Does Video Have the Power to Engage Your Audience and Deliver ROI?

Video, the very current dilemma. Do you take that step and invest in one of the fastest growing internet trends, or wait it out and hope your current strategies will continue to engage and effectively communicate with your audience?

Just as much as internet users go weak at the knees for cute dogs, they also lap up videos. The fact is, where it was once simply just nice to have a video, it is fast becoming a fundamental part of any content marketing strategy, and it’s not just because Google says so. The digital world in 2016 is set to bring us ever more ad blocking, increased pressure to speed up the mobile web and to awaken us all to the importance of audience engagement over clicks.  All factors that stem from and aid the rise of video engagement online.

How will video boost sales?

Video has the potential to drive sales for eCommerce in 2016 more than ever.  How and why? I hear you asking...

It has been reported that video viewers are anywhere from 64-85% more likely to buy after watching a product video¹. Whether you’re using it to showcase products, demonstrate their uses, or give the audience an insight into the creation of a product by using behind the scenes snippets, all will have a huge impact on your customers' intent to buy.

This attention to detail allows prospective customers to feel confident in your product in a fast and informative way.  Displaying visually what goes into making your products and sharing this with your customers, allows them to feel special. Who doesn’t like to have insider knowledge? Showing a potential buyer the process and level of hard work that goes into every product, followed by showing them how they can gain the most from that product will build a level of trust and confidence within the buyer, resulting in purchases.  Get video right and there is tangible evidence to say that it will produce fantastic return on investment (ROI).

Even without any informative elements in your video, the power of entertaining your audience and introducing your product to them is immeasurable. The power of brand is no secret, numerous studies have shown time and again that brand recognition and familiarity goes a very long way in influencing consumers purchase decisions.

Will video deliver a good ROI? 

Traditional marketing techniques were hard to measure in precise terms, how can you accurately measure if a billboard ad resulted in 4 or 4,000 sales? Digital marketing has raised the bar in terms of marketing measurement with so much data available in Google Analytics. However it's not a perfect system and some channels which lend themselves more to relationship building and awareness driving new customers may be the reason a consumer knows you, but they come back further down the line to purchase, maybe via another channel meaning that your great video never gets the credit.  When you consider the long term impact a video can have on your audience, who may tell their friends about your brand and come back years later to make a purchase (probably through a different channel), the question becomes should you even be looking at ROI as a key performance metric (KPI) for video?

There are a number of ways in which you can successfully measure the strength of your video online in comparison to your goals. Like anything we invest in, it’s important we see our time and effort justified by way of return.

When looking at the demographics, it’s important to know that gaining a huge volume of views is not the only key to a great video, it’s also dependant on whether the right people are viewing.

Like all content created, it should be sufficiently distributed, the old "build it and they will come mantra" is not quite true and people won't know about your great content unless you promote it!  Lack of social sharing will damage your campaign right from the get go.  It is important to have clear objectives outlined for your video, and know what you wish to achieve before making the step.  If you simply just want it to go ‘viral’, that’s not enough.

Social platforms know limited amounts of information with regards to who is viewing your content, but where they do know it can offer great insight into whether you are reaching your target market or new audiences, both depending on your initial objectives.  Factors you should consider are;

• What devices do your audience use?
• Where are they most active?
• Most importantly, at what time of day?  

Know where they are and when, and you are already closer to effectively engaging. 

Number of views

The number of people who have clicked and played your video will always provide a good indication as to how successfully you have produced and distributed your video.  Views imply value and naturally build trust in the viewer if the video has already racked up a good number.  There are three factors you should be investigating when measuring your video’s success:

• Total views – This requires you to look at the total number of views your video has had overall.
• Organic views – How many views have been achieved by referral traffic from engagement on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter?
• Paid views - If using PPC (Pay Per Click) to reach a wider audience, how many views have you gained from this?

How much is a view worth? 

Understanding the revenue or leads, depending again on your campaign goals, data from all of those traffic sources can show what influence your video has had on conversions. Perhaps you only have the video embedded on a page of your website, so looking at external traffic sources is not an option and time on page would become an indicator of success. You can however, investigate the leads and sales that occur after people have viewed the designated page, and then determine what effect this is having compared to other pages. 

Surround awesome with awesome 

Video should work alongside your already existing content marketing strategies. For you to gain the most from your efforts use varying types of content around each video made, for example, repurpose your infographics, blog posts, whitepapers etc.  You’ll be dramatically increasing your content reach and therefore engagement.  Let’s not forget, you’ll also be creating a new number of backlinks for both your video and website. 

There’s a lot to be gained by integrating video into your current marketing approach. More and more people are releasing its benefits and you can too. Did you know that landing pages with videos see 80% more conversions² than those without? It’s data like this that assures us that video should be a key part of your marketing plan for 2016.

In part two I’ll continue to discuss how video is dominating all social platforms alongside how this works in correlation with mobile trends. 

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Sources

1. https://blog.kissmetrics.com/product-videos-conversion/
2. http://www.eyeviewdigital.com/documents/EyeView-White-Paper-Making-Video-Accountable.pdf