping visitors on your site much longer than a text-only website. This can dramatically help with Search Engine Optimisation (S.E.O.) for your website, especially when combined with providing Social Share options with your video content. All this helps your website get ranked high on all search engines results pages.

No other form of Persuasive Communication has the same Viral Potential as video content. Due to the ability of Video to produce an immediate emotional reaction, viewers tend to want to share the experience. This is now very easily achieved through the vast array of Social Media Networks that all have embedded sharing functionality.

Creating multiple related videos can create the possibility that your products (or services) will display more than once for any relevant search closely related to the industry sector your business operates in!

Interactive experience

Video content can turn a static business website into a dynamic and more interactive experience. Video offers you a multipurpose platform to promote your company (and what your company offers) in many different ways. Online video content can be hosted directly on your company website or on Video Hosting Platforms such as YouTube & Vimeo. Most commonly the videos are hosted on the specialist video hosting platforms – and linked to directly through the company/business website. This ensures the fastest possible download speed for the video content while still allowing the video to be viewed directly on the company website (as well as other Social Media Channels).

Videos with clickable links direct users to appropriate pages in the website or to other video selections, providing additional opportunities for you to cross-sell and upsell

So what are you waiting for?

Give us a call today at ImageLink Film & Media, to discuss all of your video production requirements …

This is an example of a ‘Live Event’ video that we were hired to help create for Matthew Hussey. Matthew is a top rated online celebrity and author, with over 1.6 million followers ...Read More

This video is our own Commercial Style Video Advert for the Video Production Services offered by ImageLink Film & Media....Read More

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