Video is the most highly consumed digital media, with 300 hours of it being uploaded to YouTube every minute. Businesses not adapting their content marketing to include video aren’t reaping the engagement they could be and are missing out on those crucial conversions. Static content is useful for static views, such as an Instagram grid overview or a thumbnail, but video as an active media on websites and Facebook feeds can be extremely useful to a business. Video can positively affect your search engine optimisation, your social media engagement and reach, and buying behaviours that influence conversion when implemented correctly.
Using video content on your website
Your search engine optimisation has no doubt been carefully formulated and maintained for some time, but without video you are not achieving its full potential. Google’s algorithm now looks for what is deemed ‘quality content’ over keyword density, because this kind of content is exactly what its’ searchers, and your traffic, are looking for. Google’s trawling and indexing will identify your pages with video and favour them above other factors such as keywords, pushing your site higher up the search engine results. Adding a video to your websites sees your traffic spend as much as 80% more time on it, which of course gives them far more time to learn about your services, thereby increasing the chance of an enquiry.
Uploading your video to multiple platforms including social media, YouTube, and your website, will positively affect your search engine ranking, too. The more times you upload your video, the more times Google will index it and note it as dynamic content, leading it to feature your content sources higher up its search rankings. This can bring in the all-important click-throughs, but it’s important to note that your video needs to be mobile optimised, because 42% of Britons use their smartphone or other mobile devices to watch clips online. Dodge the duplicate content when uploading, by this we mean using differing titles and descriptions for each upload, to keep your video marketing performing perfectly.
Video and social media algorithms
Interestingly, social media platforms like Facebook are moving away from their initial algorithm that placed a high importance upon the presence of video on the news feed. Now, Mark Zuckerberg himself took to the platform to inform us that its main focus was shifting ‘from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions’. This ends the algorithm’s favouring of videos, but this also raises a new and beneficial challenge for businesses.
Videos still have a positive impact on buying behaviours and are still entertaining, informative, and persuasive. Rather than focussing on likes and general acceptance of your video posting, you need to encourage engagement. Comments and shares are far more preferable to likes, because this kind of social engagement pushes your content onto the friends’ newsfeed of the participating audience. Seeking to engage and communicate rather than just be present can not only alter your content marketing, but your brand.
This may be beneficial for engagement baiting like Facebook-based competitions. This won’t work on Instagram due to its inability to share across profiles, but the ‘like this post, tag a friend, and share to win’ format performs exceptionally well on Facebook. Demonstrating value yet also an incentive to engage will bring about far more interaction on your video content, pandering to Facebook’s new focus while still making your content work for you.
Videos and buying behaviours
While algorithms may change, there is no denying that videos affect buying habits and trust in your business. Video content shows a certain pride, investment, and effort made, helping to craft a well-rounded brand image that will keep your clients engaged and placing value in your services. Interestingly, 81% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a video. By posting a video on your products and services, you immediately invite your traffic into your world of influence and expertise. By sharing your professionalism in an engaging format, you greatly increase your chance of engagement and enquiry. The way this works is that our brains enjoy narratives and puzzles and the stimulation of imagery and audio ques. Informational videos tend to work best when our brains are in the ‘softer’ stage of interest, which is when we just become aware of a product or service, rather than the hard sell technique. By adopting video content into your digital strategy, you can shape and predict your traffics’ buying and viewing habits, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow into an enquiry.
How to use video marketing
Presenting a content journey
Video marketing is great for building your brand, but it is also extremely effective at showcasing products and services. While simply informational videos aren’t the most engaging, videos that take their traffic on a journey are. Videos can be centred around any topic, but you will experience the most conversions when you follow a 3-step formula: present a problem, offer the solution, propose the call the action. By taking your clients on this journey and guiding them into questioning their own related target area, you immediately plant the seed that leads to an enquiry. If you add value to a service by presenting it as something worth investing viewership in, then you’re prompting your traffic to see it as valuable. By leading instead of pushing, you create a willingly captive audience already a little invested in what you have to offer.
Demonstrating your brand
However, you don’t necessarily have to always centre your video content strategy around products and services. Video marketing is a great way to humanise your business and build your brand. Videos of one of your practitioners talking through a treatment as they administer it or detailing their own use of one of your products for social proof can help to add a certain tangibility to your clinic. Even real-time video updates can demonstrate your brand in action. With the addition of a ‘Story’ on Instagram and Facebook, you can now post content that lasts for 24 hours before erasing. This allows you to document the day-to-day character building of your brand and business without disrupting your main content strategy on your social media. Social media as social proof works incredibly well, and video can help to engage, inform, and persuade with this. This medium works exceptionally well with behind the scenes style shooting, or video testimonials. Word of mouth is powerful, and today, word of mouth doesn’t happen face to face, so utilise video content for your digital marketing and social media in order to gain the trust of your traffic.
Video marketing is a valuable addition to your digital marketing and content strategy, influencing not only your social media and search engine optimisation, but also your traffic’s behaviour. If you haven’t considered implementing effective and comprehensive video content, then you could be drastically affecting your conversion rates and missing out on exactly what your traffic wants to see.
