A whop­ping 82% of all online traf­fic is video, and that num­ber is only expect­ed to grow. With an 800% increase in online video plays over the last few years, there’s no deny­ing it: video mar­ket­ing is not only here to stay — it’s set to take over.

But what exact­ly makes video mar­ket­ing so pow­er­ful? More impor­tant­ly, how do you har­ness the pow­er of video mar­ket­ing in a high­ly com­pet­i­tive dig­i­tal market?

Keep read­ing to dis­cov­er the pow­er of video mar­ket­ing and how you can lever­age it to boost engage­ment, increase con­ver­sions and expe­ri­ence immense growth in your business:

Why Is Video Marketing So Powerful?

Video mar­ket­ing uses video con­tent to mar­ket prod­ucts, pro­vide rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion, and dri­ve sales. Videos are infor­ma­tive, enter­tain­ing, and emo­tion­al­ly engag­ing, hence their pop­u­lar­i­ty. But that’s not all there is to it.

Here are 8 key rea­sons video mar­ket­ing is so powerful:

1. Appeals to changing consumer needs and habits

Inter­net users pre­fer to learn about brands, prod­ucts, and ser­vices through videos. They also like to watch videos about a busi­ness before mak­ing a pur­chase. Videos allow you to get to the point quick­ly, which is some­thing time-starved con­sumers appre­ci­ate. They are also a wel­come reprieve from all the sta­t­ic imagery and text on the web.

2. Increases engagement and retention

Gen­er­al­ly, peo­ple remem­ber images bet­ter than text. In oth­er words, your videos will help view­ers absorb and retain more infor­ma­tion in less time. This is great if you have com­plex prod­ucts or ser­vices, as videos can explain how every­thing works in an engag­ing way.

Visu­al demon­stra­tions are eas­i­er for view­ers to grasp and help view­ers visu­alise the ben­e­fits of your product.

3. Inspires trust

Video mar­ket­ing is a great way to ease cus­tomer con­cerns about online shop­ping. Videos cre­ate a sense of trust and estab­lish your busi­ness as a reli­able source of infor­ma­tion, prod­ucts, or ser­vices. View­ers will have proof that you exist and have a sense of how your prod­ucts and ser­vices will oper­ate in their lives.

4. Increases competitiveness

In today’s mar­ket, online vis­i­bil­i­ty and brand aware­ness are a source of com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. Hav­ing good qual­i­ty videos on var­i­ous mar­ket­ing chan­nels and plat­forms, such as YouTube, can give you a strong edge over com­peti­tors. As video con­tent on YouTube now appears in search results, qual­i­ty videos are guar­an­teed to get you noticed first.

5. Boosts ROI

Unlike oth­er forms of con­tent that must be tweaked for var­i­ous plat­forms and chan­nels, a sin­gle video can be shared across mul­ti­ple plat­forms and gen­er­ate mas­sive returns. This is why 88% of mar­keters state that video has a high­er return on invest­ment than oth­er mar­ket­ing strategies.

Video pro­duc­tion is now more cost-effec­tive, and con­ver­sa­tion rates for video con­tent are much high­er. So even a mod­est invest­ment into a great video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy can yield mas­sive returns.

6. Improves search engine rankings

Video con­tent can be tagged with rel­e­vant key­words to enhance your SEO. Did you know that videos now influ­ence search rank­ings more than ever?

In fact, hav­ing a video on your site’s land­ing page makes you 53% more like­ly to get a top spot on Google’s search results. That’s not all: as videos increase your web­site ses­sion times, this sig­nals to Google that your con­tent is rel­e­vant, which in turn, improves your rankings.

7. Encourages social sharing

Since you’re engag­ing your audi­ence on a more per­son­al lev­el, they’re more like­ly to share your con­tent with friends. As videos can eas­i­ly be shared on social media plat­forms, this can

increase your vis­i­bil­i­ty and reach at no extra cost. Social shar­ing also encour­ages refer­ral traf­fic, which is four times more like­ly to lead to more sales.

8. Boosts mobile marketing

Mobile use is sky­rock­et­ing, and this presents fresh chal­lenges for busi­ness­es to make their mar­ket­ing strate­gies more mobile-friend­ly. With over half of all videos being played on mobile devices, it comes as no sur­prise that mobile users are the dri­ving force behind increas­ing glob­al video con­sump­tion rates.

If you’re look­ing to increase your reach and take advan­tage of mobile mar­ket­ing, video mar­ket­ing is one of the best ways to do so.

How Does Video Marketing Help with Conversions?

83% of busi­ness­es say that video has helped them increase their con­ver­sion rate. The ques­tion is, how exact­ly does video mar­ket­ing increase conversion?

These are three ways in which it works:

1. Increases traffic

Video attracts more traf­fic than oth­er forms of con­tent, and an increase in traf­fic is strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with high­er con­ver­sion rates. Videos also con­tribute to refer­ral traf­fic through social shar­ing, and refer­ral traf­fic has some of the high­est con­ver­sion rates.

2. Generates leads

Videos are quick­er and eas­i­er to con­sume. They also engage more sens­es and accom­mo­date more learn­ing styles than oth­er forms of text-based con­tent. This makes them pow­er­ful lead magnets.

The more rel­e­vant your video mag­nets are, the more leads you’ll have to nur­ture. It does­n’t end there: a good video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy can actu­al­ly guide leads from one stage of the buy­er’s jour­ney to the next and help you con­vert them into pay­ing customers.

3. Influences purchasing decisions

Videos can direct­ly boost sales. Land­ing page videos increase con­ver­sion rate by an impres­sive 80%. Addi­tion­al­ly, over 90% of cus­tomers admit that watch­ing a video influ­ences their pur­chas­ing decisions.

Should Video Marketing Be Included in Your Strategy?

When even inter­net giants like Google con­sid­er video mar­ket­ing indis­pens­able, there’s no doubt you should include it in your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. After all, it’s an excel­lent way to strength­en all the oth­er aspects of your marketing.

With notable ben­e­fits such as greater aware­ness, engage­ment, and con­ver­sions, video mar­ket­ing can, with­out a doubt, help your busi­ness succeed.

How To Include Video Marketing in Your Strategy

There are many ways to incor­po­rate video into your mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Ensur­ing that each video address­es your audi­ence’s chal­lenges and offers them a solu­tion is cru­cial. The key isn’t to fol­low fads or trends but to cre­ate a video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that sup­ports the rest of your mar­ket­ing strategy.

Attracting customers

If you’re look­ing to increase brand aware­ness, build trust, and attract vis­i­tors, your videos should res­onate with their pain points and offer fea­si­ble solu­tions. This is pos­si­ble through the following:

• Short videos that show­case your val­ues and brand personality
• Brand videos that com­mu­ni­cate your mis­sion and values
• Thought Lead­er­ship videos that estab­lish you as a cred­i­ble author­i­ty on a par­tic­u­lar matter
• Explain­er or how-to videos with rel­e­vant tips or prob­lem-solv­ing insights

Capturing high-quality leads

As lead mag­nets, videos can play a cru­cial role in cap­tur­ing high-qual­i­ty leads. The best video lead mag­nets inform and excite prospects. They also prime poten­tial cus­tomers for fur­ther mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions. The most effec­tive videos to use are:

• Webi­na­rs offer­ing insights and advice
• Prod­uct demos
• Land­ing page or pro­mo­tion­al videos
• Case study videos
• In-depth explain­er and how-to videos

Increasing sales

Videos can boost sales and help the cus­tomer visu­alise their prob­lem being solved. Some of the best videos to achieve this are:fc

• Authen­tic tes­ti­mo­ni­al videos
• Prod­uct reviews
• In-depth prod­uct demos
• Cul­ture videos high­light your com­mit­ment to qual­i­ty service
• Per­son­alised videos that explain exact­ly how your prod­uct can help them

Retaining customers

As cus­tomer reten­tion guar­an­tees the growth and con­ti­nu­ity of a busi­ness, that should be your next pri­or­i­ty. So, once you’ve suc­cess­ful­ly turned leads into cus­tomers, focus on turn­ing them into loy­al fans by pro­vid­ing com­pelling con­tent that enhances their expe­ri­ence with your brand. You can do this through the following:

• Thank you videos
• Post-pur­chase onboard­ing videos
• Educational/training videos
• Social videos that encour­age sharing

How To Create an Effective Video Marketing Strategy

To reap its vast range of ben­e­fits, your busi­ness needs a well-thought-out video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Fol­low these steps:

Step 1: Determine your target audience

To set your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy up for suc­cess, gath­er detailed infor­ma­tion about your tar­get demo­graph­ic and the type of video con­tent that would appeal to them. If you haven’t defined your buy­er per­sonas, now is the per­fect time to do so.

Step 2: Define your goals

For max­i­mum results, fig­ure out what you want your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy to achieve and let that guide your efforts. Do you want to boost traf­fic and sales? Are you look­ing to increase brand aware­ness? Per­haps you want to achieve all of the above.

Well, the key is to pick your goals wise­ly, deter­mine resources you can ded­i­cate to each goal, and then cre­ate the video con­tent that will help you get there. Your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy will also be eas­i­er to track if you define your goals. Again, your goals should guide which key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors you choose to monitor.

Step 3: Consider your competitive landscape

Analyse your fiercest com­peti­tors to under­stand what your mar­ket responds to. What plat­forms are your com­peti­tors lever­ag­ing? What can you do bet­ter? This will give you an indi­ca­tion of where to focus your efforts.

Step 4: Identify the best platforms to distribute your video

The key advan­tage of video con­tent is that it can be dis­trib­uted across var­i­ous plat­forms. How­ev­er, not all videos will work on all chan­nels, so you’ll need to base your selec­tions on fac­tors such as your goals, tar­get audi­ence and the unique require­ments of each platform:

LinkedIn: is best for B2B

Face­book and Insta­gram: are best for how-to videos and prod­uct reviews

YouTube: is best for longer con­tent such as tutorials

Your web­site: don’t for­get to imbed videos in land­ing pages or blog pages to enhance their quality

Step 5: Design and create your content

With your goals and resources in mind, tai­lor your video con­tent to your audi­ence’s wants and needs. Aim for brand con­sis­ten­cy; oth­er­wise, you risk appear­ing incon­sis­tent and disorganised.

It’s impor­tant to stick to one or two goals per video. If you aim for too many, your videos will be unfo­cused, and view­ers will have a hard time fig­ur­ing out what to do next. Authen­tic videos are more like­ly to cre­ate a sense of trust and posi­tion you as credible.

Next, focus on deliv­er­ing your con­tent as con­cise­ly as pos­si­ble. Elim­i­nat­ing unnec­es­sary infor­ma­tion will help get your points across faster and encour­age more engagement.

Step 6: Publish and optimise your videos

Once you’ve edit­ed and finalised your videos, give them a boost by plac­ing key­words in the descrip­tions, video titles and meta tags. Be sure to use attrac­tive thumb­nails and com­pelling titles to increase engage­ment. To make your videos more acces­si­ble, and increase view­er­ship, con­sid­er adding captions.

Step 7: Monitor performance

As feed­back comes in, use it to refine your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. The more infor­ma­tion you gath­er about the effec­tive­ness of your videos, the bet­ter you’ll get at cre­at­ing con­tent that deliv­ers the results you want. You should be able to track essen­tial video mar­ket­ing KPIs on the con­tent ana­lyt­ics tools you already use.

Video Marketing Dos and Don’ts

As a video mar­keter, what should you be doing? What should­n’t you be doing? As you inte­grate video into your mar­ket­ing efforts, keep these things in mind:

Dos:

• Incor­po­rate video into your exist­ing con­tent to boost engage­ment and achieve your con­ver­sion goals more efficiently
• Include ani­mat­ed videos in your strat­e­gy to increase engage­ment and keep pro­duc­tion costs low
• Out­source video cre­ation to a pro­fes­sion­al full-ser­vice video mar­ket­ing agency, as this can save you valu­able time and money
• Track the per­for­mance of your videos to make them bet­ter and iden­ti­fy con­tent gaps or issues
• Part­ner with influ­encers to take brand engage­ment to a whole new level
• Pro­vide sup­port­ing text con­tent so that users don’t leave your site if they don’t want to watch a video

Don’ts:

• Avoid cre­at­ing con­tent that does­n’t con­nect to your audi­ence’s chal­lenges or habits
• Invest­ing in video con­tent that isn’t evergreen
• Not updat­ing your videos
• Fail­ing to improve your video mar­ket­ing strategy
• Hav­ing bro­ken video links on your website
• Mis­lead­ing or trick­ing cus­tomers into watch­ing your videos and oth­er click­bait tactics

Final Thoughts

As the demand for video con­tent grows, video mar­ket­ing is emerg­ing as one of the most effec­tive ways to engage audi­ences. Video mar­ket­ing has evolved far beyond build­ing aware­ness or increas­ing engage­ment; it is now a pow­er­ful way to max­imise con­ver­sions and cus­tomer reten­tion rates.

The mes­sage is clear: if you’re not har­ness­ing the pow­er of video mar­ket­ing, you’re los­ing out.