How to Leverage Video Marketing in Business? Take these five Video Marketing Trends, Rubbish the old outdated methods of conversion and accelerate your marketing in 2018

By Santosh Kanekar

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80 percent said Video.

Great, but what was the Question?

"Where both text and video are available on the same web page, how would you prefer to learn about a product or service?"

What really? But I thought Video was only cat videos on YouTube and those gamers doing funny videos, You may say.

Nope.

Video is In and how!

It is mainstream and it is a central pivot in your online marketing efforts.

For years, TV ruled isn't it? The only difference is now anyone with a camera is a content producer and anyone with smartphone can be a producer or consumer.

By 2019, according to Cisco's Visual Networking Index, global consumer Internet video traffic will account for 80 percent of all consumer Internet traffic.

But, how does one implement Video inside Marketing?

Take these 5 Video Marketing Trends, Rubbish the old outdated methods of conversion and Accelerate your marketing in 2018

Video in Email
Most marketers have discovered, long back, that picture rich emails don't go through email filters, and even if they do, the output in html code looks worse than plain text.
Smart marketers had leveraged plain text email with attention-grabbing headlines and story-based email body to migrate the prospects through the marketing funnel.

Now comes the latest advantage: Embedded video in email. Marketers can directly communicate with the consumer, make it human as well as use rich media to persuade their prospects.
Wistia calls them Video Voicemails. Video in email is the hottest addition to a marketer's toolkit. Make use of it before the whole world latches on to it.

Action Tip:

Get your CRM and Email marketing team to experiment with Video in mail. Check for engagement and click through scores. If the scores improve, then you have a winner in your hands.

Video on website

Gone are the days of static pages. In the late 1990s or early 2000s, people enthusiastically used to visit websites. With the Content explosion, everyone's inbox is flooded with content. Today if anyone visits a website it's because they have clicked a link either on social media or email.

Video on Website takes engagement to a different level. Imagine a customer clicking through and coming to your landing page. What would you want to greet her with? A static plain vanilla page or a personal greeting video which draws your customer into the offer?
Video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more.

Video on the website also helps in explaining routine or sequential steps. E.g. B2B customers routinely use Video to demonstrate their use case which might otherwise occupy reams of pages on the website.

Action Tip:

Having a Video on the Landing Page is a must. A/B test your landing pages with and without Video and see which scores better. Once you are convinced, explore how each of your content pages can incorporate more video.

Live video explosion

Did you know 80% of people prefer to watch live video from a brand rather than reading a blog, and 82% would take live video over social posts?

People spend 3x more time watching a Facebook video that's live compared to one that's no longer live. Facebook sends notifications to your followers when you go live. You can also see who is watching and view their comments. Live Video creates excellent opportunities for Q & A sessions and live interactions.

Live Video helps the customer to interact with you and to know you at a human level. This personal interaction creates more in-depth likeability than any print campaigns. We all know that people do business with other people and Live Video helps in cementing this relationship.

Action Tip:

Use Facebook Live and see your engagement rates skyrocket. If you want to run a webinar, use Facebook Live video streaming and also record the content for sending on email.

Native Video
Earlier, the only way you could put videos on Facebook or LinkedIn was by posting YouTube links. No more.
Native Videos are videos which are uploaded to the social media platform like LinkedIn or Facebook directly. Native videos on Facebook have 10 times higher reach compared to YouTube links.

We all know Facebook is massively promoting Native video. Everyday it sends video recommendations along with feed details.
LinkedIn has recently enabled video to be posted directly from the app.
At the same time, the same content rules apply in video too. The kind of videos which you would post on Facebook would be different than LinkedIn.

Action Tip:
If you have critical business videos which help solve consumer issues, edit it to suit the platform and upload directly to LinkedIn. If you are doing it on Facebook, remember that 80% of Facebook videos are seen without sound, so captions are a must.

Video On-the-Go

Over half of video content is viewed on mobile and 92 percent of mobile video viewers share videos with others.

This marks a significant shift from the long dominance of desktop over video to an on-the-go mobile which serves up video anytime you want. Haven't you watched so many commuters on subway or buses watching videos on their mobiles? Makes you wonder the role of billboards if everyone is hooked onto watching their mobile.

More videos will be created and consumed on Mobile.

With mobile dominating, the format also changes.

More than 10 billion vertical videos are consumed every single day on Snapchat

Implication? More people are consuming Vertical Video format than before.

Also, the duration needs to reflect the traffic source. Animoto's survey reveals that 66% people prefer Videos to be less than 1 minute when watched on mobile. Make it short and pointed.

Action Tip:

If you are hosting a video on a website, use Google Analytics to understand how do your visitors engage with your content: Desktop or Mobile? If it is mobile, you need to have Vertical videos on your responsive website.

Santosh Kanekar

Startup Mentor, Leadership Coach and Author

Author of Stop Reset Start, Growth Rocket Launcher, and Leadership Coach, Santosh Kanekar founded BeLive Corp, which advices many Global Hedge and Alternative Funds based in New York, London, Singapore and Hong Kong. He regularly advises Startups on Business Planning and business acceleration.

He has coached hundreds of individuals and businesses to deliver high-performance results and launch their own Growth Rocket.

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