Here are 5 reasons you must consider video as part of your overall marketing & branding strategy.
- Video Helps Builds Trust
Building relationships is the key to any Sales activity, and at the foundational core of relationships lie trust. A customer who trusts you will transact with you and develop a relationship with you. But trust needs to be built and it takes effort and time.
There is no other content that ignites emotions and engages content like videos. For ages, television commercials have been ruling the roost in terms of brand & trust building. And today, youtubers are taking over as the top video content generators for the younger generation and brand promotion on these platforms are taking precedence over traditional form of promotions.
When customers come across brands with good quality videos with great explanations of the product or concept, it naturally creates a sense of trust towards the brand in them. Videos reflect on how serious the brand is in communicating clearly with its customers. Not everyone indulges in video marketing strategies and the ones that do come out as the ones who are invested in their customers. Use videos to develop a trust based relationship with your clients.
2. Search Engines Love Video
There are a few things search engines love more than video. You are more than 50 times more likely to show up on the google first page if you have a video embedded on your website. Also the fact that people stay for longer on pages on your website because of embedded videos, has a positive effect on your website SEO rankings.
And since google has taken over Youtube, they give very high priority to youtube videos in terms of search engine rankings. There is a video tab in all google search results too, which you completely loose out on if you do not have videos in your marketing strategy. Using videos will only drive more business to your website through internet discovery channels. The best thing you could do for your SEO strategy, if you still aren’t doing it yet is to include videos in it.
3. Video is Social
When the internet was newer, it wasn’t easy to stream or download videos. But today in the age of high bandwidth speeds, nothing gets shared more than videos. They are all over Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and messaging apps like Whatsapp and Wechat. Instagram has got in Instagram Live, Stories and also 60 second videos. Facebook has introduced Facebook 360 video, Live video and now Lifestage which is a video-centric app for teenagers. Twitter has periscope. Youtube is second only to google as a search engine and is all about video.
Mobile phones are built to play 16:9 ratio videos on full screen and play responsively from all social sites with great ease. Development in compression technology has lead to videos becoming very small & shareable, yet maintaining a decent resolution. Videos are all over social media, and along with them are the share buttons. In todays age, videos are the most shared content out there and you have to have them to make your social more engaging and shareworthy.
4. Video can be plugged in anywhere
Its crazy how one finds videos absolutely anywhere. From places where you expect them like youtube channels to small google banner ads that have them! The development of GIF technology also helps the marketer to make high quality gifs that look just like videos and use them where videos cannot be used. From websites to tabs on FB pages and youtube channels, if you have a video you can plug it across various platforms and get much higher engagement that you would without them.
5. Video can be cost effective in terms of ROI
One might tend to think that the costs of making a good professional video would be prohibitive, especially to newer businesses. But developments in technology & good practices can help bring the cost of video to a very affordable rate. For larger businesses, concepts like fragmented videos help bring down costs and making use of shoot schedules wisely help get maximum out of your investment.
At the end of the day, videos are the best marketing investment you can do and will provide you a great ROI both directly and indirectly, helping you grow your business in the long term. And long-term steady growth is what every business owner looks for.