It was in the early 1880s when the world got to see the earliest form of motion pictures. Between 1888 & 1895, famous inventors like Thomas Edison and Louis Lumiere introduced a motion picture camera and the cinematograph. And with the invention of televisions in the 1920s, videos came into our lives! The world of storytelling took a great leap and never looked back!
‘A picture is worth a thousand words is an adage in multiple languages meaning that complicated and sometimes multiple ideas can be conveyed by a single still image, which conveys its meaning or essence more effectively than a mere verbal description. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words would you think a video is worth? A few hundred thousand, you think? A million? Maybe more? Dr. James McQuivey, of Forrester, has estimated that a minute of video is equal to 1.8 million words. Am sure you are trying to imagine speaking 1.8 million words in a minute. Well, that’s the power of a video.
Videos bring ideas to life, helping make even the most complex ones easy to understand. They can capture and deliver the emotions as intended by the storyteller in a way that just words simply can’t! Made well, they can be customized and keep you hooked, making them an ideal marketing tool in today’s day and age!
The advent of computers, the internet in the 1960s, social media in the late 1980s, and most significantly, the mobile internet at the turn of the millennium gave a massive fillip to the way videos were made and consumed.
In today’s digital scenario, the paradigm of business-consumer dynamics has shifted. The existence of digital channels has influenced buyer behaviour, and consumers are now in control of how they receive information. Instead of giving you a call or waiting for your next commercial, consumers now rely on the internet to find information about your business. In recent times, studies show video as the preferred medium by consumers to receive information about brands or products that have sparked their curiosity.
Key Benefits of Using Video for Marketing
Video is a multifaceted media & communications format that you can adopt to offer information to your viewers. It’s available in various forms and can cater to a varied set of audiences. It can effortlessly draw your audience’s attention, encouraging them to engage with your brand or business.
There is a long list of benefits of using videos for marketing. We are listing down what we think are the top 5:
1. Video builds trust and credibility
Videos are an ideal way to create and build a persona for your business and the brand(s) you have to offer, helping you engage with your audience and earn trust in the process. Creating and building trust with a customer is a long-term process but critical for winning over the customer resulting in sales of your products and services. Over 90% of users claim that product videos are instrumental in the decision-making process. So a continuous series of product videos help your consumers understand and appreciate various aspects of your business and brand(s), resulting in creating & building trust. And better the trust, higher the sales. Simple!
2. Social platforms thrive on videos
People love watching videos, and people love sharing what they watch! Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin thrive greatly on video sharing. With videos being an easier way to communicate your point of view, as a business, to create an impact in the social media space, you’ll have to create, curate or crowdsource and share videos at regular intervals. Over the last few years live videos, and stories have become the in thing!
During the current Covid pandemic, brands & businesses across industries, from education and fitness to personal care and real estate, had to transition into an online-first entity almost overnight. The reliance on sharing, immersive yet straightforward and engaging videos, on social platforms to help the audience understand the products and services being offered became hygiene!
Videos also always prompt a debate leading to businesses getting critical insights in feedback and reviews. Incorporating video into your posts drives higher engagement and interactions. Instagram and Twitter videos also automatically play in your newsfeed, making videos more eye-catching and consuming to followers than just text.
3. Video Appeals to Mobile Users
Whether you are working from home or on the move, videos and mobiles go hand in hand. Falling smartphone prices have driven the massive increase in the usage of mobile smartphones across India. The easy availability of super-fast internet at meager prices is another factor for a large-scale rise in the adoption of social media. The number of Mobile Internet users has reached 572 million, out of which 444 million are social media users accessing through mobiles. This number is expected to see a 30% growth year on year! In India, YouTube will be the most used social media platform in 2021, with 85.80% of the social media users enrolled. After the US, India is the second-biggest market for YouTube, both in terms of views and subscribers.
As per Google, users watching video content or ads on their smartphones feel connected to the brands…twice as likely as TV viewers and 1.4 times more likely as desktop viewers. The increase of mobile video means that brands need to align with people’s personal experiences on their smartphones.
4. Videos are SEO friendly
Videos on YouTube and search on Google makes it a potent combination if used well for marketers. Knowledge & experience gained through previous SEO exercises come in handy and can be applied for video marketing. From SEO-friendly titles to headlines, descriptions and keywords that you’d typically use in a blog post can be taken forward for the video’s title, description, and so on. Even better. Don’t be surprised to know that Google prioritizes video content, and pages containing videos are more than 50 times more likely to rank in the top results than non-video content.
Further, topical, informative videos go viral occasionally, which helps boost the traffic and serves other SEO-related needs with minimal effort compared to other routes.
5. Videos boost sales and conversions
According to various studies, in a world where marketing is becoming more and more ROI-driven, video marketing has driven notable increases in conversions. Seen across industries, it further reinforces the power of just changing a single factor – video marketing. Videos – ads, product explainers, and customer and influencer testimonials help drive sales too.
YouTube and its origins
Founded bySteve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, YouTube, a website for sharing videos, served over 2 million views by the end of 2005 when it was officially launched. The number grew exponentially to over 25 million in a little over a month! By the summer of 2006, YouTube was serving more than 100 million videos per day, and the number of videos being uploaded to the site showed no sign of slowing down. YouTube was acquired by Google in late 2006, which proved to be a significant win-win for both the businesses and the consumer in general.
Why use YouTube for video marketing?
- in 2021, there over 2 billion YouTube users worldwide and 325 million + monthly active users in India. YouTube is the world’s second-most visited website, right behind its parent company, Google. It’s also the world’s second-most used social platform, in this case, behind Facebook.
- People watch more than a billion hours of videos on YouTube every day. A billion hours. Every day. That’s an incredible amount of content being consumed all around the world.
- According to a meta-analysis of more than 100 media mix modelling conducted by Nielsen across multiple categories, it concluded that YouTube delivers 4.8x greater effectiveness than TV and impacts incremental sales.
- According to a combined study by Google and Kantar, YouTube is cited as the preferred platform for watching videos in regional languages, with Hindi leading the charts, followed by Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Bengali, among others.
- Insight The best thing about YouTube advertising and marketing is that it offers free analytics on each video’s performance. Like Google Analytics, YouTube’s Insights feature provides all the data you need on the number of views you are getting, your viewers’ demographics, and your subscribers’ status.
But the best thing about YouTube Insights lies in its most powerful feature: Discovery. You gain more insight into how users find you on the website, and it shows what channels are being used to find your videos, which will help further sharpen your targeting exercise using YouTube.
Concluding
Video marketing is critical to succeeding in today’s day and age for any business, big or small, across industries. It doesn’t matter how many people, agencies, equipment, etc., were involved, but the content matters. You need to get started on a video marketing strategy.
The ideas listed above should help. For a more detailed conversation, write to us at deepak@diigitalcatalyst.in
Think big and start small with video marketing. Today!
FAQs on Why Business needs to be using YouTube
Why is YouTube marketing important for digital marketing?
- Over 2 billion monthly active users.
- Interactive way to engage with the customers.
- Advertising options like video ads, display ads, and sponsored content.
- Targeting possible for specific audiences based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.
- Powerful platform where one could build the brand and reputation over time without spending a lot of money.
- Number 2 most visited website in the world.
- Availability of analytics and metrics to measure the effectiveness of the marketing.
How do YouTube videos help businesses?
YouTube videos help businesses in a big way, and below are some of the reasons –- Improve brand awareness
- Improve visibility by reaching a wider audience
- Increase engagement with potential customers
- Drive website traffic
- Increase customer trust and credibility
- Boost search engine rankings for the videos and gain an extra brand’s place in the serps
- YouTube provides a platform for product demonstrations
- Community of subscribers
- Generate leads and sales
- Humanize the brand and build a personal connection
What types of videos should businesses create for YouTube marketing?
Businesses should create videos that are relevant to the target audience. The videos should be informative, entertaining, and relevant. Businesses could create videos like –- Product demonstrations
- How-to tutorials
- Customer testimonials
- Industry insights
- Behind-the-scenes glimpses of the business
