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3 Types of Online Video That Will Drive Your Marketing Goals

Credit: Unsplash by Sara Kurfeß

Direct mail often plays the role of a physical touchpoint that helps your brand feel more real and trustworthy. When a prospect receives your mail, they immediately make a tangible connection to you that was not present when they only knew you through digital marketing.

Online video plays a similar role in digital marketing, especially with many consumers and businesses social distancing to fight COVID-19, and it’s an essential piece of any omnichannel marketing campaign in 2020.

Why Online Video Is Worth the Effort

Video is the next best thing to meeting your customer in-person. Putting a real face on your brand to speak for your products, causes, and ideas helps bring what you do into focus.

Brands that are good at online video marketing are more relatable and better able to appeal to customers on an emotional level. This is backed up by research.

“Today’s top marketers are the ones who can deliver the best experiences — be they informative, entertaining, or both — and video is one of the most effective mediums for delivering such experiences at scale,”  says Andrew Moravick, senior research associate, marketing effectiveness & strategy, at Aberdeen Group.

When consumers in a HubSpot survey were asked to rank what kind of content they prefer to receive from brands and products they support, 54% said video, 46% said email and newsletters, 41% said social images, and 34% said social video.

Likewise, Brightcove found that video was more memorable, more engaging, and gets shared more often than any other form of online content.

Most importantly, video works to achieve marketing goals. Research conducted by the Aberdeen Group for Vidyard found that the presence of video had positive effects on just about every aspect of online marketing:

  • 27% higher email clickthrough rates
  • 34% better conversion on landing pages
  • 49% faster brand revenue growth

3 Ways to Use Video in Your Omnichannel Marketing

1. Customer Testimonials

This may be a no-brainer, but prospects believe their peers. Seeing someone else like them endorse your brand creates what’s called “social proof” that your products and services fulfill the needs they purport to serve.

There is no better way to build social proof than to give your satisfied customers a place to speak on your website. We’re strong believers in this ourselves at Propelo Media. When we’ve done our job well, the best thing we can do is let our customers speak, and their words have the most power when the audience can see and hear them on video.

That’s why customer testimonials are showcased extensively on our own website, and I believe you’ll find the same thing for your brand if you give your customers the platform to speak.

2. ‘Viral’ Engagement Videos

These are the catchy videos that serve a top-of-funnel, lead-generation purpose. They don’t explore the details of your products or offers; their main goal is to make a positive impression on the right kind of viewer.

One of the best examples of a consumer engagement video was the Dollar Shave Club launch video. The goal was to make a memorable brand impression that made shavers question the status quo. A few years later, Dollar Shave Club was the biggest thing in men’s grooming e-commerce and got swiftly acquired by Unilever.

It might not be an obvious connection but thought leadership videos also fall into this category. Not every brand can or should present themselves like the National Lampoon of shaving, but every good brand has an angle that stands out to its target audience. Rand Fishkin used simple, arguably boring, whiteboard explainer videos to put MOZ on the map and launch a decade of growth. (Don’t miss the savvy way they tied the YouTube videos back to their website, either).

Find a way to showcase your brand spirit in a video, and the right kind of prospects will find it, share it, and come to you to learn more.

3. Landing Page Explainer Videos

This is easily one of the most lucrative uses of video because a landing page asset helps to drive conversions. Prospects who click to visit your landing pages are looking for more information about the product and offer. In 2020, many of them, especially Millennials and Gen Z, would rather see that information as a video.

Video in this role should act as a helpful salesperson: Answer the customers’ questions, explain the product, highlight its benefits, and show why the deal is worth taking.

A Time for Video

If you haven’t fully embraced video as an integrated part of your omnichannel marketing strategy, this is the time to step it up. Your customers have spent an entire season interacting with the world through online video, and they are going to come out of this crisis with a new expectation for brands to be able to communicate with them that way moving forward.

If you use this time to boost any one aspect of your marketing, make it online video. Plan to come out of this time knowing who your brand is in video, what your customers want from it, and how to integrate it with every other aspect of your marketing plan.


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