Video is Taking Over the Current Business and Social Scene, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
At the current growth rate, Cisco predicts that it will take over 5,000,000 years to watch every video that crosses global IP networks in a single month in 2019.
If you’re not taking advantage of the benefits of using video for your business, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.
When people think of video and business together, a promotional video for advertising purposes probably comes to mind. While that’s a great way for video to serve your company, it’s not taking full advantage of everything video has to offer to your business.
There are areas of your businesses that could transform by the use of video. Below I will discuss a few unconventional—and sometimes overlooked—ways to use video to help your business thrive.
GENERAL MARKETING / PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES
Although this category is neither unconventional nor overlooked (as most of the industry uses video for advertising purposes), it’s still important to go over the general benefits of using promotional videos for your business.
As for why video is a great investment, the reasons are nearly endless.
For one, businesses literally say so. Wyzowl reports that 76% of businesses that use video believe that it provides a great return on investment (ROI).
For another, video builds trust between your business and a current or potential customer or client. Trust creates a pathway for sales to happen and long-term business relationships to form.
Potential buyers are engaged by video. It inspires them to move forward with your business. According to Online Publisher’s Association, 46% of users take some sort of action after viewing a video ad. 74% of viewers who watch an explainer video on your company’s website will subsequently buy the product. With all of this being said, it’s not a surprise that video marketing boosts conversion rates and sales.
Consumers today love video, and here are other beneficial ways to incorporate it into your business plan.
FOLLOW-UP CAMPAIGNS
Automated Emails
Follow-up campaigns are fundamental to your business.
These campaigns are the way your business creates and nurtures relationships with customers or clients. They can either help you to seal the deal with a potential client, or be the reason why the relationship fails to form.
Despite their importance, follow-up campaigns are one of the biggest areas where video is being overlooked and underutilized in the business industry.
A great place to start incorporating video into your follow-up campaigns is through automated emails sent to a list of leads.
Forrester reports that including video in an email leads to 200-300% increase in click-through rate (CTR). In fact, an introductory email that includes video shows an increased CTR by 96%. On top of that, email subscriber dropout rate is reduced by a whopping 75% with the incorporation of video.
Video greatly increases the amount of attention that leads pay to your email campaigns. This will inevitably lead to more traffic driven to your website and more leads, clients, and sales. It’s time to start thinking about exactly how to use video for your business.
It’s best to use your judgment when determining where to use video marketing in your follow-up campaign. Is your aim to reach your leads in a more personal way? Use video in your lead-nurturing emails. Do you have too many leads and not enough conversions? Video is a way to communicate directly to your leads why they should commit and choose you.
The content and aim of the video also depends on the type of lead.
For automated emails sent to top-funnel leads, these videos should introduce the potential customer or client to your company, product, or service. Supplying them with the basic, introductory information about your company, these leads will be ready to move forward in the sales process.
When sending automated emails to leads further down the funnel, include videos that answer frequently asked questions, discuss your product or service in greater detail, or show a demonstration of how your product or service works. Show your leads why they can’t miss out on doing business with you.
Tip: It’s great to always include a call-to-action at the end of these videos and provide concrete steps for prospects or leads to take next.
Blogs & Social Media
Video is dominating the current social scene, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
According to Insivia, 74% of all Internet traffic in 2017 is predicted to come from video. On top of that, Invodo reports that 92% of mobile video consumers share videos with others.
That’s a huge amount of visibility that can come from a single investment—video. Any brand that is not creating video and promoting it on social media is missing out on a huge opportunity.
Social video has the attention of one critical audience in particular: 18-33 year olds. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that by 2030, millennials will make up 75% of the global workforce.
If you’re not spreading brand awareness on social media, your business is failing to target a key demographic that’s not only important now, but will gain importance in the upcoming years. It’s time to start learning how to speak the language of the millennials: video.
Blogs and social media are intertwined when it comes to your business. With each blog post you write, you create content that your followers can and will share on social networks.
Writing blog posts and increasing your business’s presence on social media actually feed off of one another. Blogs fuel your social media content and increase your social reach, while social media drives new visitors to your website who will then read your blog.
The cycle continues and your business will reap the benefits!
Blogs
Blogs increase traffic to your websites.
Search engines love blogs. Every new post you write for your business’s blog is one more indexed page on you website. Google interprets this as your website being active and relevant, and drives up your website’s SEO. If you’re not blogging about your business now, it’s time to start.
Combining video with your blog is even better for your business’s visibility. Moz found that incorporating video into a blog post brings three times as many inbound links compared to blog posts without video.
Video is also an integral component of increasing your SERP. Forrester Research reports that video is 53 times more likely to rank on page one of Google search results.
Using video on your blog not only engages current customers and clients, but also increases your customer/client base by driving your website’s visibility and relevancy.
Social Media
Social media is booming right now.
As with blogs, if your business isn’t utilizing social media, it’s seriously time to jump on the bandwagon.
As social media sites are growing and reaching people like never before, they are releasing features that are increasingly integrating video into the user experience.
Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter’s Periscope, Youtube, or another social site, video is the way people seek, receive, and share information today.
This is because social media users are drawn to video. It’s comprehensive, information-filled, and engaging.
And lucky for you and your business, social media is a great way to reach your target demographic right where they already are. With features like Instagram’s “Pages You Might Like” and “Picked for You,” these social media sites can market and reach new potential customers for you, as well.
Videos on social media are limited to short spans of time. This is actually a good thing, as people’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. Wistia reports that videos under one-minute have 80% retention until the 30-second mark, and videos two to three minutes long still have 60% retention.
With less focus on length, it’s important that these videos are impactful. Some ideas for videos that are great for your business’s social media page include customer testimonials and product demonstrations. These videos can simultaneously increase brand awareness, gain and build trust with the viewer/customer, and drive up the perceived value of your product or service.
So tell me again why your business isn’t using video on their social media sites?
CORPORATE STAFF-TRAINING VIDEOS
Video is an amazing, and yet underutilized, way to train your staff. Video can truly transform the staff-training process for your company, making the process easier and more successful for everyone involved.
Training your staff can be a sometimes daunting and information-packed process. It’s safe to say many companies would welcome a way to make this process smoother. Introducing: video.
Video makes the learning curve more manageable for new-hires. Video can deliver a lot of information in both a time-efficient and engaging way. Forrester researcher Dr. James McQuivey estimates that one-minute of video is equal to 1.8 million words. This amount of information can actually be delivered in a comprehensive way via video because it will be paired with explanatory visuals and demonstrations. This is especially helpful for companies with complex processes, which is common in the sales or manufacturing industries.
Another key fact that makes video great for staff-training is that it preserves the basic, fundamental way of doing things at your business. As companies grow and more staff is hired, it’s not uncommon for the training process to stray away from the original way it was done when the business first opened. Video is a one-time investment that ensures each employee is trained the same way, time and time again.
Tip: If your company posts the videos that new hires can access through a portal, on a website or YouTube channel, they can reference the information again and again throughout their training and into their employment.
Video can have amazing benefits for your company. No matter where you use it—whether it’s for promotional purposes, email campaigns, blogs, social media, or staff training—it will enhance that area of your business and increase the success of your business overall. Video is the future. There are so many ways to use video—conventional and unconventional, alike—and it’s time to find a permanent place for it in your business plan.
Amanda Zambito
Senior Writer/Editor
Click the logo at the top of the page (or Call (855) 862-3456) to learn more about how video can grow your business.
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