Early Digital Adoption Series Part 3: The Video Edition

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We’ve reached the third part of our exciting four-part blog series “Being an Early Digital Adopter”. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve discussed the pros and cons of being an early adopter of digital marketing technologies in our first blog post: Early Digital Adoption Part 1: How To Get Ahead of Your Competition. This was followed by our second blog post which looked at Natural Language Programming (NLP) and how this concept relates to conversational marketing. In case you missed that one, you can read more on this here: Early Digital Adoption Series Part 2: The NLP Edition. 

In this part, we are looking at the importance of being an early adopter of video content, and why you may need to consider implementing video as an integral part of your digital marketing strategy.

Video & Digital Marketing 101

It’s no surprise that the concept of video content has grown in both popularity and importance in recent years. As social media has developed into a robust part of digital marketing, video content has rapidly dominated the top social channels we see and use today. Consumers are increasingly watching and engaging with video content, not only for entertainment purposes but also for educational purposes as 61% of consumers actually want to learn from the videos they watch on social channels. 

The growing use of video and technology has drastically changed the way businesses promote and inform consumers about their products and services - from traditional television commercials in the 1950s to the use of YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram today. Marketers have constantly sought new ways to engage consumers. And now with video content on the rise, a recent Hubspot report shows that 92% of marketers have already made video content marketing an important part of their marketing strategy. 

So why is video so important? If you’re still in doubt, the rapid changes in video should tell you that it’s more vital than ever to stay on top of the latest advances, not only to create a strong digital marketing strategy but also to stay ahead of competitors. If you’re not creating video, you may well be falling behind.

What is Video Content Marketing?

You may be thinking “that sounds great but what exactly is video content marketing?” Simply put, “video content marketing is the principle of creating and distributing relevant and consistent video content by attracting a target audience with the aim to acquire valuable leads”. Similar to traditional content marketing, video content marketing is a strategic marketing approach that serves to create awareness and stimulate interests in a brand’s products and services by engaging and educating consumers through the use of video.

Why include Video Content in your Digital Marketing Strategy?

Video content is one of the most powerful and engaging communication mediums in this era. In fact, consumers want to see videos from brands more than any other type of content. Nonetheless, while video is convenient and efficient for consumers, video content marketing also provides marketers with an attractive, functional, and extremely shareable medium to reach their audiences. Here are some useful statistics:

• 89% of marketers say that video content marketing gives them a good ROI.
• 95% of marketers say that video has helped increase user understanding of their products and services.
• Video has proven to build increased consumer trust as 84% of consumers have been convinced to buy a brand’s products or service after watching their video.  
• 76% of e-commerce businesses say video has helped them increase sales. 
• 95% of marketers plan to increase or maintain their spend on video in 2020. 

How Brands Are Using Video Today

The use of video is not expected to slow down. Especially now that businesses (and marketers) are seeing the importance and benefits of incorporating video content within their digital marketing strategies. Across the board, marketers are using video to support key marketing objectives such as improving and increasing website traffic, increasing sales, educating consumers and offering consumer support and help. Apart from these objectives there are also a few emerging elements that you may need to keep an eye on in order to become an early adopter of video content.

Brand storytelling 

A continuously growing aspect when it comes to using video is the concept of brand storytelling. This concept has been widely used to create compelling stories that convey a brand’s personality to build an emotional connection with consumers. A rising platform that, in particular, is helping businesses connect with consumers through video is TikTok. Over the past few years, TikTok has grown to become one of the most popular social media platforms with over 500 million monthly active users and one of the most downloaded apps on Apple App Store. TikTok has introduced a range of advertisement forms such as ‘Brand Takeover’ and ‘Hashtag Challenge’ which are designed to help businesses gain higher engagement rates through video. For businesses that want to target especially Gen Z consumers, TikTok is unavoidable.

Augmented Reality 

Another major trend that’s transforming the use of video is augmented reality. An example of a brand that has successfully adopted this concept in their digital marketing strategy is Ikea. However, before we dive further into this, let’s look at what augmented reality actually is. Augmented reality uses devices such as our smartphones and tablets to augment the real or physical world. In essence, augmented reality adds an extra layer of digital information to our physical environment. This could be in the form of images, sounds and video. 

Through the Ikea Place app, augmented reality is used to let customers preview how furniture would look in their home, through their smartphones. So before a customer decides to buy a product, customers can view 3D renderings of over 2,000 products from different angles before buying. The ability to see lifelike versions of Ikea’s products in homes allows customers to make more  reliable buying decisions. This is a great example of how Ikea is using the combination of video and augmented reality to increase e-commerce sales.

So, as the use of video continues to grow it’s important to consider how video content will fit in your digital marketing strategy. Moreover, think about the key marketing objectives you would want to achieve when using video. For example, are you looking to increase website traffic, drive more sales or use it as a means to educate your customers? Whatever your goal may be, we hope this part of our series has given you insight on why video can help you achieve this.

Keep an eye out for the final instalment in this series, which will cover new trends in voice search.