Video is big. But if its sheer irresistability were its only criterion, Youtube could have gone with the tagline ‘No one can watch just one.
January 9, 2019 5 min read
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It’s just another day at work: Spreadsheets, conference calls and emails abound. Come noon, and you can’t help but take a quick break. Then, something happens: A sneaky push notification on your mobile catches your glimpse: A friend of yours has uploaded a video that’s getting a lot of attention.
Related: 5 Video Marketing Trends You Should Follow in 2019
Smitten with curiosity, you click on the link, and the next thing you know, it’s 1:30 and you’re already behind on your schedule. Don’t feel bad, though; we’ve all been there. If the sheer irresistibility of videos were its only criterion, Youtube could have gone with the tagline “No one can watch just one.” Certainly, the statistics point in that direction …
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One-third of online activity is spent watching videos, according to the Wordstream blog.
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By 2020, video will make up 80 percent of all consumer internet traffic, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index.
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59 percent of executives said they’d rather watch a video than read text according to the Wordstream blog.
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Viewers retain 95 percent of a message when they watch a video, as compared to 10 percent when they’re reading it in text, Wirebuzz wrote.
- Facebook videos receive 135 percent more organic reach than a photo, according to the Buffer blog.
Now, the irony that you’re reading about how effective video is isn’t lost on me. For, clearly, video works, and for a good reason too. As humans (and pre-humans), we have been visual creatures for who knows how many millions of years; and we’re attuned to visuals far more than than text, which we only became acquainted with some 10,000 years ago.
Related: 5 Incredibly Simple Strategies to Help You Win With Video Marketing
Yet, today, in the 21st century, video’s irrestistability isn’t all you have to put into it to make your business soar. Here are some video hacks that will take your website to new heights in 2019:
Use videos on your landing pages.
Why tell your visitors what you have to offer when you can show them all it can do? When viewers watch a (good) video, they usually want to finish it before moving to something else. EyeView digital found that videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 86 percent, which is why videos make the ideal content for getting more subscribers or sales.
Not only does a video presentation with a powerful voice convince people to listen, but it gets them to stay longer, as well. A well put-together video sales pitch can also engender trust in your brand, as it will give you more creative space to play with.
Use videos on your product pages.
Seeing a product live in action is better any day than reading about it in a long paragraph filled with jargon and marketing-speak. Check out these examples of videos being used for promoting products for some ideas.
Use VR/360 content.
Video, like any other medium, sees frequent iterations, and brands that leverage those advancements can reap rich dividends. VR happens to be one of them. Despite naysayers, virtual reality, including “360 videos,” continues to gain market share. While, a few years ago, 360 content was fairly expensive to create, these days it can be made on a low budget, as well.
Certainly, 360 cameras are the preferred medium for shooting such content, but you can easily make such videos with lesser equipment, as well.
Migrate to HTML5.
HTML5 is extremely searchable and makes it easy to implement both native mobile support and full browser support. HTML5 also brings numerous advantages that are hard to ignore, especially for videos.
Users need not have any special plugins installed on their browsers to view HTML5 videos, either. In fact, almost every browser has default play, pause, seek and volume functions. However, if you wish to harness more advanced functions, you can look into dedicated html5 video players.
Insert lead-capture forms directly into your videos.
It’s nice enough to insert videos directly into a landing page, but wouldn’t it be cooler if you could just collect leads as a presentation is playing? That’s totally possible. Hubspot offers a lead-collection form for videos that can be used to capture leads from within them. Wistia even found that inserting a lead-capture form during the first 10 percent to 20 percent of your video yields a 38 percent to 43 percent increase in conversions.
Use a human face as the thumbnail.
More specifically, use a smiling human face, or one expressing an emotion that goes with the subject line. Doing so not only humanizes the content, it builds familiarity and trust; and the expression itself will resonate with the audience, which in turn will generate curiosity.
Play around with autoplay.
Turning a video on without the user’s permission is a slippery slope; however, this does make sense in some cases. For instance, brand -building videos on home pages that turn on automatically are becoming quite common. Youtube has gone with a default autoplay option for its videos as well.
Related: 5 Low-Cost Ways to Get Started With Video Marketing
Final thoughts
While simply using videos as content is smart, remember: People know this, and chances are that quite a few of your competitors are already trying this out. Using out-of-the-box strategies therefore can help you institute that much needed edge in your marketing efforts.
This article is from Entrepreneur.com
