When it comes to online marketing, many businesses don’t realise how video marketing can dramatically improve their results. Whether your current activities include social media, email marketing or just focusing on converting website sales, here are 7 reasons why video is critical to online marketing…
1: Get Found In Google Search (SEO)
Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO for short) is about optimising your website so that you appear in Google search results when a customer searches for the services you offer. Google uses the amount of time a visitor is on a page for as a measure for page quality, and how likely it is to appear at the top of the results. Sites with video are known to increase time on a site by 20 times!
The presence of video itself affects the most important SEO ranking factor: content. Video is evidence of quality content, and as part of a media mix on a site, it helps send signals to search engines that your page or site contains rich media relevant to search requests. It is expected that search engines will continue to increase the ranking factor of including video as consumers demand video in search results. So having video on your site will boost page rank.
SEO marketing can be expensive, yet it might not be as effective as you want if you don’t use video on your site!
2: Video Builds Trust With Potential Clients
An important part of the decision process before buying is trust. Is the company you are about to buy from genuine? A short video provides an insight into your brand. Who you are and what you do (and why they should buy from you!). People who like a video are more likely to like you… and buy from you!
One way to use video to build trust is through a case study. Traditionally case studies are presented as powerpoint presentations or documents. Using a video keeps the viewers attention for longer, letting your showcase the results you achieved. Here’s an example of how a case study video can look:
3: Education Of The Benefits
“I just don’t get it!” cries the customer “I understand what you sell but why will it benefit me?”
Two minutes later after watching an explainer video, the customer may be reaching for their money! It maybe that customers don’t see a need for your service (when actually they do need it!) or they don’t understand the service you offer. Either way, a short explainer video is the most effective way to educate customers on what you offer and the benefits to them – and it sure beats a 30 minute power-point presentation!
This explainer video for EATFIRST is a great example of how video can be used effectively to explain how a service works in under 2 minutes.
4: Increase Website Conversion From Visitors To Customers
Once you’ve used SEO, Social Media, Advertising or another form of marketing to drive visitors to your site you then need to convert them to a sale. Video can play a crucial part in converting visitors to customers. After watching a short video on your site, a customer is more likely to see the benefits and want to click on the ‘Call Us’ or ‘Buy Now’ button.
Organisational housewares retailer StacksAndStacks.com reported that visitors were 144% more likely to purchase after seeing a product video than those who did not.
5: [VIDEO] Content Is King
Marketers accept that content is king. But what type of content?
Over the last 5 years content has become more visual – from plain text Twitter messages for example to posts with images to animated GIF images and now video. If you want to provide good quality content that people want then the best visual content is video.
Embedded videos on websites can increase traffic up to 55%
6: Attention Spans are Shrinking
Bombarded with information online, we now [apparently] have a shorter attention span than goldfish! If you want to grab your customer’s attention on your website or social media, it needs to be visual. While your competitors may have their sites full of wordy text that nobody will read, use video to grab your visitor’s attention and guide them towards a sale.
7: Familiarisation Breeds Loyalty
So far, we have talked about finding NEW customers (or in fact, customers finding you and then converting them!) but what about repeat business? Video marketing allows customers to become more brand loyal. The more a customer interacts with you online and the more visual you are then the greater the chance they will want to buy from you rather than your [less interactive] competition.
Video marketing is growing in importance and if you would like some free advice on how using video could improve your marketing activity then you will find our free video marketing eBook helpful:
Thanks for reading!
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