Video is a powerful form of marketing that seems to grow in popularity almost daily. Everywhere you look, someone is live streaming or uploading a video. The reason video marketing is so popular is that it is a highly effective way of getting your message across and making it stick in viewers’ minds.
Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing survey looked at 656 respondents made up of both consumers and marketers. The survey found 85% of businesses now use videos for marketing. Marketers in the survey cited reasons for using video as a promotional tool, such as a good return on investment (ROI) and engaging leads.
Whether you’ve already jumped on the video marketing bandwagon or you are just dipping your toes into this advertising pool, it’s important to know what kinds of videos will dominate as you move through 2020 and beyond.
1. Short Informational Videos
If you ask most people, they’ll tell you they leave crazy busy lives. They may work full-time, take care of a family, participate in a hobby or sport, care for aging relatives or even be taking a course or two on the side to further their education. Time is a premium, so short videos people can digest while commuting on a train or waiting in line are highly desirable.
Recent consumer surveys show about 68% of respondents want to learn about a new product through a short video. Only 15% wanted text-only articles, while 4% wanted infographics. The takeaway here is that teaching your target audience about your product should always involve some type of video in addition to anything else you’re doing.
2. Docu-Marketing
The public is tired of the world of fake news stories, clickbait and even reality shows that aren’t realistic at all but obviously staged. The bachelor always keeps the drama queen or the mean girl around a lot longer than he should, for example. Docu-marketing has become popular as a way to meet real people within a company and get to know the brand through their stories.
Docu-dramas often interview key employees in a company and come up with a theme, but let things unfold in a natural way. A lot of branding can be done in the editing phase, such as adding accents in the company color scheme.
3. Personalized Videos
Personalization is more and more important to consumers. Around 72% of consumers say they will only engage with companies that personalize their messages to them specifically. One way to accomplish this with your videos is to create multiple buyer personas and then videos that target each persona. You then send the right video to the right match to make the products and services ones that person is most likely interested in.
For high ticket items, you might even want to plug in a personalized greeting at the beginning of a video to take your efforts to a new level. It takes only a few minutes for someone to record a specific greeting. Your video editing crew would then splice the new clip into the beginning of the video, and your marketing or sales team could send the video out.
4. 360-Degree Videos
The ability to create 360-degree videos has been around for a good long while. Real estate agents have long used them to showcase the benefits of a particular home and do a virtual walkthrough. However, with the advanced capabilities of today’s smartphone cameras and high-resolution screens combined with faster internet connections, they’ve become more commonplace.
360-degree videos show your product from every angle. It’s the next best thing to a real-life demonstration of a product. These videos are particularly effective at selling physical goods. Expect to see more and more 360-degree videos as we move through 2020.
Social media sometimes gives us a hint of upcoming trends. Facebook’s 3D photograph features and the addition of many 360-degree videos by all different product types is a hint that this trend will soon explode, and you’ll see more and more product videos that look at an item from all possible angles. Another advantage is how interactive the videos can be as the user often moves the screen to see different areas of the video.
5. Long-Form Videos
Video marketing often follows closely behind other forms of content marketing. Remember a few years back when everyone was putting out short, 300-word articles on their blogs to drive traffic?
Google’s algorithms changed, however, and suddenly, the very short content wasn’t deep enough, and people’s rankings slid into the gutter. The length of articles slowly grew to the point where long-form became a cornerstone piece of content for most sites, and shorter pieces became fillers.
While most videos online are still fairly short, there are occasions where a longer, explainer video content type makes sense. Instead of using longer videos for the first phase in the buyer’s journey, though, use long-form for the middle of the sales funnel to better educate browsers and reel them in as buyers.
Studies show that around 80% of videos are less than five minutes but that videos over 15 minutes long account for 50% of engagement statistics. Longer videos keep viewers watching to the end, but it may be the point at which those videos are used in the marketing process. Think about the best use of long-form videos in your own marketing efforts. Where would customers be most likely to respond to longer content?
6. Shoppable Videos
If you’re going to use videos to market products, it’s a smart move to make the video clickable so the user can immediately go to a page and order the product. One of the keys to successful online marketing is immediacy.
If your product or service doesn’t work well with online sales, then you should at least offer a link to get in touch right then and there. The link can pop up during the video and go to a contact form or a working telephone number or even a live chat feature. The goal is to collect leads or sales through your video while the content is still fresh in potential consumers’ minds.
Experiment With New Techniques
As marketers try new tactics to reach customers, expect new trends to emerge. Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing with their videos as well as techniques from some of the larger Fortune 500 companies. Pay attention to emerging trends and do your best to stay on top of what your specific target audience wants. With a little effort, your videos will help you sell more than ever before in 2020.
