If your content marketing strategy doesn’t include video content yet, you need to act fast before you’re left too far behind.
Video, without a shadow of a doubt, has become the number one content type when it comes to lead generation and user-engagement.
More than 93 percent of marketers are actively using video content, and more than 50 percent believe it has the best ROI among all types of content.
According to Phil Tadros, CEO and founder of Doejo a leading brand management and web product development firm, and one of the few featured WordPress.com VIP partners in the world, video content is more effective than any other content type when it comes to branding and lead generation.
“It gives your company a human face, builds trust and allows your prospects to see your product in action. No other content type builds these vital bridges between you and your customers as quickly as video content. It has the highest ROI, and that’s no surprise.”
A study by Cisco states that globally, consumer internet video traffic will be 80 percent of all consumer Internet traffic in 2019, up from 64 percent in 2014. But how exactly can you make video a part of your content marketing strategy?
Here are a few ideas to get you thinking.
1. Use Videos to Earn Backlinks and Boost Time on Site
SEO and content marketing are closely tied together, and any improvements in your SEO strategy usually benefit your content marketing goals as well. Video content can directly improve two key SEO metrics time on-site and backlinks and help you elevate your search rankings.
Time on site is the average time a visitor spends on a web page. If a page has a high average time on site, it’s a good indication for Google that it contains useful information for the readers.
So for example, you’ve written a blog post about easy physical exercises that can accelerate weight loss, you can create a relevant two to three-minute video, upload it to YouTube and embed it in the blog post.
Several leading bloggers use this approach to improve their average time on site.
The time your readers spend watching the embedded video will be counted as time spent on your page. When you upload your video to YouTube, include a backlink in the video description to the blog post where you’ve embedded the video. These are no-follow backlinks, but they’re still useful in sending you referral traffic and building your link profile.
2. Create Short Explainer Videos to Hook Your Visitors
When was the last time you saw a high-converting landing page without an explainer video? Honestly, I can’t remember. Short 2-3 minute explainer videos allow users to quickly understand the value of your offer and how it can solve their problems. If your video is engaging enough, people would usually continue reading your sales page and spend more time understanding your product.
Video also works really well on landing pages because people are lazy and prefer watching a video instead of reading thousands of words on your sales page.
3. Use Video Testimonials to Earn Trust of Your Prospects
Honest, credible and to-the-point testimonials from satisfied customers and well-known figures in your industry can have a huge impact on your brand image and sales numbers. However, like most other marketing and branding techniques, testimonials are often misused. Using fake testimonials is a big mistake that lots of SMB’s and even large corporation seem to be making these days.
To counter this, and to make your testimonials much more engaging, you can create short 40 to 60-second video testimonials from your satisfied clients and business partners. A recent study by Ascend2 found that more than 51 percent marketers consider video testimonials as the most effective form of video content marketing.
However, the key to generating video testimonials is to make the process as easy as possible for your customers and partners. Remember, most people are camera shy, and would find any excuse to avoid the limelight.
Here are a few tips you can keep in mind.
- Keep the video short (less than a minute)
- Write down the script for them
- If they’re too shy, ask them to shoot the video with their smartphone
- Get them on a video call to record the testimonial.
- If they agree, invite them to a professional studio or visit them with a professional videographer.
Generating video testimonials is slightly harder than text-based recommendations. But they’re much more powerful.
4. Boost E-commerce Sales With Product How-to Videos
E-commerce and video content marketing is a match made in heaven. More people are purchasing things online than ever before. And even though online shopping doesn’t allow users to touch and feel a product, they can still see it in action and examine it from different angles with video content.
According to Internet Retailer, video content is known to have increased E-commerce conversions up to 144 percent in some cases. How-to videos that demonstrate product use, work best with E-commerce product pages, product review sites and other types of sales content.
For example, this article about smart home tips includes a short how-to video that demonstrates each tip and shows the product in action. This instantly makes it much more effective and drives more action.
5. Offer Free Webinars to Generate New Leads
Lead generation is one of the primary objectives of most content marketing campaigns. And there’s nothing better for lead generation than a great webinar. According to the 2016 B2B Content Marketing Survey by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, more than 66 percent B2B marketers consider webinars the most effective marketing and lead generation technique.
One of the reasons why webinars are so effective is that customers and prospects can directly engage with you live and ask you questions directly. Plus, the personal and human touch of webinars help in building trust and credibility with your prospects.
And of course, you can later use webinar replays and recordings as paid products or lead magnets, or hold follow-up webinars based on customer feedback. So the time you invest in a webinar can be used in a number of other ways.
Wrapping Up
I’ve just given you a glimpse of what video content can do for your business. But there are dozens of other ways video can be used to make your content marketing efforts more effective. The important thing here is to understand that consumers, and the market in general, is moving quickly towards more interactive content that has a strong personal touch to it.
That is the key to building trust and credibility, which is crucial for lead generation and sales. Video helps you achieve all these things more effectively than most other content types.