The Power of Video – How You Drive Engagement To New Levels

We are all seeing more video content out there, whether across social channels or embedded on websites. People love video, it’s far more engaging than still images and as marketers, we need to do everything we can to drive up engagement.

YouTube The Search Engine

YouTube is basically a giant search engine for video content, and a really good one at that. We all use it and know just how much content is on there.

It is vast!

Think about this… Would you rather watch someone demonstrate how to cook the perfect BBQ steak and see it actually done, or simply read about it?

Depending on where you are, it may be easier to just read about it, but we will always get more from watching video than still image.

Why?

Video is considerably more influential than just words. According to Forrester Research, one minute of video is equivalent to 1.8 million words.

If a picture speaks a thousand words, you can see how much more influence video can have by comparison.

And as YouTube is a search engine, if you write good descriptions and use appropriate tags, you increase the opportunities for your content to be seen.

How Engaging Is Video?

Very!

It has far greater capability to engage us emotionally and it’s that emotional engagement which is key for brands in marketing.

If you can capture that emotional engagement, you have every opportunity to convert that to your ultimate goal.

To illustrate how engaging video really is, I’ve prepared a comparison.

Take a look at the image below.

It’s beautiful, and I can write some words as a title to accompany the image to help align emotion from the image to the reader.

Beautiful Bluebell Forest In Early Spring

The image alone is picturesque, it’s full of nature and as human beings, we have an innate connection to nature. So it should be pleasing to look at by itself.

If I want to really maximise engagement, I can go for a short video. Check it out below.

The Secret Bluebell Forest

As you can see, it’s far more engaging.

You see so much more, a sense of movement, depth, changing light and shadows, textures. On top of this, music to enhance the visual experience. Music alone can drive emotion, combine the two and you have a winning combination.

Of course, it only took a minute or so to take the still image on my phone and another two minutes to process it on my computer and then embed into this article.

By comparison, it took me about 20 minutes to fly my drone through the forest, another hour and a half to process the video and get it embedded into this website.

You will end up investing a lot more time in video content, but the results will be worth it!

Key Video Content Statistics

Its no wonder video on landing pages can increase conversion rates by up to 80% (Source: unbounce). On the basis you have engaged your audience emotionally, you have a much better chance of converting.

In terms of statistics around video content, check out 10 key ones below:

• Featuring video on a landing page can increase conversion rates by 80%
• Customers who view a demo video are nearly 2 times more likely to make a purchase than those who didn’t view
• 4 times as many customers prefer watching a video about a product as opposed to reading about it
• ‘How to’ searches on YouTube have grown by 70% year on year (remember my example earlier, how to bbq the perfect steak)
• 52% of marketers describe video as the content with the best ROI
• Video ads have the highest clickthrough rates of all digital ad formats at 1.84%
• Brands that use video marketing increase their year-on-year revenue nearly 50% faster than brands that don’t
• Before reading any text content, 60% of web visitors watch a video if available
• 85% of Facebook videos are watched with the sound muted
• Autoplay is horrendous – 82% close their browser or webpage as a result of an autoplaying video

Your Starting Point – Define Your Objective

When you look to create video content, ask yourself what your actual objective behind the video is.

Are you…

• looking to demonstrate a product
• creating a video testimonial
• giving more detail about the services you provide

Whatever the objective is, think about how it can enhance or add value to your brand whilst giving value to the viewer.

Value can be defined in a number of ways, essentially though, make it worthwhile to your viewer.

Emotional Engagement

Emotionally engaging your viewer is a key objective.

We can do this in several ways and ultimately we want to pull on emotion.

What do we mean by emotion?

Emotion is a strong feeling deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.

So how do we trigger strong feelings or moods?

There are a number of techniques such as:

• humour – think about different types of humour and how that can relate to your brand personality, is it right for you?
• intensity of content – think about how intense your content should be and how it relates to the story in your video
• music – think about the tone you want to set and how that can be enhanced with choice of music
• colour – think about colour use in the video. All colours associate to different emotions in the brain (you can read more about that in my article – How to use images to increase engagement levels
• subtitles – think about how these can enhance the messaging of your content (some people will watch with the sound muted)

If you can trigger a memory in this process, great! You will have engaged the viewer to an even greater extent. As a result, you have their attention and they become highly receptive to your message.

Above all, remember your objective and ask yourself if you are being true to that. It’s easy to get side tracked so stay on course with detailed planning.

The Secret Bluebell Forest – Example

If we look at my video of the bluebells and take it back to the beginning from my perspective.

What was my objective?

It was to have a really engaging piece of video that could easily demonstrate a considerable difference between a still image of a bluebell forest, and video footage.

• My objective – is clear and focused.
• The colours in the video are predominantly green and blue, known psychologically to have a calming and trusting effect.
• My choice of music is to enhance that feeling of tranquility.
• The pacing of the video is slow and steady. This helps achieve a sense of peace. It’s as if you are walking there yourself, able to take in all the senses from similar real life experiences, or even past memories.
• Think about your title as well, what more can you do interest your viewer into watching your video? I could have just called it A Bluebell Forest. By throwing in the word ‘Secret’ it becomes interesting, enticing.

Use every tool within your marketing knowledge to extract the best you can. And depending on your content, consider a behind the scenes video of what you just published.

If people are engaged with what they just read, a chance to see behind the scenes making of it will engage them even more.

I would love to have made a behind the scenes one myself but I just didn’t have time.

Sometimes you have to make the best from your available resources and just go for it. Otherwise, you can spend forever working on a 10/10 piece and by the time you publish it, the moment has passed and all opportunity lost.

Remember, you can always keep adding to your content so revisit it and update it. Planning ahead will ensure you get the most from all of your campaigns.

Supporting the objective of my video content is this article. It’s about video marketing that drives emotional engagement. If I can demonstrate to you the difference and power of video content, then you’re likely to be more receptive to what I’m writing!

LinkedIn Video Content

Through all social channels, including LinkedIn, we are seeing a lot more video posts by users. It’s definitely more engaging than simply reading text.

There are some basics to get right.

Before uploading the video, just do some basic trimming of it. This is easy to do on mobile phones without editing software.

Depending on your brand and what you are going for, it’s probably not going to add much value by seeing you reach out at the end of the video to press the ‘stop recording button’ and a freeze-frame of your concentrated face!

Just trim it back a couple of seconds and remove that last part.

Equally, a lot of social feeds default to playing with the sound muted, always have that in mind.

In a business environment, some people may not have their sound turned on for professional reasons, so always think about putting in some subtitles. It allows them to be engaged at their own pace and on their own terms.

Think about the length of video too. This also relates to what your content is so will have an impact on the length of video you commit to.

Remember, people are generally pressed for time, so the quicker you can get to the point, maintain the emotional engagement, the more likely you are to convert that engagement.

LinkedIn has recently launched sponsored video content, so it’s important to take note of the following statistics which relate to ads:

• 33% stop watching a video after 30 seconds, 45% by one minute and 60% by two minutes
• 66% of consumers prefer video under 60 seconds
• The most successful ads are less than 15 seconds long

Don’t be afraid to show the personality behind your brand either, ultimately that’s what people want to see. Its your key differentiator straight away, you can then build in your USPs around that.

In Conclusion

Let them in.

Invite them to a more personal side of your brand. If you make someone feel welcome, your chance of converting them is even higher.

Video content gives you the opportunity to share your brand personality in a far more engaging way than text alone ever can.

Remember, one minute of video is equivalent to 1.8 million words. Think what you can achieve with that!