If you thought video is the future, I have a funny feeling that it’s already here and that we are all late for the party (unless you are already doing well with video).
According to this cool infographic by Maryam Moshin of Oberlo, more than 85% of users in the United States (and we aren’t even talking about the rest of the world which is just as hungry for video content.
A study by Cisco reveals that traffic from live internet videos will grow by 15 times in the five-year period from 2017 to 2022 and account for 17% of the total internet video traffic share by 2022.
It’s not just that brands, marketers, and entrepreneurs have taken a special interest in the video; customers don’t want anything less.
Clearly, you don’t need any more convincing that you need videos (all kinds of videos, peppered across the various stages of your marketing funnels). Hopefully, you are working to include videos for your branding, marketing, and sales processes.
Remember that you don’t much to start making videos, except for showing up. Plus, there are several ways to do videos on a budget.
If you haven’t started yet, here are a few types of video content you can try to create without breaking the bank.
Create Videos for Products & Services
According to SmartInsight & Accenture, at least 90% of the customers today are more likely to buy when companies or brands create videos to showcase products or services.
About 48% of consumers say that they want videos to help them with their decision making to reflect the products/services they’re interested in.
Another 43% of customers surveyed want interactive videos in order to allow them to decide what information they want to view and when.
According to a study by Wistia, the average time spent on pages with video is 7 minutes and 21 seconds and the average time spent on pages without video is 2 minutes and 48 seconds.
People spent on average 2.6x more time on pages with video than without.
Now, that’s saying something, eh?
In a study of the top 100 pages that Wistia did a study on (the blue lines indicate pages with video on them), it’s clear that videos make your pages sticky. There’s more engagement and people tend to last longer on those pages with videos on them.
Now, this applies to landing pages leading to better conversions as well.
How exactly can you use product videos? Ideas for creating product videos, you ask?
- Showcase your products and services with short, snappy, videos (those that are almost like video ads).
- Create product update videos with regular videos on new features that you’d ship for your products on a regular basis.
- Create explainer videos to deep dive into product features that aren’t exactly obvious for your customers.
- Create product videos with tips, insights, and cool ways to use your products or services.
Use Video for 1-to-1 Selling & Video Prospecting
Do you use emails for sales prospecting? Then note that long emails are boring to read (unless you have Joanna Weibe (of CopyHacker fame) skills or if you are literally writing out a $100 check to the person you are writing the long email to.
Image Credits: HippoVideo
Try an email with a video embedded in it along with a CTA and you boost the potential of your prospecting email manifold.
That’s not just heresy.
According to HubSpot, using video in emails used for prospecting (and I am sure this applies to any kind of email you send with the intention of having people to click through and take action) gets results.
Sales reps who use videos for prospecting, relationship-building, and sales emails see 5x higher open rates and 8x higher open-to-reply rates.
On top of all that, let’s be honest. When you do sales prospecting with videos, you are going to stand out, look interesting, and you are getting as close to “being in person” as possible.
Videos — with you on them — just make everything so much more human, personable, and interesting.
Collect Video Testimonials. Show them Off
Collecting video testimonials from your happy customers is one of the easiest ways to collect some smart and honest videos that you could practically use everywhere online, across all stages of your sales funnel.
Not only are video testimonials easier to create but you’d also be able to boost your conversion rates, engagement, and build up the “trust factor” much better than whatever else you’d do.
Further, you don’t really have to make it hard to collect video testimonials from your customers. All you have to do is to share a link and collect the testimonials by using tools like HippoVideo, for instance.
Start a YouTube Channel. Create Dedicated Videos For The Channel
Don’t the mistake of thinking that YouTube is full of crazy, aimless, and uninterested millennials, cat video aficionados, and just those who thumb through #supercarfails.
It’s a myth that only millennials love YouTube (just in case you were thinking). According to ThinkWithGoogle:
- According to ComScore, YouTube reaches over 95% of online adults, 55+ and those who are over 35+ in a month.
- From 2015-2016, time spent on YouTube grew 80% faster among adults 55+ than among adults overall.
- From 2015-2016, time spent on YouTube grew 40% faster among adults who were 35+ than among adults overall.
Over 50% of all age groups are YouTube users. Older groups use the app less than younger, though the proportion of YouTube usage among all age groups is strong; two-thirds of 65-74 year-olds and 79% of 65-75s are users, which are incredibly strong figures for these age groups.
It’s those younger age groups, in which over 90% of Americans are YouTube users, where the platform has its most-committed user base, however.
YouTube is clearly one of the most effective channels to reach US consumers of all types.
Image Source: We are Flint
In the United Kingdom (across age groups), YouTube is the most preferred followed by other social networks such as Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat.
Image source: We are Flint
The UK demographics for YouTube usage is dominated by people between the age groups of 18-44, equally distributed between men and women, and YouTube usage is the highest for those with an income of £48,000+ per year.
As for your business, it only makes sense to have a presence on Youtube. More than 83% of marketers believe that video is an increasingly important content form to help improve the personalization of marketing efforts, boost conversions, and to help strengthen their digital marketing efforts.
Read:
6 ways to monetize videos without relying on YouTube
Go big on LiveStreams (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter & More)
Do you know what’s cool about live streams?
They are as real as they can get to actually being in the room with that particular someone. They are raw, unedited, natural, and absolutely human. You’d never get a cleaner and a more honest version of the person you are listening to (be it businesses and individuals) if it weren’t for live streams.
Most major platforms (at least those that you’d probably have an active social media presence on) have ways to allow you to do live streams. In most cases, you don’t need much except an account on the platform (like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter), a high-quality mic, and you.
You’d need software to live stream. Here are a few you can use:
According to LiveStream,
- Nielsen’s U.S. Video 360 Report 2018 found that 42% of the population in the U.S. has now live-streamed online content — a significant rise from 25% in 2017.
- Conviva’s 2018 State of the Streaming TV Industry report found that viewing hours of live video content rose 65% from 2017 to 2018, accounting for the “largest global surges in viewership throughout 2018.”
- According to a survey by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, 47% of live streaming video viewers worldwide are streaming more live video compared with a year ago.
- Nearly as many (44%) said they watch less live TV as a result of live streaming.
Needless to say, if you have a live stream, you’ll also earn an audience for it. But the goodness of live streams doesn’t end here.
- You can repost your live streams and get even more audience.
- You can record and upload your live streams on the same (or other platforms). For instance, a Facebook live stream can be uploaded to YouTube
Read:
Nearly 2 billion people have watched Facebook Live broadcasts. It’s time to use it for your business. See How B2B Brands are Successfully Using Facebook Live Videos
Start Webinars. Repurpose Webinars
As long as you don’t do shady things with webinars like wasting everyone’s one hour with the entire length of the webinar being nothing but a disguised pitch for your products and services, webinars hold promise.
They are an incredible way to put yourself out there, share some valuable content, and grow an audience base.
Webinars can help you create spectacular content after building up some anticipation, establish you as an expert, communicate with hundreds of people worldwide, and also allow you to sell (without being too pushy).
You can repurpose webinars easily with Descript and convert them into valuable and concise content.
There are at least 10 more reasons why Webinars great for your business. Learn how to do good webinars and see how some brands are killing it with webinars.
But you are way smarter, aren’t you?
Instead of just letting a webinar fade into the oblivion, you can record webinars and use webinars as more content for your business.
- Record webinars and upload them to YouTube.
- Package your webinars and make them available for your website visitors or your community to access on-demand, much like SEMrush does with SEMrush Webinars
- Use webinars as lead magnets to grow your email list .
Read:
Comprehensive Guide to Evergreen Webinars for SaaS: Sell, Scale, and Skyrocket Growth on Autopilot
The Anatomy of a Successful Webinar for #SaaS Companies
Create a B2B SaaS Sales Strategy from Scratch: And Put It To Work
How To Launch Your Webinar Campaign on Time and Budget
Got a Community? Create user Generated Content (Videos)
Adweek found that 85% of consumers find visual user-generated content more influential than brand-created content.
It’s just the way it is. We tend to trust communities more than we trust brands. If you do have a community (dedicated customers, vendors, partners, and other stakeholders), you can leverage the power of community to create several pieces of content that come from the users (and not you).
As Chris McCormick of BuzzSumo points out major brands like Coca Cola (share a Coke), Adobe and Starbucks have all launched overwhelmingly successful UGC campaigns.
Kimberlee Morrison of Adweek writes:
Another stumbling block in the creation of UGC is that consumers feel they aren’t given enough guidelines for creating reviews or other content. More than 50 percent of consumers want some direction, but only 16 percent of brands provide any.
It’s important to let your community how exactly they should go about videos, video testimonials, or anything else you want from them. There are several smart ways to go about gathering this data such as video testimonials
Be sure to create branding kits, suggestions, tips, and instructions to make sure you get the best of UGC in the form of videos.
How do you plan to use video for your business?
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