TELL YOUR STORY, VIDEO STYLE
A few years ago, there was Vine, where moments were brought alive in a continuously looped six-second video-shot frame. Even if inadvertent, Vine offered users great ways to discover the power of videos. Today, online videos are a huge phenomenon both for the fun-seeking consumer and the corporates looking to promote their brand.
Businesses realize the potential of this untapped channel of content marketing that is ideal to reach out to customers and gain their mindshare. Quirky and disbelievingly unique strategies are being used to capture target audience’s attention, so much so that even congested marketplaces using video marketing, doesn’t come as a surprise anymore. For example, YouTube declared a 16% rise in Super Bowl ad views last season, and that one in every eight Super Bowl ads on Super Bowl Sunday was watched on digital devices. These videos and commercials were ranked based on views and cheers on YouTube Adblitz.
Despite such impressive facts, it appears that video marketing has a more prominent role to play in the future. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Complete Forecast, there will be about 1.9 billion Internet video users by 2021. The world is expected to watch 3 trillion minutes of Internet video per month by 2021, which is 5 million years of video per month! Furthermore, video will continue to dominate the Internet, representing 80% of all Internet traffic by 2021. It is clear the influence caused by video marketing is becoming a headline in itself. While small brands with modest budgets are still unlocking its potential, the more prominent ones are exploiting it already to alter the way audiences digest the advertised content and grand brand promises.
Small or significant, it is vital that brands looking to leverage the potential of video marketing, at first, device an exclusive video marketing strategy. This isn’t a new development for marketers - integrating a video marketing strategy into the marketing mix. What has changed is the level of cruciality a video brings to every platform and channel, so it is no longer one piece of your strategy. Video needs to be a centre-piece in your outreach and campaign efforts.
Any day and every day, Content is king in marketing, but today with video marketing, it is a mighty, magnificent king. More potent than it was in the past. With precise content and messaging, videos offer the opportunity to communicate about your brand, showcase your product and connect with your customers in a substantial, never-before-used way. For example, viewers no longer just watch the Super Bowl but also like to talk about the commercials. The fans involve themselves with the game much the way they do with all digital mediums – exchanging views and opinions on social media. Advertisers are aware of this. As a result, they track a variety of metrics on how these viewers are engaging with the promoted brands.
What was a blip on the radar a few years ago is now a top content marketing priority for brands and influencers everywhere. When developing marketing videos, having accurate content is paramount. If the content fails to connect with your customers in the way it is intended to, the visual fails its purpose. The video might as well be discarded. Curating content in a storytelling format in an authentic, genuine and engaging manner will find significance in today’s overcrowded media platforms. In line with this, video marketing has to transform from just delivering brand messages to connecting emotionally with customers’ desires and needs. We, at AforBusiness, call them “Video Stories”.
In marketing, a silver lining separates the marketers’ thoughts with that of their audiences’ when it comes to spotlighting interesting content. The challenging part is to delineate the two, keeping your audience’s preference in mind, first. Customers bond with video stories and not so much as with video marketing, for stories in any sphere, have the power to absorb us into their cocoon of belief. They draw us in into their emphatic and empathetic narrative capacity only to let us believe that such a world - their world - exists.
As much as video marketing is key to building any business, it’s a video story that triggers and ignites interest in any product or service for a business today. For all that we are familiar with, it takes years to build a business, months to establish customers, but ten-seconds to make the right impact. And for every great brand, there is a great story waiting to be told.
Are you ready to take that momentous leap from video marketing to video stories, and take your brands to the next level of customer appreciation? Then, check out A4B’s latest Video Stories archive.
