Video is everywhere. Over the past years, more and more people started to film what they do and share their activities with their friends and followers online. Especially the younger generation became quite skilled in video editing, and social media channels responded to this trend by giving video a prominent position on their platform.
In this article, we look at this trend and discuss what this means for marketers. How can we use video to get the attention of our target audience; and which platforms are most suitable for video marketing in 2021, and beyond?
Video Is Taking Over
Over the past 5-6 years video has been taking over. Let’s have a look at some statistics first:
- According to Tubular Insights, views of sponsored video content jumped with 258% between 2016 and 2017.
- Video views on mobile grow by 100% each year, according to Insivia.
- On Twitter, videos are 6 times more likely to be retweeted or liked, according to Twitter.
- A study by Hubspot showed that 78% of their participants watch online video every week, and 55% watch video every day.
We could keep going like this for a while, but the conclusion is clear. People watch, share, and like video a lot, and marketers would miss out if they wouldn’t spend time and energy on video marketing.
What Is Video Marketing?
So what exactly is video marketing? According to Hubspot
“Video Marketing is using videos to promote and market your product or service, increase engagement on your digital and social channels, educate your consumers and customers, and reach your audience with a new medium.’
Video Marketing – 3 Ideas
There are endless ways to do this, from short cellphone videos to extensive video campaigns. However, to give you some inspiration, we listed a few simple video ideas that almost every company could use.
1. Showing your company culture through Instagram stories
People love a company with a story. One that is real, and shows who they are and what they stand for. Instagram stories offer the perfect opportunity for a business to share a bit of their culture with their fans and potential customers.
[See related post: How To Create Compelling Instagram Stories For eCommerce Businesses?]
All you have to do is record short clips during office hours or at a company event, and upload them to your Instagram account.
This might not result in fast sales, but will definitely be valuable in the long term.
2. A fun contest through user-generated content
User-generated content is becoming big on social media. People simply trust statements from other customers more than those from a brand, so showing how other customers like your product is a great way to build trust. And on top of that, user-generated content increases engagement and saves time and money on content creation.
Since both creating, and watching videos grows in popularity, people generally like creating content for a brand. At least, when they get something in return. Therefore, a contest can be a great way to get people to create content for you. You can, for instance, ask your fans to create videos of them using your product. The best video wins!
3. Webinars or instruction videos
To provide extra value to your (potential) customers, you can decide to share webinars or instruction videos. It takes some time and effort, but a high-quality video can have many benefits.
- An instruction video can add value to your product or service. Customers will appreciate that you put in this effort, and your video will help them enjoy your product or service even more.
- The same instruction video can also convince potential customers to choose your product or service over that of your competitor. They will understand your product better, and will appreciate the fact that you are actively working on helping people enjoy your product to the fullest.
- Webinars about topics in your field (so not necessarily a product promotion or instruction video) can also help build a community and increase brand awareness. Through watching your videos, more and more people will find out about your brand. And who knows, maybe they will become customers one day.
Best Video Platforms Currently
Did you get inspired yet? Creating video is great, but having the world see what you created is even better. Therefore, we listed a few of the best social media channels to share your videos on.
You Tube
The first video channel is an obvious one: YouTube. This famous video channel is currently used in 88 countries, and has over 1.9 bn monthly logged-in users. That is huge! Especially people between 18 and 49 years old are active on the channel; 8 out of 10 people in this age group watch YouTube videos.
There are two types of videos that marketers can share on YouTube: Their own videos, or ads in videos by others.
Sharing your own videos probably takes more time, but can pay of. A few great examples of videos you can upload to your company’s channel are instruction videos and instruction videos, but also company updates and promotional videos can do well. As long as they are interesting and entertaining to watch, of course.
Advertisement videos on YouTube have a time limit of 1 minute. Therefore, YouTube ads will most likely be short introduction videos or promotions. We recently wrote a blog about YouTube advertising, where you can find all the details about YouTube ads. Including some video ad examples!
TikTok
TikTok is a video channel that has been through immense growth the past years. In 2018, TikTok was the most downloaded app in the App Store, with more downloads than, for instance, Whatsapp and Facebook.
The channel was created during a rebranding of the well-known Musical.ly and attracts a young crowd compared to the other social media websites. To give you an idea: According to MediaKix 66% of TikTok users are below 30 years old. This makes the platform ideal for businesses who like to target a young audience.
Videos on TikTok are generally short, fun and fast. So how can you, as a business, use the popular video platform to promote your business? This can be done in different ways. You can choose to share your own content, you can work with influencers to share your content for you, or you can choose to share user-generated content.
Especially challenges are very popular on TikTok. Think of a ‘playback’ challenge, a dance challenge, or a challenge that incorporates a product. By making participating fun and letting users share your hashtag with their videos, a brand can reach large numbers of people on the platform with a fun challenge.
We all know and love Instagram. Instagram offers the perfect way for brands to use their creativity and communicate their ‘vibe’ and style. The platform currently has about 800 million monthly active users, and around 250 million people watch Instagram stories daily.
With the introduction of Instagram stories in 2016, Instagram made a clear step towards video. Later, live stories were added too, as well as IGTV.
Let’s take a look at the different video options within the platform:
- Instagram stories; can be 60 seconds long and are great for sharing short and informal updates. Think of ‘behind the scenes’ clips, vlog-style ‘stories’, or product ‘sneak peeks.’
- Instagram live stories; can be up to 60 minutes long and are perfect for longer vlog-style videos, events, and presentations or even product demonstrations.
- IGTV allows for videos up to 60 minutes long, in vertical format. The main goal of IGTV is to share higher quality videos compared to stories. IGTV videos stay on a profile permanently, while stories disappear after 24 hours unless you add them to your story highlights.
As the last channel, Facebook needs to be included in our list. Facebook is a large platform, with 2.41 billion monthly active users in June 2019. Because of these vast numbers, almost every target audience can be found on the platform. However, the largest age group of 29.7% is between 25 and 34 years old.
Video on Facebook performs well. According to BuzzSumo, ‘video posts generate an average of 59% more engagement’ on the platform.
So what kind of video can you share on Facebook? Similar to Instagram, you can choose to share stories, go live, or you can simply add a video to your timeline. Through YouTube, or directly through Facebook’s video function.
Again, similar to Instagram, stories and Facebook Live shots are great to share ‘behind the scenes’ updates, ‘sneak peeks,’ company events, or other company culture-related videos.
The Future Of Video
Video has been growing in popularity on social media, and we think this growth will continue in the coming years. We learned that people love video and become better and better at creating and editing videos themselves. Fewer people watch TV nowadays; they spend time on social media or, for instance, Netflix instead.
We can’t give you any numbers, but we found an interesting prediction online. According to Cisco, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic in 2022. That is an incredible amount. We will have to wait and see if this percentage will be made in a few years, but we are almost certain that we will end up close to 82%, at least.
[Images – Main Image by Pera Detlic from Pixabay; Clapboard Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash; Instagram stories Photo by sergio souza on Unsplash; Listening Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash; Two women Photo by CoWomen on Unsplash; other images from their respective websites and/or social platforms]
I’m Gurby Bulo, CEO of Social Media Gids, I am a Social Media Strategy Expert, Hootsuite-, Social Marketing-, Social Selling and Advanced Social Advertising Certified Professional.