Syed Balkhi — April 3, 2018 — April 3, 2018
When it comes to content marketing, videos take a much bigger role than most other types of content. Video marketing grew rapidly over the past couple of years. Will it be able to keep up the pace in 2018?
There’s no doubt about the effectiveness of video marketing. In fact, it’s one of the most powerful content marketing strategies that most marketers are investing in without hesitation. Neil Patel is one of those marketers who plan on spending $ 144,000 on video marketing in 2018.
Why spend that much money to create videos? Because 90% of consumers find product videos to be helpful in their decision-making process. Which is probably the main reason behind why video marketers can generate 66% more qualified leads every year.
Clearly, every business could benefit from video marketing. If you plan on getting started with a video marketing campaign this year, here are a few trends that you should keep an eye out for.
Facebook Vs. YouTube
YouTube used to be the biggest and the best platform for video marketing, but now Facebook has been giving them a run for their money. After launching video as a content form on the social network, Facebook now generates over 8 billion average video views every day.
Facebook is much more effective at snackable videos than YouTube. These are shorter videos, with text, that gets shared across multiple profiles. For starters, the social network has a reach of over 2 Billion active users and the platform also provides you with easier ways to boost your video reach with affordable advertising. You also get better and more detailed analytics for your videos on Facebook. You can also easily team-up with influencers on Facebook to cross-promote video content as well.
Because of all these reasons and more, marketers will prioritize on Facebook video over YouTube this year to effectively promote brands and products.
More Instagram Stories
When Instagram copied Snapchat’s profile Stories feature, which allowed users to feature short videos and pictures temporarily to their followers, many thought it would fail. Well, they were wrong. In fact, Instagram Stories now see more daily users than Snapchat. 250 million daily users over the 166 million on Snapchat, to be exact.
Instagram Stories offers users and brands an easier way to create more engaging video clips. Unlike regular posts, these featured stories are highlighted on the followers’ home feeds to encourage them to view the video.
Brands are already using this feature to their advantage. This year, we’ll see more businesses joining Instagram to use this brilliant way to integrate video marketing with Instagram promotions.
The Rise Of Twitter TV
For some reason, many marketers seem to avoid Twitter claiming it as an ineffective platform for video promotions. It’s quite the contrary. Believe it or not, video is quite a strong medium of content on Twitter. Video content is viewed by more than 82% of Twitter users.
More brands are now pushing video content to their users on Twitter as well. Twitter is also planning to launch a live broadcasting section on the platform to promote live streaming on the micro-blogging site. This section, dubbed “Twitter TV” will stream different types of TV programmes live 24/7 to viewers.
Twitter also claims to have streamed over 800 hours of live content in Q1 2017 alone. With this new announcement, marketers will once again rally behind Twitter to start promoting video content.
Videos In Email Marketing
It’s a known fact that people hate reading long emails. This is why email marketers try to get their message across to their subscribers without taking up too much time. That’s why video is perfect for email marketing as well. There’s no better way to sum up a product and its features than a video.
For example, you can include explainer videos to showcase product features or embed a customer testimonial in your promotional emails to help users make better choices. Or you can use a mix of a video with a combination of a countdown timer to add scarcity to create the ultimate email that generates better results.
While many popular email marketing services provide easier ways to embed videos in emails, some services still advise against it since some email client apps have issues with handling embedded video scripts. Hopefully, things will finally change for the better this year.
Interactive Videos
Storytelling takes an important role in video marketing. Including a captivating story in your marketing can make a big difference for the success of your campaign. Many brands now use emotional stories and humor to influence the audience and create more memorable ads. Things will change in the near future.
Interactive videos are the future of storytelling. These videos allow you to add more than one narrative to your video marketing campaigns and also puts the viewer in control of the video to let them create their own journey.
Warner Bros. used this strategy to promote one of their movies with an interactive gamified video called Focus On The Con. This gave viewers an amazing experience of becoming a con artist by allowing them to make their own choices along the video.
Imagine using this same strategy to create virtual tours inside stores and shops. Or creating personalized marketing videos based on different user groups, age groups, and genders. Soon, we’ll see more interactive videos used for marketing than ever before.
Over To You
Like in most marketing strategies, innovation is the key to creating a successful video marketing strategy. Instead of copying others and creating the same old boring types of videos, find your own way to stand out and get people’s attention.
Whichever method or platform you plan on using, you should get started on creating videos before it’s too late and stay ahead of the competition.
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