INTRODUCTION If your company is not using video to build its brand and attract new customers, you are already behind the curve. In the rapid-paced world of mass-media and Internet marketing, simple text or boring PowerPoint presentations no longer grab and retain consumers’ attention. Four times as many customers would rather watch a video explaining the benefits of a product than read the same information,1 and video’s popularity continues to grow. 43% Marketing software company Hubspot reports that 43 Consumers who actually percent of consumers want to see more video content want to see more video from marketers.2 When was the last time you heard that from marketers. Source: Hubspot consumers actually want to be marketed to? 1 Animoto, 2015 2 16 Video Marketing Statistics to Inform your Q4 Strategy 1 The numbers on video’s rapid and continued growth as a business communication platform are staggering: • 80 percent of internet users will watch • 100 million people watch a video on the a video, while only 20 percent will read internet every day. the full contents of a web page. • Video will account for 80 percent of all • Users spend 88 percent more time on consumer traffic on internet by 2019. websites that include video content. And video’s value goes well beyond simply getting customers to hang around your website a little longer. Video is also a powerful medium for creating a lasting impression. Research indicates that viewers retain 95 percent of the information they consume while watching a video, compared to just 10 percent if they read the same information in simple text. As you can see, your company needs to incorporate high-quality video in your marketing, sales and business communications, both online and in personal interactions with clients. Note that we said “high-quality.” The lasting impression your video makes on customers may be a negative one if the content and production values don’t show your company in the best possible light. High-quality video is an upfront investment, and it pays off enormously. 2 WHY VIDEO? Video content engages viewers at every level – it educates, entertains and inspires them. The best way to get and hold someone’s attention is with the interactive, immersive potential of video. This isn’t just a bunch of award-winning videographers and editors talking. The hard numbers on video content’s payoff for your company are impossible to ignore. VIDEO INCREASES SALES AND CONVERSIONS Perhaps the most compelling argument for Product and how-to videos are the best way to incorporating video into your company’s messaging is provide consumers with easily accessible, actionable that it dramatically increases customer engagement information about your products and services. You can and conversion. You can increase conversions by 80 demonstrate a product in action, or show before-and- percent just by adding a product video to a landing after footage or animations to illustrate the ultimate page on your website. benefits of using a product or service. 3 VISUALIZING THE FUTURE OF AN ENGINEERING PROGRAM Videobred produced an animated video to help Seeing a product in action engages consumers: Hanover College, a liberal arts school in Indiana, 57 percent of online shoppers say watching promote its new engineering program. Hanover’s videos made them more confident to purchase goal was to recruit nine students to the program, online.3 In fact, 90 percent of shoppers say which had never held a class and had no facilities in online video is helpful as they make purchasing operation at the time of the campaign. The school decisions. ended up enrolling 25 students, almost three times its target, due largely to the power of video to attract and The power of video extends to marketing engage young people. channels well beyond your website, including email. According to marketing firm Syndacast, “Video’s a great media for high school students; that’s open rates on emails jump by 19 percent where they live,” said Rhonda Burch, Senior Director when the word “video” appears in the subject of Communications and Marketing at Hanover. “Video line. The results are even more dramatic for helps us tell a story in a way that’s more relatable.” introductory emails, where some research4 shows that click-through rates increase by more than 95 percent. Overall, video marketers see 34 percent higher web conversion rates and 27 percent higher click-through rates than companies that don’t include video in their messaging, according to The Aberdeen Group research firm. 3 eTailing Group: How Consumers Shop with Video Animation from Hanover video 4 Implix 4 EXECUTIVES LOVE VIDEO It’s not just online shoppers who find video so The preference for video is also dramatic among compelling. Forbes reports that 75 percent of business Millennial professionals, 29 percent of whom say executives watch a work-related video each week.5 And video is their preferred source of product research 59 percent of senior executives would rather watch a for their company. That’s more than even formal video than read text in a presentation or on a website. case studies, which came in at 19 percent. Executives who watch videos don’t stop there. Forbes reports that after viewing a video: • About 65 percent click through to visit the vendor website. • 50 percent look for more information about the vendor. 59% • 45 percent contact a vendor after seeing Senior executives who an online video would rather watch a • About 50 percent make a purchase for video than read text. their business. Source: Forbes 5 Forbes: Video in the C-Suite 5 For business-to-business marketers, this presents a compelling case for investing in high-quality video to SEARCH ENGINES speak to both the most senior decision-makers and LOVE VIDEO emerging leaders in a prospect account. Your website is one of the most important tools for Executives’ affinity for video also makes it a growing your business, and the best way to fuel that great platform for other kinds of corporate growth is to attract potential customers and clients communications, including internal strategic to your site via results in search engines such as messaging and education. Videobred client DLA Google. Search engines aspire to provide users with Piper, a leading international law firm, reported great results they will enjoy, so Google and its competitors results after using a 45-minute corporate drama to have been on the video bandwagon for quite some educate corporations around the world about key time. issues in cyber-security and privacy. Forrester Research6 famously noted that the odds Everyone – including executives – learns faster, of your website showing up on the first page of retains more information, and is more motivated to Google search results increase by more than 50 take action after watching a video. percent if you include video content on your web page. The importance of video in being found in internet searches has only grown since then. Overall, researchers suggest that you will see a more 150% than 150 percent increase in organic site traffic as a Increase in organic result of adding video to your website. website traffic attributed to video content. Source: Forrester Research 6 Forrester Research: The Easiest Way to a First-Page Ranking on Google 6 In addition to winning in general searches, publishing Video is a perfect fit for mobile since it lets viewers videos also makes your content eligible for the high- quickly get an overview of a product or concept value video results channels on Google and rival without having to engage with a 1,000-word blog services, including Bing. And remember, YouTube post. In fact, about 70 percent of smartphone users is now the second-largest internet search engine, say they prefer video content when researching processing more than 3 billion searches a month. purchases on the web. Mobile users are 1.4 times as likely to watch video advertisements as consumers A key factor in ranking highly in Google results is who view online content on their desktop computers. how long your visitors spend on your web page engaging with valuable content like a video. This is often described as “long clicks versus short clicks.” Basically, if users like your content, then search engines like your content – and users really like video. MOBILE USERS LOVE VIDEO Mobile data speeds have increased dramatically over the last few years, and so has consumers’ desire to view 53% videos on their smartphones and other mobile devices. Mobile users who feel Mobile now accounts for more than half of video more favorably about views7, increasing more than 230 percent since the companies who offer middle of 2013. And YouTube reports that mobile video mobile video. Source: Hubspot consumption is roughly doubling every year, confirming that more than half of its views came from mobile in 2016. That’s more than 1.5 billion hours of mobile video viewing each month on YouTube alone – a pretty 7 significant audience to tap into. Ooyala report: “Cord Cutters on the March” 8 The 5 Mobile Marketing Mistakes Infographic 7 The growth of mobile video is not just a volume play. socPub8 reported two years ago that average smartphone conversion rates were up more than 60 percent when compared to the same metric for desktop users, and the trend continues. Compound that with the conversion edge video brings to any landing page, and the advantages of mobile video are obvious when it comes to closing the deal. But video’s impact goes beyond getting consumers to pull out their credit cards or download a whitepaper. Smartphone users are twice as likely as TV viewers to develop a sense of personal connection to brands that show them internet video, and 1.4 times more likely to do so as desktop users, according to Google.