If you’re anything like the majority of B2B marketers and businesses, you’ve already sunk your teeth into a content marketing strategy. And if you’re like more than half of that group, you’re so impressed with the results that you plan to increase your investment this year.
But here’s a bit of news: If you invest your time and money in content marketing without planning for video, you’ll be missing out on a substantial opportunity to engage and convert potential customers.
Let’s start with the obvious: Most of us — as humans and as consumers — put a huge premium on authenticity. And while content-heavy marketing is effective and relatively low-cost, it often fails to create an authentic connection between a brand and its customer base. Video marketing, on the other hand, bridges the gap between your brand’s message and your customers’ genuine interest.
Here’s a perfect — and emotionally moving — example:
If you’re already reaping the benefits of a well-polished content marketing strategy, you might wonder why you need to change anything. But here are four unique benefits of adding a video component to your digital marketing strategy that content alone simply can’t deliver:
Traditional content marketing allows you to track a number of key performance indicators, but the data you track is comprised of after-the-fact insights, not proactive, targeted insights.
Rather than assess how effective your efforts were, enhanced targeting tools on video platforms allow you to tailor specific content toward demographic and psychographic personas interested in your message from the outset. The result is highly targeted content that proactively seeks out the right audience.
Ever-increasing ad-space competition means that every kind of advertising method must continually prove its viability. And native advertising? It’s consistently ranked on top.
In fact, consumers are25 percent more likely to look at a native ad than a banner, and they look at native ads 53 percent more often. What’s more, the native advertising market is set to hit$2.36 billion this year, which totals 38.9 percent of paid social ad expenditures in the U.S.
Looking to engage the 18- to 35-year-old market? YouTube marketing will give you a distinct advantage. Original online video content reaches 52 million American adults per month — with 39 percent of that audience composed of the young demographic range. This should come as no surprise, given reports that digital content has quickly become just as popular as prime-time TV.
Do you have a mobile strategy, or is that something you’re planning to tackle later? Well, “later” is now: 189 million of Facebook’s users are mobile-only, and mobile makes up almost 40 percent of YouTube’s total global watch time. Video marketing allows you to represent your brand on mobile as a natural conduit between your customers and your digital marketing assets.
While these numbers and facts are exciting, don’t rush in and reinvent your strategy overnight. Here are three ways you can use video content to complement your existing content marketing strategies and build a strong foundation for the changes:
As satisfied as you might be with the results of your traditional content marketing strategy, video is too important (and effective) to ignore. Step forward into this medium with the right tools and attitude toward collaboration to take your content marketing efforts to a whole new level.
