The benefits of video content for your brand.
Our business environment has changed in strange and significant ways since the onset of COVID-19. Many businesses have scrambled to take their services online, which has meant a change in how brands market to their existing and potential customers.
As an agency, we have championed digital marketing for a long time now, recognising its benefits over more ‘traditional’ advertising channels such as print for its increased ROI. However, COVID-19 has seen businesses accelerate their digital transformation. Brands need to master digital marketing quickly, efficiently, and find new ways to stand out from the competition.
Social media platforms have seen a marked uptake in activity and engagement recently, as people remain at home and spend a larger portion of their working day interacting online. This uptake in social media activity is fantastic news for marketers. Furthermore, as advertising spend dips across all sectors, now is the perfect time to look at generating more digital content to promote via social media and CPC (cost per click), as the associated costs of advertising may be lower in line with a decrease in demand.
Motion graphics animation
The average user engages with 300-700 ads and brands per day (more so in the current circumstances). Due to this overload of information, it’s more important than ever to differentiate your brand and get noticed. Motion graphics, which is animation including typography as a major element, has gained significant traction with social media audiences, reinforcing brand relationships with short sound bites, and high share value. Additionally, video allows brands to bypass word count limitations imposed by social media, increasing click-through rates, and sales conversions. Below is an example of motion graphic animation for our client Lifelong Homes.
‘Live-action’ videos
In our current circumstances, ‘live-action’ video filming has been put on hold, but brands can still create the wow factor needed to not just attract but to hold an audience’s attention by using stock library video footage and motion graphics animation. We achieved fantastic results for our lighting client Sylvania when we created their brand movie using a mix of original content and stock library video footage.
Animated video content on social media
More recently we’ve worked closely with our clients to create animated video content for use on social media. These short, bite-sized, videos are perfect for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Designed to attract the attention of audiences used to scrolling quickly through their feeds, animated videos provide the introduction to longer brand stories that can be told once the user is engaged.
65% of people are visual learners, and 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. In fact, visual information is processed 60,000 times faster than we process text. With that in mind, it’s easy to understand why video content fairs better on social media than any other kind of content.
Animation works particularly well on a platform that targets people with short attention spans or limited time. Consider how much animated content is created for children on digital platforms, this is in part due to the ease at which it can be processed. Many educational organisations embrace animated video as part of their course materials for this very reason.
Here’s an example of an ‘explainer style’ animation we produced for our client Cambridge University Press – for their FUNSkills Exam Preparation Course.
Animated video content on your website
There are several ways that video content can drive traffic and engagement on your website. Simply including video on your website landing page can increase conversions by up to 80%. According to MistMedia, 88% of visitors will stay longer on a website with prominent video content and a further 64% of those visitors will go on to buy products.
Good video content elicits an emotional response in your target audience that will be picked up and shared, then shared and shared again. This organic traction helps to build links and drive traffic to your website which all impacts positively on your search engine optimisation (SEO) ranking. You don’t have to create a viral video, it just needs to be something that your audience can relate to with content that’s useful to share.
We recently created a ‘How To’ video for Mitsubishi Electric to help their customers navigate their ‘Partner Portal’ website. The video was then shared with their client base who in turn navigated to their website and were able to interact with content that was useful in growing their respective businesses. This all goes to cement the client relationship with Mitsubishi Electric, the brand.
In pre-COVID-19 times we’ve also created several ‘live-action’ videos for Mitsubishi Electric staring George Clarke. All of which are hosted on their YouTube channel and shared on social media, individually driving traffic to their website. When you consider that more than 500 million hours of videos are watched just on YouTube each day, it’s clear that we all love watching video content and it’s a huge marketing opportunity.
Here’s our top tips for creating effective video content
1. Think strategy first
Think of your video content as part of your larger content strategy. Who do you want to see your video and why do you want them to see it?
2. What’s the desired outcome?
Set some clear goals for your video. If the intention is for it to sit on your website to boost product sales make sure you collect website traffic data before you upload it so that you can measure it against data after it has been uploaded.
3. Short or long?
Think carefully about where you’re going to post it. If you’re uploading it to Facebook, Instagram or Twitter then keep it short and sweet. Users rarely engage with lengthy videos, and when they do it really has to be worth their while. If you’re uploading to YouTube your video content can be longer and more comprehensive. It’s important to plan your video content, this allows you to create several shorter videos from the master edit.
4. The 3 second rule
Remember your audience is a fickle one. Get to the point quickly or they’ll move on. You need to engage your audience quickly, keep them intrigued, and leave them wanting more.
If you’d like to see more examples of our video projects visit our website https://therestless.co.uk/videos/
If you’d like to find out more about how to use video and motion graphics to market your brand email us [email protected] or call 01279 797 250 and ask for Lawrence or Anthony.