Why Video Marketing Can Not Be Ignored

By 2019, 80% of all web traffic is projected to consist of video content and it's been a long time coming for businesses in the know. However, there are still many people out there who believe that video marketing is just a good idea, but not best practice. They're wrong!

Creating quality video content has become more than that for every business to succeed in the digital realm — now it's essential if you want your digital presence to matter. It's a simple fact.

Don't Get Left Behind

Video marketing can no longer be ignored as part of your strategy by those who have been holding out and waiting for the right time to dive in. You're already falling behind the curve as far as the trend goes.

In fact, digital video marketing spending budgets have gone up from $2.0 billion in 2011 to $8.05 billion in 2016. That's a giant increase and one that is paying off for businesses in every industry.

The ROI is there for businesses who want to catapult their digital presence to the next level.

Video Marketing Improves Brand Recall

If you want audiences to remember your brand and share your content, video is the absolute king. Here are a few best practices to ensure that your videos matter to them:

1. Stay On Brand - Align your video content with your branding. Colors, fonts, and messaging should match up with your blog posts, banner ads, and web design.
2. Short And Simple - Sure, longer, more informational video can be valuable, but make sure to give people something that's easy to remember and share.
3. Focus On Audio - The voice and music you use should be high quality, and resonate with your target audience.

The SEO Factor

Adding just one video to your website can increase your chances of getting on the front page of Google by 53 times! That's just one video. Google rewards video content big time.

Why? Because people respond to high quality videos in a big way. They watch it, take it in, and it's easy to share with their friends and family.

Video content can be a great way to improve the SEO of your landing pages, blog, and home page. Try some A/B testing to see what great video marketing content can do for your SEO strategy

Use Video Content To Promote Other Content

Just like you can use a great infographic as a way to visually promote a case study, blog post, or landing page, you can use video marketing to turn up the heat.

When you're investing in a research study or a series of long-form content pieces, the challenge for marketers is how to promote them so as many people see and engage as possible.

Whether you're making the campaign investment for your blog or another site that will be linking to your site for PR purposes, utilizing video content will stretch that investment further.

Plan on incorporating it the next time you plan a campaign and make it standard operating procedure from here on out.

Increased Time On Site

Want a way to increase the time visitors are spending on your site? Video content is the way to do it.

People spend 2.6x more time on pages with video than without one. That means that conceptually, you can double your overall time on site in Google Analytics by adding video content to your website. That's pretty compelling.

And, as any digital marketer who's worth their weight can tell you, the more time someone spends on a website, the more likely they are to engage and the more likely they are to convert over time.

As we know, the biggest challenge is getting people to pay attention and video content absolutely increases the chances that the people visiting your site are actually paying attention to your messaging.

Social Media Demands Video Content

Especially when it comes to mobile, video content is what gets shared above text postings and links. It performs better than images as well.

HubSpot reports that 92% of mobile video customers share videos with others. That doesn't even account for those who are watching videos on their smartphones and showing the person next to them what they're viewing!

What happens when people share? They remember and they engage. The more comments you get, the more likely someone is to see your Facebook update.

People are about 10 times more likely to engage, embed, share, and comment on video versus blog posts and updates. The goal of content is for it to be seen and videos get a reaction.

It's More Affordable Than Ever

Creating quality video content in-house and through agencies used to be a fairly pricey affair and you had to be very careful not to blow the whole marketing budget in one fell swoop.

Through the magic of technology and the fact that more agencies are providing it as an essential service, the cost to create quality video content is less than it ever has been. The process has also been streamlined.

Many companies have gotten the system down to deliver great video content to you in as little time and with as much ease as a blog post. Instead of taking months and thousands of dollars, they can have it to you in weeks for a fraction of the cost, depending on how extensive you'd like the video to be.

Get Results

Don't know where to start? Have you been burned by video content in the past not living up to your expectations? That doesn't mean it's time to give up.

The best thing to do is go through a digital marketing agency that understands video marketing as part of the bigger picture and will incorporate it into a comprehensive social media, SEO, and SEM strategy. It should not be a standalone effort.

Great video content is only as good as the strategy behind it and like any other marketing effort, it takes planning, time, and a realistic budget. Make the investment in quality video content. It pays off in the long run and can have great results to show early on.