Users Interests are Evolving, Stay Ahead by Offering Video

User attention and user interests are continuing to transmute, with video leading the reason for this. We have seen user interaction alter even more the last few years, where engagement via link click posts, pictures, PDFs, and etc., are starting to take a slight sideline due to the attraction of video. Over the last few years, video has increasingly taken over as the main driver of engagement on social media, and is slowly bleeding onto other digital aspects like websites. Because of how much users interests are evolving, here is why you need to consider offering video:

Going back to how “Video marketing is no longer a nice to have – but a need to have”, this statement couldn’t be more true, as we continue to make an effort in reaching our audience in every way possible. As mentioned previously, Video makes up over 80% of all internet traffic. Meaning, most of your target audience is consuming video-based content.

Average Video Viewing Time is Continuing to Increase

Because of how important video is to the average consumer, you have to consider giving them what they want. But how much video is the average person consuming? Hundreds of millions of hours of video are watched every day. At least half of the population watches five or more videos a day, and daily viewing minutes in 2020 were up 19% (and continuing to climb), as it was estimated that the average person will spend over 100 minutes a day watching videos online. If your audience spends a good portion of their time watching video, it is essential that you provide them with something to watch so they don’t miss out on the content you would normally share through other non-video strategies.

Provide your Audience with a Visual Experience

We see the growth and importance of visual experiences. Now is the time to decide to be offering video so you can reach your audience to the fullest potential. Getting the attention of your prospects is continuing to evolve. If you want to stay ahead of the game, you have to consider trying new ways to get your word across. What people want to take away from a video is a visual experience. Meaning, experiencing something memorable, educational (cognitive), entertaining (sensational), emotional, or insightful. If you’re able to construct your video that way, you’re guaranteed to see a positive outcome.

Video Can Increase your ROI

By offering video, it can most definitely help grow your business. There’s no question that video marketing get’s a much better ROI than other marketing strategies. More than 51% of marketers say video gets the best ROI of any content. One way to stay ahead of the game is by not only implementing a video strategy for social media but also for your website. Having short videos on your web pages is a great way to reach people, and because of how often the average person spends time watching videos, your web page would not only see an increase in average duration but an increase in conversions, (including an increase in revenue), by more than 80%.

What Can be Offered Through Video?

Offering video on your website is a must. It is definitely a need to have and doesn’t have to be long. There’s so much that you can offer through video to reach your audience in a more powerful way. You can still have standard web pages, but it’s worth converting some of your page copy into video.

Standard webpage content that can be replaced with video includes: tutorials, press releases, product demos, case studies, testimonials, company services showcases, explainer/instructional videos, company introductions, educational material, news-story overviews/announcements, event promos and recaps, expert tips/advice, weekly highlights, teasers, FAQs, VR recorded audio conversations, employee features, and more.

Think of it as text-to-video! In terms of how we absorb content, video is the most popular, so why not cater to your audience that way? The percentage  is continuing to not only increase, but represent the more preferred way people consume content today.

To highlight a quick statistic of this, according to dreamgrove.com, “98% of users say they’ve watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service. That is why 45% of businesses who use video marketing said that they have an explainer video on their website. Of those businesses, 83% said that their homepage explainer video was effective”. More than half of all internet users look for videos when seeking content. In fact, according to Google’s research, “6 out of 10 people would rather watch online videos than television”.

How to Optimize

You can either upload videos directly to your hosting platform or embed with code. One downside to uploading videos directly onto your website is that they use up a lot of bandwidth. Instead of slowing down your website, use an external hosting platform, and then just embed with code. Be sure to not only optimize your website but follow Google’s list of preferences and rules. Once you start uploading videos to your website, Google will start evaluating your content.

To make Google happy and have your website/webpage show up higher in the rankings, you can always create a video sitemap, so you can show Google the location of your videos and an explanation of the content. Standard SEO practices that you incorporate into your web content, should also be done for videos. This includes; titles, meta descriptions, keywords, etc. According to Video Explainers, “A business is 53x more likely to appear on the first page of Google results if it utilizes it on their webpage. The reason? The inclusion of video improves SEO, consequently boosting a business’ place in the rankings”.

Start Selling Video

Video can be used to create brand awareness, trust, and long-term relationships. Not only can this be valuable to your own business, but your clients as well. Selling video, where you either create the video and host it on your website, or your customer hosts it on their website, is a win-win scenario. Why? Well if your goal is to increase page views and average site duration time, having a video on your website will increase the amount of time consumers will spend on your site, ultimately increasing conversions by 30%.

According to Hubspot, out of all the various types of content, “54% of consumers want to see video from brands”. The many different forms of content that you can offer through video, is not only something that would be for your own business, but it can also be packaged as video sales for clients. You can also sell paid video social media ads. Creating and posting videos on behalf of your client can generate great revenue.

As mentioned previously on how popular organic video is on social media, paid video ads are just as popular. Eight out of ten people say video ads are more relevant to them than any other advertising. A Renderforest Survey found that, “Videos helped businesses increase: brand awareness by 70%, traffic by 51%, and sales by 34%”.

It’s clear that video marketing is here to stay and can lead directly to sales. So why not offer something new for your business and your customers as well? Take advantage of consumers’ interests and desire in consuming material, by offering video content! 

If you’re wondering is video important to have in my business strategy,  check out these facts for marketers and sales.