Alan DraperMarketers are constantly seeking ways to increase engagement with their content and video is fast becoming the best way to achieve it.
According to eMarketer, daily time spent with digital video has risen from 6 minutes in 2010 to 55 minutes for the average US adult in 2014, revealing a growing consumer preference for video content. This is because video provides the opportunity to create engaging moments that entertain and educate, increasing its authenticity for the viewer. It also appears to aid message acceptance and retention. In fact, an Unruly report found enjoyment of a brand video increases purchase intentby 97% and brand association by 139%.
Whether you are just getting started with video or looking to add more to your mix, here are seven tips to incorporate video into your content marketing program:
1.Identify where video makes sense in your brand’s story. Product demonstrations, customer testimonials, expert interviews and case studies are great ways to both inform and entertain using video.
2. Talk with your company’s subject matter experts to understand how you can use video to convey expertise. Perhaps video can be used to visually break down a complex subject or describe a new product or service.
3. Create videos about topics that are highly relevant in web-based searches – what is researched before the first point of contact. Then perform video search optimization so that your video content ranks successfully.
4. Reuse with purpose. Just because you made a video for the web doesn’t mean it can’t be used elsewhere. Think of how you can edit existing video content for wider distribution.
5. In video marketing, quantity can often reduce cost. Identify how many videos you plan to make, say in a year. Discuss ways to develop a template approach with your production partner. Reusing openers, closers and graphics will help maximize your production budget so that you can create more video content.
6. Consider creating a video with existing photography or graphic assets you already own. Reusing product animations or b-roll can be the basis for a video.
7. Capture stronger marketing metrics about who watched the videos, for how long and in what context. If you understand what is connecting with the audience, you can offer more video content at the right place and the right time.
By incorporating more video into your content marketing program with these tips, you will increase engagement with your target audience and drive real business results.
To help you leverage your video content, JPL has developed A Content Marketer’s Guide for Video eBook series. The three-part series provides practical guidance on integrating video content that achieves higher performance results.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Alan Draper.
Learn how to publish your content on B2C
Join our Telegram channel to stay up to date on breaking news coverage
Add B2C to your Google News Feed
Very useful, well written article. I would add the following anecdote to illustrate that caution for reusable openers.
We were contracted to do the web deployment for a series of 10 corporate videos of 3-4 minutes each. The first had a very large number of views and great user view-through. On each subsequent clip the audience halved. So that by clip 7 the audience was miniscule and the median view-through was down to 8 seconds. The last three of the series were rightfully cancelled.
Why the precipitous falloff? It wasn’t the content, which increased in importance as the series progressed. It was the dang 50 second opener, which the sponsor insisted on using over and over to justify the large expense. The open was beautiful, will likely win somew awards, but the audience could have cared less about “wonderful traditions” after the first view. Rather than dispensing common sense, the production company went along with a plan that was counterproductive.
My advice is to get right to the topic. Use an opener to stimulate interest for THAT SPECIFIC CLIP. If you can tease a message point to pull users through to the end, such as “bonus pool will be announced later in this video,” so much the better. But the opener has got to be short and to the point, or your content will be lay dormant and unwatched. A 3-4 second stinger is great. 10 seconds is an eternity in today’s world of short attention spans. 50 seconds is ridiculous, an exercise in self indulgence that insults the audience.
Randy, your advice is spot on. Openers are to maintain brand consistency and tease the content quickly. Incorrect usage defeats their purpose and hinders the viewer from getting to what they really want to watch. Thanks for your comment! I’m glad to hear you found the article useful.
Good article Jessica. So happy to see the emphasis in point #3 – responding to what is being researched. I am putting a course together at the moment that will press the value of a three point strategy.
1) Learn what your micro moments answers your potential customers are researching
2) Produce video to address those questions (in our case the emphasis is on educating rather than selling)
3) Work with an agency such as yours to get that video content consumed
As you say, in a world of micro moments Randy’s point is bang on as well.
Let me know if you would like me to keep you in the loop as roll out the course. We will be creating versions for different target audiences so there might be the opportunity to reference JPL in a case study as we create the version focused on skill sets for brand marketers.
Again, thanks for the timely post.
Cheers,
Dave Howard
@momentstorm
Hi Dave, Glad you found the article useful for your course development!