The most successful businesses know that attracting visitors to their website and holding their attention, as well as having them return time and time again, is extremely important. The higher the number of visitors to your website, the higher the number of opportunities you have to make a sale, or get a new lifelong customer.
Cross-promoting your site with your social media accounts and keeping a regularly updated blog are useful tools in keeping website traffic, but many sites are also finding that video is a great way to garner attention. Below are some ways that video can be the ultimate marketing tool for your website.
Get your message across
It’s a fast-paced world online, and potential customers are looking to get as much information as possible in the first few minutes that they visit a site. Content needs to be interesting, pithy and to-the-point. Nothing makes this easier than a well-placed video. Visitors won’t read pages and pages of content, but they might stay engaged with an interesting video, allowing you to get your message across.
Bear in mind that video should not replace written content, but rather be used to complement it, and grab attention first.
Active engagement
Internet users love videos. Studies have shown that using the word ‘video’ in an email subject line makes users 19% more likely to open it, and 65% more likely to click through to your website, whilst a 2018 survey by HubSpot discovered that 54% of consumers wanted to see more video content from their favourite brands and businesses.
The reason for this is that videos offer a form of active engagement. Whereas passive interaction (a ‘like’ on a post, for example) theoretically shows engagement, it is very quickly forgotten about. Active engagement (opening an email, commenting on a post or watching a video) requires far more commitment, making users feel more dedicated to the subject they are focused on.
Enjoy higher Google rankings
Search engines are designed to favour sites with regularly updated content. The more often the site changes, the higher up the Google rankings it will be. A new video is a great form of fresh content as it can be cross-promoted without triggering algorithms that penalise anything that looks like duplicate content (a real issue with blogs and other copy). You can ramp up the audience and effectiveness of your video by tagging keywords, and hosting your video on YouTube.
Creating a YouTube channel is key to influencing visitors to watch your videos. YouTube is the world’s biggest source of video content, providing 83% of all videos watched globally. Users trust it, and the chances of your video being found and watched even by accident are higher. Incidentally, Google owns YouTube, so it doesn’t hurt your Google rankings either!
Captivate your audience
The ultimate goal for any marketing video is for it to go viral. For this to happen you can’t just have a dry video which states your mission statement and offers a product or service, it has to be entertaining. How you do this is up to you. You could make it funny, daring, quirky or downright weird. As long as it fits with the personality of your company and evokes an emotional response of some kind, you have a good shot at getting an audience for it.
- Grab the viewer’s attention within 7 seconds. Statistically, users will stop watching after this if they are not entertained.
- Surprise but don’t shock. Shock tactics have been very successful for some businesses in the past, but it has been a huge failure for others. You don’t want to alienate your audience or cause upset, and you should be aware that some of your audience could be disturbed by something shocking and switch off. A surprise that makes people laugh is far better.
- Provide a value exchange. People share things because they want their peers to think they are switched onto something cool. Give them that opportunity by offering them something slick and entertaining, that is ahead of the curve.
- Aim for emotional highs or lows.
Give your company personality
The likeability of a brand is often overlooked when putting together marketing material, but it is a key factor proven to influence the choices of customers. With a video, you are far better able to portray the real personality of your company and the people that work there. Everything from the characters to the music and colour palette of your video will give an impression of your company, so it is important to tailor it to who you really are.
To accurately portray your brand persona, as well as grab a viewer’s attention and hold it, your video should:
- Express an emotion. Audiences are statistically the most likely to respond to a video that is very happy or very sad, something which pulls at the heartstrings. If the video leaves people wanting to cry tears of sadness or joy, you’re definitely on the right track
- Humanise your brand. Why not include real staff members to show that your company is not a faceless corporation who doesn’t care about their customers.
- Give some background. Now is the time to talk about where you came from and what your mission statement is.
- Project the future. Where do you want to be and how can they help you get there?
- Give an idea of what it would be like to work with you. A video can offer a ‘behind the scenes’ vibe that helps viewers to feel a real connection with you, and want to develop that connection.
Make visitors feel like part of the family
People are more likely to buy a product or get involved with a service with people that they know or that they feel they know. This is how celebrity endorsements work, and is a powerful marketing ploy. A video offers a human face to your brand that makes the bond feel that much stronger.
Helps to bring visitors back time and time again
Videos don’t have to be just straight-up advertising, you can use them to educate as well. Perhaps your videos could teach customers how to use the products or services that you provide, or offer tutorial-style reviews. Make your videos into a series and instantly you’ve gotten yourself at least a few repeat visitors for as long as that series lasts. If you are able to provide something unique and useful, you should find that your videos are shared more often as well.
Why not let the MaxWeb team lead your first foray into video content on your site? The statistics are clear, everyone loves video – so give us a call and allow our knowledgeable and helpful staff to discuss your options. Please call us on 0151 652 4777 or email info@maxwebsolutions.co.uk and ask to speak to our website development team.
Posted on Friday, March 29th, 2019 in Digital Marketing.
