Grow your business and encourage more time spent on your website with a video marketing strategy.
From the how-to and other informative videos we watch for work to social media videos we see at home, video content is an essential part of our day-to-day lives. According to a study from Wyzowl, people on average spend one and half hours a day watching some form of video content, and 72 percent of people said they would rather use video to learn about a product or service. Marketers who have adopted a video marketing strategy say it has helped grow their business and encouraged more time spent on their sites.
With the large influx of video content from social media providers and other businesses, it can be difficult to decide what kinds of videos stand out and which would work best for your own digital marketing strategy. To help you decide what type of video marketing strategy is best for your brand, Parallel Interactive has put together a list of the top forms of video used in digital marketing strategies as well as when and how to use them.
Corporate Videos
When looking to attract customers to your brand and products, video is the way to go. According to Wyzowl, 85 percent of people would like to see more video from brands in 2018. Types of videos that work well for businesses include product highlights, company culture, testimonials, and explainer animation videos. The reason? They all help viewers connect to your brand and the people who are already a part of it.
An added bonus of whatever type of video you choose is the ability to share them on your website and social platforms. This widespread exposure can help you reach more viewers, and ultimately, more potential buyers. However, not all video performs well, all the time. When creating your video marketing campaigns, it is important to remember to create different lengths and aspect ratios for your content, depending on what platform you are choosing to share it on.
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality (VR) is the newest video trend to fall into marketers’ laps, and it’s important to find ways to adapt the technology to your brand before your competitors. According to Entrepreneur, 2018 will see 171 million VR users. This massive pool of potential customers will only continue to grow, making planning for VR worthwhile. Here are three ways you can include VR in your video marketing strategy:
Try Before You Buy: The selling point of VR is getting to experience a product or service from a first-person perspective. Creating virtual experiences where your customers can interact with what you’re selling helps them make informed decisions about their purchases, increasing the odds they will buy.
Recently, Parallel Interactive developed a VR video for Hawthorne Cat, placing viewers behind the wheel of one of their 323 Next Generation Excavators to demonstrate the new 3D assist feature. VR allows potential customers to experience the machine first hand from the operator’s perspective.
Engaging Content: Take your customers on an engaging adventure with your product or service and let them see what your product is like while in use. Instead of filming a stationary video, where your customer is watching from one position, have the camera move throughout the demonstration as though the viewers are walking around the product or using it themselves.
Grow Emotional Connections: Virtual reality allows your customers to emotionally connect to your storytelling, putting them in the heart of your experience. A study from Customer Thermometer revealed that 55 percent of people valued a company that makes a positive difference in the world. By capturing a moment like this with VR, you are allowing the audience to be in your shoes during those impactful moments, giving them a more intimate, empathetic viewpoint of the positive changes you are making in the world.
Animated GIFs
GIFs have been around for more than 30 years, yet they are still hyper relevant to audiences today. In 2016 alone, the GIF search engine, Giphy, reached 100 million daily active users. GIFs are attractive to sellers and consumers alike because they are quick, easy to understand, and offer call-to-action capabilities. Text can sometimes be misinterpreted, but GIFs provide a chance to clarify tone or meaning to your audience, helping to avoid miscommunication.
Here are three ways you can use a GIF in your video marketing strategy today:
Explain a Process: People remember 20 percent of what they read online and 80 percent of what they see. Including a GIF increases the chances of people remembering your content and gives them a visual example of what to do once they start following your process. Text can sometimes be confusing, but images are straightforward.
Source: GitHub
Promote a Product or Service: GIFs are great ways to provide highlights about your products or services. Their frame-by-frame format allows your audience to focus on each feature longer than they would in a video, and the looping functionality allows them to see the feature in action again and again.
Source: Publicate.It
Post on Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more now support GIFs as a way to capture your audience’s attention. Posting with a GIF increases the likelihood that your target audience will take more time to view your post and share it with their friends.
Source: Medium
