The trend of using video content for marketing has been on the rise for the past few years. As we go through this pandemic, video calls and video content marketing have become very common. Businesses have realized that people’s attention span for watching videos is a lot longer than their focusing ability in reading text or articles. That’s why they now try to include as much video content in their advertising strategies as possible.
Creating video content has also become easier than ever before. In the earlier days, only professional video makers and video editors could make marketing videos because they probably had to work on the illustrations, transitions, and animations from scratch. These days, so many open-source, cloud-based, or paid video-making software and tools are available that can be used by any layman to make videos.
A company that includes a video content strategy in its marketing plan can penetrate its target market at a faster pace than those that stick to text and images. This is because video content marketing usually has an added element of entertainment in it. When people feel entertained by your ads, they are likely to remember your brand name more often, which influences their buying decisions to a great extent.
An effective video content marketing strategy is one that entices customers to increase their loyalty towards your brand, without being too consciously aware of what’s influencing their decisions. Therefore, video ads are often shown in between YouTube videos and Facebook videos, when people are least interested to see them. They target the subconscious minds of the viewers, instead of directly claiming or pushing them to buy anything.
What is Video Content?
Video content refers to marketing content, used in digital advertisements that are run on different digital platforms, such as social media, websites, and landing pages, as different videos.
Here are some of the different videos that use video content in different formats.
- Explainer videos
- Doodle videos
- Live footage videos
- Illustrative videos
- Animation videos
- Slideshow videos
- Tutorial videos
- Spokesperson videos
6 Benefits of Having a Video Content
Here are 6 benefits of using a video marketing strategy for your business.
1. Increased Attention Span of Viewers
As mentioned above, video content grabs the attention of viewers for longer, as compared to text articles or even images. Motion pictures and animated illustrations force people to focus on them for more than just a few seconds as the human brain tries to comprehend what it’s seeing.
Therefore, when video content is used in marketing, it can deliver the message to the viewers faster than any other form of marketing content. When people are watching a video, they do not consciously know from the very first second of the video that they are actually watching an advertisement. They just follow the flow of the video until they get to the end, and that’s where usually the brand name is introduced.
This psychologically creates an effect on the minds of the viewers that they just watched the advert by choice, and that nobody is pushing them to buy anything. Hence, video content strategy is a lot more effective than using other forms of outreach or marketing content.
2. Development of a Fun Brand Image
Even if a video content delivers a strong and serious message, the fact that it is delivered in video format guarantees that there is some element of fun and entertainment included in it. Brands that use a lot of video content marketing are known and remembered as fun brands because of their interest in delivering their marketing messages in the form of video content.
Whether it is an animated explainer video, a short marketing story presented as live footage, or a whiteboard illustration, it is fun to watch. Many startup firms these days get their explainer videos ready before even launching their products or services into the market, just to get the fun element rolling, which builds curiosity among people regarding what this brand is about and what it is going to sell.
Thus, we know that video content has the potential of creating a fun brand image, and that is the reason many firms prefer using a video content strategy, as long as they have the means to implement it.
3. More Engagement of the Audience
Not only do people enjoy watching video content, but they also like sharing it with their friends, colleagues, and peers. Companies that use video content marketing can get their viewers engaged with their brand more easily than others that use only content writing or simple SEO tactics to promote their website and brand.
The way videos are inserted into web pages is that they are usually embedded using video links from third-party video hosting platforms (such as Youtube and Vimeo). On a site like Youtube, people can comment right below the video and engage with other people who are also watching the same video. This builds interaction among the audience, which is very good for bringing up the brand’s name and making it popular. It is indeed a very cost-effective means of developing brand equity.
4. Easy to Embed into Landing Pages
Since videos are usually uploaded onto video hosting sites and then embedded into other websites using their links, it has become very easy to insert videos like this into web pages. Videos are rarely inserted into websites by directly uploading them from the website maker’s computer. If that is done, it would actually make the website quite heavy.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Embedding video content links to web pages keeps the website light and fast to browse, while at the same time, integrates the different marketing platforms for the business with each other. When someone views an embedded Youtube video on a brand website, they can easily visit the brand’s Youtube channel too by clicking on the video. This means that video content marketing helps in driving traffic back and forth from the different sites where the brand is being promoted.
5. More Explanation Given in Less Amount of Time
Through video content, brands can deliver longer messages in a shorter period. Illustrations and animations can convey complex messages and explain complicated concepts in just one or two minutes, because of the way they are designed. Explainer videos can explain lengthy procedures in minutes, that would otherwise take many pages of text to be explained if it were not for the video content. This gives many plus points to a video marketing strategy as compared to other online marketing strategies.
6. Simple to Prepare and Edit
It is not as difficult and complicated as before to make and edit videos. With the help of ready-to-use video making software and tools, anyone who takes out the time to practice the tools can become a professional at creating video content.
Many companies even hire freelancers at very low costs to make videos for them. These freelancers charge low prices for preparing video content because they are also using ready-made characters, illustrative tools, and video-editing applications to do their job. These ways are a lot cheaper and time-saving as compared to making videos from scratch.
7 Tips to Create Awesome Video Content
Here are 7 simple tips for creating video content that’s appealing to the audience.
- Plan the video content carefully. Start with preparing the script, then make the video using a video-making tool, and add in some royalty-free music and voice-over.
- Pick the right background that looks as real as possible.
- You don’t need to buy a new camera, even if you are shooting live footage. Just use your smartphone’s camera.
- For recording the voice-over or any other audio, avoid using the camera’s mic. Use an external dedicated audio recorder.
- Use the right lighting if you are shooting yourself.
- Film or create animations in small segments.
- Take time to upload your videos properly, keying in all the tags and descriptions in the right places.
Inserting Video Content into a Strikingly Website
Strikingly is a website-building platform that allows you to insert videos into your web pages.
Image taken from Strikingly
To add a video to a website built on Strikingly, follow these simple steps.
- Upload the video onto a third party video hosting site and get its URL.
- From the Strikingly editor’s left panel, click ‘Add New Section’. Then select ‘Image & Media’ and ‘Gallery’ or ‘Big Media’.
Image taken from Strikingly
Image taken from Strikingly
- Hover on the top section and click ‘Add Videos’.
- Paste the video URL into the link field.
Image taken from Strikingly
Video content is very useful for businesses. Not only that, now we know that creating video content and then inserting it into websites is not so difficult anymore.
We, at Strikingly, encourage our users to use a combination of text, images, and videos to create great website content. If your web content is of outstanding quality, your site can get more traction from visitors and higher rankings in search rankings.
