Video Marketing In 2020 — What Do The Stars Say?
There is no turning away from the fact that video has seen a phenomenal rise in recent years when it comes to marketing strategies. Users respond well to videos. And videos that resonate with people take no time to do a gazillion rounds around the internet in the matter of a few hours.
The implications of the same are huge. In an attention economy, where all businesses have equal opportunities and platforms for connecting with people, you need to ensure that you have a loyal and engaged customer base. On the internet, it’s no longer about the product but also about how you are presenting it in front of the audiences. Numbers show (and friends unintentionally convey) that video is the best way.
And let’s admit it. This is the era of reading fast and reading less. Especially on a screen, people seldom like to ‘dip their toes and immerse their being in the vast and actualized ocean of your words’. Don’t mean to break your heart but here are a few statistics:
- People’s attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2018 (lower than that of a goldfish, by the way.)
- 55% of all page views receive less than 15 seconds of attention.
- Only 10–20% of readers make it to the bottom of the post.
- 60% of people skim content rather than read it.
In such a scenario, do you really want your best content to not even receive the proper amount of attention it deserves? After all the research and hard work you put into it?
For 2020, we highly recommend you create give video content and video marketing an intentional and dedicated try.
If you still aren’t convinced, here are a few numbers to rock your mind:
- Viewers retain 95% of the messages they get through videos as compared to the 10% they retain through text.
- The average user spends 88% more time on a website that has video content.
- On YouTube alone, more than 500 million hours of video are watched every day.
Taken seriously, these facts alone should propel you to create and launch interesting, engaging video content and video marketing for your business.
Creating a buzz like nothing else
If you are on the internet you know BuzzFeed. The (very raised to power very) popular publishing platform posts everything- listicles, articles, quizzes, news- using all kinds of mediums- text, audio, video. They cover all kinds of domains you can imagine and introduce you to ones you have never looked into before.
In 2017, BuzzFeed was the №1 company in video content with 64.6 billion views across Facebook and YouTube. Here are the stats as of December 2019:
Such is the power of its content that its top traffic sources are the ones which are hardest nuts to crack.
The 25.24% of search traffic you see? 99.98% of it is organic.
When BuzzFeed went live with its watermelon explosion video on Facebook Live, 800,000 people watched it in real-time. Its Tasty food network has an average of 360 million users per month. Their short recipe videos which autoplay on Facebook make the cooking dream (seem) possible for millions. No matter what others say, BuzzFeed has cracked the code for shareable content that Internet users can’t help but binge upon!
Now if you are ready to give video content a try, below are the top video trends for 2020 that we predict will be a hit with the masses. You can begin your video journey from one of these to achieve the best results.
Trends for 2020
Email + videos
To regular users of social media, the fact that email is even opened is raise-the-eyebrow-by-a-few-millimeters worthy. But, stats have shown that email and email marketing remain one of the most effective mediums for increasing conversion rates and reaching out to customers in a personalized manner. More so than social media marketing.
According to Hubspot, just the word ‘video’ can amp up your click-through rates by 200–300%! That’s a big figure, my friend. Implementing a video marketing strategy in emails had been tough up until now, but email services like MailChimp have made it easy.
You can launch email campaigns with videos geared towards a specific aspect of your business. This will not only help to market your business effectively but also has the potential to increase sales and engagements. The crystal ball says that 2020 will be the year that businesses accept this fact and start wielding it in their video marketing policies.
A tip: you can promise some exclusive content to email subscribers to leverage their curiosity and impulse not to miss out.
Not everyone hangs out at LinkedIn. But those who do have a very determined mindset of extracting the maximum value from the platform. Be it regarding job searches, recruiting people, or finding business resources. As such, if you are using or plan to use B2B marketing, then using LinkedIn will prove to be immensely valuable for your business.
Consider other platforms like Twitter, FB, Instagram. All of them have an informal aspect. When businesses step onto them, they aren’t in the same mindset as they are when using LinkedIn. Not to mention, you’ll be showing a different side of your brand on these platforms, keeping in mind the kind of user base present there.
With LinkedIn, B2B advertisers and marketers get to craft a video marketing strategy that caters exclusively to the business sense in people. You can use jargon unhesitatingly, talk numbers, and showcase real value to your ideal clientele because you’ll be communicating directly with them.
All that being said, yes video marketing has yet to become an integral part of LinkedIn advertising. But the direction has become clear. In 2018, LinkedIn introduced sponsored video content. The trend of usage upsurged in 2019, and 2020 has a high chance of ushering the true expansion of video marketing on this platform.
Influencing buying decisions
Buyers and customers are smart now. You can no longer fool them by pretty visuals (though they are highly effective in planting the initial seed). With the rise of interconnectedness on the internet, the buying process has shifted. Before making the final purchase, people tramp through the internet to find all possible information they can about a product or service.
Hubspot has numbers to support:
- 95% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.
- A brand video has convinced 81% of people to buy a product or service.
- 69% of people have been persuaded to buy a piece of software or application by watching a video.
These numbers were reported in 2018. Surely these numbers have seen a rise by January 2020?
When online videos are already influencing such a large chunk of people, it is only natural that this video marketing trend will continue to grow in 2020 owing to the variety in social media channels and the ease of reaching customers.
Diverse content
With traditional advertising, you not only pay more but also get a <15 seconds slot to showcase your product or services. With YouTube videos or video marketing content that you put on social media or your website, you have the freedom to display your product/ services as you wish.
You can create videos of any duration you want. You can weave any number of stories that you want. You can show certain aspects of your brand that can help the users to connect more- a sappy video for Valentine’s Day to or an informative one about the eco-friendly angle of your business. This leads to specificity which can help to engage customers more effectively than a simple, generic ‘buy from us’ or ‘work with us’ advertisement. More and more brands are recognizing this and taking going for online videos rather than traditional advertising.
Videos work well for small businesses, too, which do not have the necessary budget for producing large scale advertisements. Using the wood desk in your office along with a few potted plants peeking in at the edges, you can come up with the perfect background to get you started with product photography. Did we mention that a DSLR is not at all required?
Using 3 different types of plants, along with a coffee mug, and a few knickknacks which relate to your product, you can come up with really good pictures. These can be used as part of even a 1-minute trailer for the product. Just make sure to buy really good wooden tables for your office furniture.
Here is another example:
Very minimal and achievable. For this, you need only play with lightning and a couple of filters. Make sure, though, that the individual shots you include in the video have the same mood and tone. This shot shouldn’t be paired up with one like given below:
Now if you don’t have a white table, just use a white tablecloth, organize basic office gear at apt distances, and voila! Ace photography just a click away.
For the live telecast of an event or some juicy behind-the-scenes, live videos are the perfect tool. They are already on the road of popularity as businesses use them to show the person behind the brand. This leads the viewers and customers to feel more connected. The focus has already shifted to content-rich, engaging, and real-time content. Who’s to say the trend won’t continue (and grow) in 2020?
More social media channels will say yes to video
As video viewing continues to rise in the year, social media channels will find more ways to include it as a part of their platform.
After Instagram stories were a hit, it introduced IGTV to allow users to record longer videos of up to 1 hour. Snapchat is already a video-driven platform. LinkedIn has made sponsored video content a part of their website. Facebook has been rolling out video options and bettering them since the last 3–4 years. In 2020, the focus will shift to FB groups but videos are here to stay.
As these channels roll out more sophisticated video options, videos will become a major part of advertising strategies and user consumption, too. With this shift, a lot of barriers will be broken. Accessibility options for both large and small businesses will be the same. You won’t need to spend a boatload on advertising. Local businesses can grow to have an international reputation or coverage. The possibilities are endless, and by the end of 2019, we will have tapped into a lot of them. Speaking of which, here are some advanced content promotion strategies to help you ace your video marketing on social media.
Say yes to vernacular
How many people head off to www.rekhta.com or follow its Instagram page, just to revel in some poignant and nostalgic shayari? Plenty. Hence, if you are looking to capture and build a new, infant market, hone in on this domain and invest in high-quality translated content. People want foreign films, exotic literature, and local zines from around the world which help them to learn about diverse cultures while sitting at home.
According to research, the number of people who consume vernacular content in India is estimated to reach 540 million by 2021. For 60% of these people, lack of content in their dialect/ language is a big reason for not warming up to the Internet. This is a pretty hefty and untargeted demographic. Anyone who taps into this market can become the king of it.
Increased Focus on Tier II and Tier III cities
Following the same vein, there’s a lot of content geared towards Tier 1 cities- millennials, professionals, older people, homemakers. You name the demographic and they are covered. Content for Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, on the other hand, is still scarce. Google, however, has recognized this and is focusing to offer its services (Google Maps for example) in Hindi, too. According to Google India Marketing Director, Sandeep Menon, every one in five (21%) person prefers to browse the Internet in Hindi.
Keeping these trends and the value of video marketing in mind, you can now channel your efforts in the direction that is conducive to your business and will drive up engagement + sales like no other strategy.
Ready to take to the internet by a storm now? It’s time to scale big, folks! Tell us what do you think about the rise in this trend. Leave your comments below or write to us on contact@contentninja.in.
