Marketing and sales strategies have changed a lot from the days of traveling salesmen. Going door to door doesn’t work in today’s busy private and business world. The internet brought new life to marketing and maintaining business-client relationships, and now emails and websites are using video to give themselves a needed make-over to compete in today’s market.
A Personal Connection
Adding video to your communication enables you to be more personal. Viewers see or hear you, a human, connecting with them. Videos can be personalized for your clients’ needs. If your prospective customer feels your content is relevant and valuable, they will be intrigued. If a customer enjoys a video ad, purchase intent is increased by 97% and brand association by 139% (Unruly). I’m sure we could list off ads that we still remember because they told a story we connected with. I think we can agree with Andrew Angus, founder of Switch Merge, when he said, “The play button is the most compelling call-to-action on the web.”
Video Increases ROI
Just using the word video with an email subject title “boosts open rates by 19%, click-through rates by 65% and reduces unsubscribes by 26%.” While working for a non-profit, Bryan saw this play out when the team was struggling to have supporters open their emails. After brainstorming, they decided to set up a camera and shoot a simple interview of the founder to lay out the current needs. Amazingly, every email was opened! For the next email, they built an even better video and the open rate was remarkable again.
Videos can be incorporated into email campaigns, but also on websites, or for training and onboarding. When it comes to websites, the statistics are impressive. Landing pages with video lead to 800% more conversion (FunnelScience). In fact, 88% of visitors stay longer on a site with prominent video displayed (MistMedia).
Video Versus Text
Our brains are wired to relate to what we see. 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text. (3M Corporation and Zabisco) The Forbes survey also shows that “59% of senior executives agree that if both text and video are available on the same topic on the same page, they prefer to watch the video. If video is good within a business, it is certainly good for business. In a 2007 study, Online Publishers Association found that that “80% of viewers recall a video ad they have seen in the past 30 days. 26% of viewers then look for more info about the product, 22% visit the product site, 15% visit the brand site, and 12% make the purchase.” Diode Digital found that 
video promotion is 600% more effective than print and direct mail combined!
That’s just ads and promotions. What about your website? If a picture is worth a thousand words, video is worth a million. Diode Digital also found that, “before reading any text, 60% of site visitors will watch a video if available, and will share their experience when presented with a ‘share this video’ button.
I certainly remember some of my favorite video ads. I was drawn in because of a story long before I knew who created it. On websites, I’m intrigued to know more about a brand or be inspired how to use a product. Through these impressive stats and our own experience, it’s easy to see how video marketing is growing in our digital world.
- http://blog.hubspot.com/agency/personalization-video-marketing#sm.0001b8droma54eomyhu1cvjlfqu81
- http://images.forbes.com/forbesinsights/StudyPDFs/Video_in_the_CSuite.pdf
- http://www.insidecxm.com/video-marketing-next-big-thing-digital-marketing-2015/
- http://syndacast.com/video-marketing-statistics-trends-2015
- https://www.singlegrain.com/video-marketing/just-stats-science-video-engagement/
