By now you’ve probably heard the saying, “Content is King” when it comes to online marketing. But lately, it seems that video content is quickly becoming the way to attract visitors, improve engagement, and increase sales. While there is no magic formula for producing online videos that will guarantee more sales, the evidence is clear: a well-produced video will help increase your leads and can only help your online marketing efforts.
The Big Picture
One hundred million internet users watch online videos every single day. That means right now, as you read this post, there are hundreds of thousands of people watching a video somewhere else. Some people are watching kittens play or teenagers fall of skateboards, but plenty of others are watching video advertisements and promotional videos produced by companies trying to win new business.
And of those people watching product or service related content, 80% remember it. You read that correctly. The Online publishers Association says that a full 80% of internet viewers remember watching specific video advertisements in the last 30 days and 46% of those people who remember the ad, also took action after viewing the video.
Online Videos Aren’t Just for E-Commerce
The retail industry has been quick to pick up on the impact of using video to sell their products. But retailers are not the only businesses benefiting from this tactic. Forbes Insight recently released a study that showed 59% of senior executives would rather watch a video than read text. That means B2B companies who target C-Level execs are probably missing the boat if they haven’t invested in shooting video.
The study further showed that 65% of viewers of a single video will click through to the vendor’s website. That’s well over half of all viewers. And 50% of viewers look for more information about the product or company, while a whopping 45% went the whole nine yards and initiated contact with the vendor after viewing an advertisement. Those numbers have a far better success ratio than direct mail, email marketing, and cold calling combined.
Your Videos Must Engage
It’s not simply enough to create online videos and wait for the money to roll in. Your content must be interesting and engaging or you lost viewers. In fact, 20% of total viewers of any one video will click away from the content within the first ten seconds. Of the remaining viewers, 30% are gone by the first 30 seconds. 40% move on by 60 seconds and 60% leave before two minutes. That’s not a whole lot of time to get your message across.
These statistics may seem discouraging at first. But a well-produced and well-planned video marketing campaign can help increase your engagement. If your video is poorly produced, unplanned, too long, or flat-out boring, you likely won’t get any conversions out of your efforts. A targeted message and engaging content will encourage more viewers to stick through to the end.
In fact, just because some viewers click away, doesn’t mean they aren’t clicking on your website! A video with the right hook, which answers the right questions, or hits on the proper points of pain can encourage early click-throughs. Viewers may decide within less than a minute that they want more information and seek it out on their own by contacting you or doing further research on your website.
Video Content is Still More Engaging than Text
Forrester Research conducted a study that showed one minute of video is the equivalent of 1.8 million words. No buyer is going to read 1.8 million words about your product, and you probably don’t have the time to commission someone to write 1.8 million words about your product. But a lot of potential buyers will watch video content, and you can produce video content much more quickly and efficiently than you could produce 1.8 million words.
How Do You Know if Your Videos are Working?
Most people won’t buy immediately after viewing your video. Many will contact you directly or will browse your website, but an immediate close is rare, unless you are a retailer. So how do you know if it’s even working?
Your video analytics will be the key in knowing how your content is faring. Analytics can tell you how long people are watching, and exactly where they are stopping. You’ll have to dig a little deeper into the analytics on the rest of your site to determine if your video is improving online inquiries. But if your video is leading to higher traffic numbers and increasing your engagement and inquiries, chances are that increased funnel is leading to increased sales.
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