Who Doesn't Love Video? Why You Need A Video Marketing Strategy

Video marketing is at the top of the content asset heap these days for good reason. Video is naturally engaging, and all marketers want to engage their audience or perspective audience. In fact, engagement is a more important metric than follower count when it comes to social media and here’s why. Having a large social media follower count doesn’t necessarily equate to success in the form of lead generation, customer acquisition, sales or revenue. On the contrary, an engaged social audience that readily consumes, comments, shares and provides sentiment in reaction to your content is far more likely to visit your website, subscribe to your newsletter and ultimately become a customer. Of course, consistently creating and distributing great videos (and it does have to be great because poor video content will still drive poor engagement) can be difficult because of the time, effort and expense associated. This article examines why the investment is worth it and explores how even small to medium sized businesses can benefit from a video marketing strategy.

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First some video statistics: Ezra Firestone of Smart Marketer shared the following during Digital Marketers Content & Commerce Summit in Orlando last week. 

• 100 million hours of video are consumed every day.
• Social Media involving video generates 1200% more shares than text and images alone.
• 4X as many consumers prefer to watch a video rather than read.

These statistics, while impressive, aren’t overly surprising if you consider how you engage with video. How often have you stopped scrolling through your social feed to pay closer attention to a video? How often do you seek out an entertaining, inspiring or informative video on YouTube? The data says that you and most others engage with video quite often.
However, what is really interesting about these statistics is the gigantic opportunity that video provides marketers. No longer do you have to produce content in mass, rush to distribute and hope that it sticks. Instead, you can create one long-form video for your website, slice and dice the same video into interesting snippets or key points, determine which short video works best for each social network and distribute based on a marketing calendar which maximizes the lifespan of the original video asset. That equates to smart, efficient marketing.
Moreover, video can breathe life into otherwise mundane or less inspiring products by showcasing how the product works or can be used. Companies such as Birchbox drive significant revenue by showing their audience how to use beauty products via video tutorials or demos. They produce these videos on the premise that knowing how a product works, and more specifically how it will work for you, drives sales. Guess what? It does. Thus the brilliance of using video. 
Video is also the ideal content asset for capturing user-generated content. Any customer with a smart phone can create an interesting video and share the personal benefits they received by using your product or service. The video quality is less important. It isn’t expected to be professionally produced, it is the personal story that is important. A personal story via video is powerful.
Perhaps best of all, video elevates the opportunity for engagement merely by being a video. That doesn’t mean that a bad video will produce great results. It means that video by its nature pulls back the curtain so-to-speak. It gives a more personal view of who you are, what your company represents, and highlights the people behind your brand. It brings life to your products. It helps demonstrate the problem that your product or service solves. All of which is interesting and engaging.
Video is here to stay because of these things and more. Companies that embrace video and all that it has to offer will be glad that they did because driving engagement drives revenue. 


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