Video is one of the most, if not the most important medium and forms of content we have now. For example, Statista did some research last year that showed that 85% of all internet users in the U.S. watched online video content monthly on any of their devices, only surpassed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. To put that into bigger numbers, that’s over 250 million people in the U.S. watching online video content on a monthly basis. That’s huge! And that’s not just people watching Hulu or Netflix on their phone or laptop. A study done by HubSpot in 2018 shows that 54% of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support, which means half of your consumers want to see video content from you.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s tons of reasons and statistics to back up why you should be using video as much as possible, whether that’s getting some great visual content on your website, creating social media content or using it for advertisements. We’ll cover it all in this article.
Bringing Your Business to Life
Let’s get into it! Why are videos important for any business? It’s actually pretty simple. Videos are important because they bring text and values to life. Nobody wants to read a few hundred words on a business and why they are the best at they do. They want to see it in action, which is kind of the same reason why people will go watch a movie but won’t read the usually superior book that the movie is based on.
But if you’re the person that would rather read the book than watch the movie, here’s some statistics that’ll give you insight on why you need to use video. The most compelling statistic might be this: 68% of people say they’d prefer to learn about a new product or service by watching a short video, according to Wyzowl. In comparison, only 15% would rather learn from a text-based article and only 4% would want to learn from an infographic. So by now, you’re probably wishing this were a video instead of an article!
If that’s not enough, let’s talk about your message. It’s pretty important, right? Well, according to a study done by Insivia in 2013, viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text. What’s that old writing adage? Oh, yeah! “Show, don’t tell.” You need to show your audience what they want to know, otherwise you’re just making more work for them to do and therefore, making them less likely to finish reading it or fully absorb your message.
Why is that? Well, probably because 90% of all information transmitted to the brain is visual, and because of that, all visual content is processed 60,000 times faster than text. Again, when you show your message in a visual form, it not only processes faster, it gets remembered better. Okay, so we know videos are pretty important now, right? Now you’re probably wondering what to do with these videos you make. Which brings us to this: where are people watching them?
Where’s Your Audience?
If you’re running a business, you know what, who and where your audience is geographically, but do you know where they spend their time online? That depends on where you are from a marketing standpoint. If you spend a large portion of your time already doing online marketing, then great, you will know who to target. If you haven’t started doing any of that yet, you need to figure it out quick. We won’t go in-depth into that, but if you don’t have a well-functioning website or any sort of social media, that’s where you need to get started.
Piggybacking off that, let’s talk about some of the major places to find videos, whether that’s as an advertisement, or as content for your website or social media. Let’s start with your website. Your website is your own branded content and usually is the place your audience interacts with you the most. On your website, people are looking for products or services that only you have, and you have to explain what makes you different from the other guys. Video is something that can really help in those matters!
For one, people would rather see your service or product in action than have three paragraphs explaining something. It also helps give the appearance that you’re a contemporary business, always looking to improve and optimize things for your customers. Not only that, it can help bring your site to the top of the page rankings. If you have highly relevant videos to some key search terms, such as “how to fix a computer” or “how to apply makeup,” Google and other search engines will suggest those videos to people to watch. Not only are you getting more website traffic, you’re becoming an authority and somebody people trust.
Moving onto advertisements, your videos can be placed almost anywhere on the internet now. You can have a video run as a display advertisement on a search engine or in streaming apps like Netflix or Hulu or in all the social mediums, especially Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, which we will talk about next. Social media is probably the most widespread medium out there, with over 3.196 billion active social media users as of January 2018 according to Hootsuite. If that’s not enough for you, 93% of businesses gain a new customer due to a video posted on social media.
People love social media, not only for the fact that they can stay connected with their friends and family, but because it has become an all-in-one deal. You can watch videos, post pictures and send messages through almost all the platforms and everyone loves it. But as we are focusing on videos, let’s talk about each of the three major social media platforms and how video is used in each of them.
The Top Video/Social Media Platforms
We’ll talk about Facebook first because when it comes to social media, they are still king. Facebook is amazing about letting you use videos. There are multiple ways you can successfully use them, such as content for your business’ page or as an advertisement. It all depends on where you want to go with it. If you use it as content for your business’ page, expect more engagements. According to Hubspot, social media posts that incorporate video see 48% more views than regular image or text posts. People love to watch a video, especially if it’s from a brand they love.
If you want to advertise on social media, Facebook is probably your best choice. You can target the widest range of people on Facebook with 80% of those ages 18-49 saying they use the network, according to Sprout Social. You can promote and advertise your videos throughout Facebook and with 8 billion video views a day, you can expect to get some serious return on your advertising spend.
Let’s move onto the platform Facebook acquired in 2012. Instagram is the most visually engaging and active platform, with 1 billion monthly active users. Not only that, it is the best platform to reach a younger audience with 64% of 18-29 year olds using Instagram. Want to target this audience? Use a video. Video posts receive 38% more engagement than image posts on Instagram and help create a bond and trust between the brand and the user.
Speaking of advertising, Instagram is a great way for B2C companies to get their products out there, with 60% of users discovering products on Instagram. Not only that, 75% of users tend to take action outside of Instagram after finding or viewing your brand, according to Hootsuite. Want to sell a product and get great engagement rates? This is the place to be.
YouTube
Took a little while to get here, but let’s look at the king of videos, YouTube. Ever since YouTube was founded in 2005, it has been the go-to place to post videos of all types. YouTube has over 1.9 billion logged-in users every single month, which is about half of the internet. A good idea is for every video you create, even for other social media, post it on YouTube and work on building a channel and presence between all platforms, because if you blow up on YouTube, you will blow up everywhere.
Moving onto advertising, YouTube basically invented using videos for advertising, which is why they have been so successful. YouTube offers many different options for advertising such as sponsored content and video ads during videos, and the platform is built for it. Even if you don’t want to create branded content to post on your own channel, you can easily engage more just through video ads.
Need A Video Now?
We made it! Ready to start creating videos for every different scenario possible? Great! Are you struggling to figure out if you can create a video? It doesn’t have to be fancy or hard or take a lot of time, just some planning. But if you want to get into it now and get a dedicated, full-service digital marketing agency that will plan, create and distribute your videos, then we are your go-to agency.
Want to see some of our work?
About Amplus Agency
Established in 2011, Amplus Agency is a full-service marketing agency providing custom marketing solutions for businesses and nonprofits. Our online marketing packages are designed to grow business and our branding and web design help your business be accurately represented and stand out from the crowd. Every client has unique marketing needs and obstacles to overcome, and we dedicate ourselves to making sure your business comes out on top.
