It’s no secret that video on social media is a powerful marketing tool: 82% of marketers say that video marketing has a positive impact on their business. So we know that video marketing boosts our brand’s appeal, but do we truly know in which ways social video does this? Let’s break it down to explain some of the ways social video aids your company’s online presence.
Increases Engagement
First we were sharing passages of text on social media platforms, and then it was graphics, and now the most engaging content is video. All the most popular social media platforms have added a native video component in recent years because video drives more engagement than any other type of content available on the internet today.
Take Facebook, for example, by uploading natively to the platform businesses see up to 53% more shares from videos. Even better numbers have been seen on Instagram, where videos reportedly create double the engagement of images.
Drives Viewers Closer to the Buyer Cycle
A recent IDG study reported that exposure to a product in the social web positively affects likelihood to purchase by 44%. Video is the best way, except for testing out the product in person, for a viewer to understand the advantages and disadvantages of a product. Many times product demonstration videos can drive viewers straight to the purchase page of your website. By adding the appropriate links to lead the viewer to your site below the video you’ve shared on social media, you’ve drastically increased your chances of a sale. Not to mention, viewers who like or comment on the video will drive their friends to the video as well by having it pop up on their newsfeed. If those other social media contacts have a similar taste in products, you have more new customers.
Impacts Brand Perception
What video can do for audiences is offer a “behind-the-scenes” look at how a brand operates. This is relatively new form of content which only appeared on the scene after the creation of social media and camera phones. For example on Instagram, Jeni’s Ice Cream’s most popular video to date is a video showing how they make their waffle cone. These days audiences are interested in content that gives them unique access to content that they haven’t seen before. By offering that content on social media, you are building a level of intimacy and trust with that audience.
Creates User Generated Content
What’s better than offering dynamic videos on social media for your audience? How about your consumers making the content and creating word-of-mouth marketing? User generated content can do wonders for a brand and without any work on the brand’s end. Patti Labelle was selling a fairly unknown sweet potato pie in Walmarts across the USA before Youtuber James Wright made a Youtube video of himself trying the pie. The video went viral within one day, and Walmarts across the US were promptly sold out of Patti Labelle’s sweet potato pie by the end of the week. Now, while results like this aren’t an everyday occurrence, it stands true that consumers trust other consumers’ opinions. When you communicate with your customers through social video, you encourage your customers to respond in the same medium.
According to comScore, a brand’s professional video content combined with responsive user generated content can have a combined impact of a 35% increase in purchases.
Better Analytics
Video gives viewers more information about your company and in turn gives your company more information about your viewers. This is due to the extensive video analytics offered on social media platforms today. You can monitor how many people clicked to view your video (rather than viewing it due to autoplay), liked it, or shared it. But this is only the tip of the analytics iceberg. You can also see the demographic breakdown of your viewership, how long they viewed the video for, and how many clicked through your call to action.
This detailed breakdown helps you understand your audience’s preferences for content and ultimately helps you create better-suited content for them.
Hyper Targeting
Directing your content towards a specific demographic helps raise your chances of receiving engagement. This happens because creating niche content for a niche group will always win over creating general content that is aimed at no one in particular. You need to know who you want to talk to with your marketing strategy, and video helps you narrow that down. You can choose between age demographics and location for a general video post. For video ads, the targeting can become more specific by focusing on certain groups based on categories they’ve liked on their personal pages, or you can choose to target the friends of your fans. If you want to test what audience is the most responsive to you can try A/B split testing through ads to see which type of content drives more conversions. All this troubleshooting leads up to better quality of content that is better received by its audiences. Who can argue with that?
By 2016, 74% of all web traffic will come from video. It’s no question that social video is beneficial to your marketing strategy. Now that you know exactly how it is beneficial, your brand can better curate its content and social video marketing approach for the best ROI possible.
