2015 Is The Year Of Video?
Show, don’t tell. Which is the easiest yet strongest concept a storyteller can learn. As internet marketers put more emphasis on material that tells a story, we must keep in mind that old writing adage-even though it’s much simpler said than done.
The good news is, today’s marketers are utilizing video to put the emphasis on showing. Video is the best format for quickly catching busy audiences’ attention. It allows strong storytelling within a short but memorable structure that viewers can enjoy-and online marketers can measure.
Grabbing the interest of potential customers is more crucial than ever in a world in which buyers do many of their own research online before ever getting in touch with a vendor. We must cut through the noise and interact our prospects with material that entertains, inspires, and teaches them about what we do and who we’re, such as the culture of our companies.
Facts tell, but stories sell, as we say. There is no better method than video for storytelling.
Up until recently, most internet marketers have used video sparingly as a way to boost their website, but very few have dedicated to it strategically in an effort to improve the results of advertising and sales programs. That’s on the verge of change.
Video content is transforming into a surefire way to increase click-through rates as well as digital conversions, and entrepreneurs are starting to take notice.
To put it simply, the play button happens to be as the most engaging call to action on the Web.
2015 is definitely the year that video becomes an integrated part of e-mail marketing, content marketing, social, Search engine optimization, and demand-generation programs, helping marketing experts improve their day-to-day outcomes while increasing brand affinity and improving consumer relationships.
Data-driven marketing and advertising is all the rage, and new marketing technologies have made it easy to track the digital connections of online viewers and measure the performance of marketing programs. This movement will continue in 2015 as marketers turn to extract greater insights using their marketing techniques to improve results.
As video turns into a more prominent portion of the marketing mix, video statistics will become extremely important-and highly valuable.
Modern video marketing platforms now provide the opportunity to track even more than just view counts. Marketers can gain insight into actual target audience engagement and regular drop-off rates for their videos, in addition to how each video is adding to generating leads and revenue.
The days of view counts being the greatest measure of success will quickly be gone, replaced by an knowledge of who is watching each video asset and how video is really adding to marketing and sales goals.
Online videos can easily become active lead-generation tools. Including an email gate to the start of your video or perhaps a lead collection form to the end enables you to create new, well-qualified leads who are considering your content. That information is now able to tied directly to contact files in marketing automation and CRM systems, providing a qualified lead that can be tied back to actual engagement inside your online content. Entrepreneurs are already starting to work with this capability, and we’ll see an uptick in usage throughout 2015.
But what’s far more compelling is the usage of video-viewing data to better rating, segment, and qualify your leads.
By keeping track of video viewing activities of your prospective buyers, you can gain better understanding of who your hottest leads are and you can boost your conversion velocity. And as online video becomes an increasingly crucial part of your website and content advertising programs, tracking video relationships will be critical.
What’s all the more highly effective is that you could now track how long an individual actually continues engaged in a video, making it possible to treat a lead who watches merely 10 seconds differently from one who watches the video all the way to the finish.
Only video comes with a reliable means of monitoring actual engagement with content, and 2015 is the year that online marketers will start to use these insights to their advantage.
