Video Is the New Star of a Small Business’s Marketing Strategy

Video is the new star of a small business’s marketing strategy. In fact, 96% of B2B marketers today engage in video content marketing, and nearly three-quarters of marketers say that video marketing brings positive results to their company. Video marketing is “efficient” too. “A minute of video is the equivalent of 1.8 million words,” says Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research. Those 1.8 million words translate to roughly 3,600 pages of web content, and if you were creating content at the speed of a single web page per hour, it would take nearly five months to produce enough content to create the same impact as 60 seconds of video. If you haven’t added video to your marketing mix, here are more reasons why now is the time to push the video play button.

Video ROI vs. Content ROI

An infographic from MarketingProfs shows the key differences in tracking the ROI of text-based assets and video assets. For text-based content, once syndicated, it’s difficult to track their success, but with video, that’s not the case; 40% of video marketers can track various metrics across all channels for video, while 16% of non-video users have that ability. In addition, the websites of non-video users only convert at 2.9%, whereas the websites of video marketers have a 4.6% conversion rate—representing a 65% increase in conversion rate for videos compared to text-based assets. Non-video users are also spending an average of $115 per lead, compared to just $93 per lead for companies using video. The companies using video require 37% fewer unique site visits to generate their marketing response.

Video Drives Engagement

Visual content, including photos and videos, drives engagement. One month after Facebook launched the Timeline profile format for brands, companies reported a 65% increase in interactive content (video and photo) engagement. In terms of advertising, the average engagement rate for rich media ads such as video ads is 16.85%, compared to 1.62% for mobile ads, and 2.14% for standard banner ads. Nearly 93% of shoppers say visuals are the most influential factor affecting their purchasing decisions, and the viewers of e-commerce videos are 1.7 times more likely to make a purchase than non-viewers. [WooZoneProducts asin=”B004ORLYWI”][/WooZoneProducts] MetLife Hong Kong launched a video marketing campaign titled, “My Dad’s Story: Dream for My Child.” In the video, a father reads an essay his daughter wrote about him. She describes her father as “the smartest,” “most clever,” and “Superman.” She goes on to say she knows he lies about being tired, having money, and having a job—as part of the sacrifices he makes for her. The campaign then directed viewers to visit a website where parents could submit their dreams for their children for a chance to win a three-year endowment plan to save for their children’s college. This video engaged more than 300 million people, with over 27 million views on Facebook and YouTube: 7 million viewers shared the video, 268 million read about the video through nearly 100 news reports, and 280,000 visited the MetLife microsites in Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

Video Helps Brand Awareness

Video can work alongside your other assets to help build brand awareness. In fact, a study by On Device Research showed 92% of all mobile video viewers share mobile video with others. That means your video content is likely to get shared across multiple channels, furthering your reach and expanding your brand awareness. The majority of those sharers shared video on Facebook and similar social websites, while 44% simply passed the mobile device to their friend for viewing. The number of people watching YouTube every day is up 40% year over year since March 2014, and the number of hours people watch YouTube videos is up 60% year of year. YouTube mobile reaches more 18 to 49 year olds than any cable network in the U.S.

Video Improves SEO

It makes sense that because Google owns YouTube, including YouTube videos on your landing pages will help boost your Google ranking. While no one knows exactly what goes into a ranking, we do know it’s a combination of factors. Forrester Research also says the chances of getting a page one ranking with the search engine increases about 50 times with video. [WooZoneProducts asin=”1542618118″][/WooZoneProducts] Links also play a role in SEO, and according to SEOmoz, blog posts that include video attract three times the inbound links compared to blog posts that do not include video.

Video: A Smart Marketing Strategy

By taking the time to learn more about video marketing, and analyzing video marketing trends, you can fine-tune your company’s marketing strategy. Use analytics to determine when and where your customers are dropping off turning a video, at what point in the sales and marketing funnel they are driven to make a purchase, etc., and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly. Video marketing can take your marketing campaigns to new levels, and when done well, your video marketing ideas can be repurposed to create additional marketing assets that will stretch your budget.