The Benefits of using Video in Your Content Marketing Campaigns

If you're running a content marketing campaign and you're not using video in your campaigns you could be missing out on many of its benefits, and in this post, we will take a look at some of the ways that video content can help your business grow.   

With over 70 million blog posts written on the WordPress platform every month, creating content that stands out is becoming more difficult. Adding video to your content is a great way of doing this as not everyone has the time to consume a 4000-word article, but most of us will have the time to watch or listen to a video as we commute or get ready in the morning.  

Video content is more expensive than putting an article together but the benefits of creating video content outweigh that cost when done right.

Video boosts conversion rates

Just like creating a new website or running a search engine marketing campaign, video is an investment and when done right it can boost your conversion rates by 80%.

There aren't many things you can do to boost your conversion rates that much. Having video content on your website or landing page could be the difference between your business growing slowly or rapidly expanding year on year.

Video can also demonstrate a product or a service much better than the equivalent in text form so if you do have a product or a service consider adding video to your pages highlighting the main features and benefits of your product as it can help you sell more of it.

Video helps build trust

Without trust, the only way you are going to be able to sell a product is if it's very cheap. The majority of readers on this blog are going to be consultants or work in digital marketing so there's a very high chance your product isn't cheap.

To sell a more expensive product you will need to build trust with your potential customers. Reviews on third party websites and case studies can help with this, but these can be manipulated.

Video testimonials of past customers not only build trust but they also sell for you. Imagine you are an e-commerce store owner that's used a few SEO agencies in the past which all promised rankings and didn't deliver and then you come across a video testimonial from someone who was in the same position as you but is now praising this agency in this testimonial.

Having a testimonial like the one above is a great selling tool and will help your conversion rates significantly.

Video can help with link building efforts

I think everyone who has worked in some form of content marketing will have heard of Brian Deans Skyscraper technique but if you haven't the basic premise is that if you want to rank for a keyword you have to look for the topics ranking on the first page of Google and then create something better.

Most marketers take this as increasing the word count but that shouldn't always be the case. Afterall someone who's looking for information on the best type of tents for camping doesn't need a history lesson of camping outdoors. Adding the history of camping outdoors would increase the word count but ultimately doesn't help the user with their search query.

An infographic highlighting different tents and their recommended usage however would be a better piece of content. Now if you were to add a video to that page where someone tests out different tents and gives their opinions of them, this improves the quality of the content without filling it with useless information that the visitor doesn't need.

When you have a thorough article without the fluff and additional forms of media such as photos and video where the others on the first page of Google don't, you then have a better piece of content and this can help in your link building efforts. All you then have to do is outreach to people who have linked to these old articles on the first page and ask them to link to your new article. If you don't know how to perform outreach, Hunter.io has some outreach templates to get you started.

Video helps increase social shares

Over half the world now uses social media so getting your message seen is becoming difficult.

By using video content on social media you are more likely to get engagement on your content and video posts perform 49% better on Instagram compared to static images.

Video has become so prevalent in content marketing that social media networks are adapting to these changes. LinkedIn was once thought as a place where long-form content was king but that has changed recently because of video. Video content on LinkedIn now generates 3 times more impressions than text content.

Search engine optimization benefits of using video

We have briefly covered some of the off-page search engine optimization benefits of using video content on your website above but you will be glad to know that using video on your website can help with your on-page optimization too.

Video content can help the amount of time a visitor spends on your web page which shows Google that you have satisfied the search engine query and it can also lower the bounce rate which is another metric which Google may use to consider if your page matches the search intent.

And if all of the above doesn't sway you to add video content to your website pages, you should know that blog posts with video added to them are 53 times more likely to show up on the first page of Google than those pages that don't.

Search engine optimization is a competitive field so any advantages you can have over your competitors you should take. Creating video content doesn't have to be expensive or difficult either. A simple camera phone on a tripod with an external mic is better than nothing. Of course the more you can invest in video content the better, and although it's difficult to put an ROI on video marketing you should know that over 83% of marketers are happy that they have invested in creating video content and think that it's given them a positive ROI.

Creating video content for your business

With all of the positive benefits mentioned above, it's worth noting that creating video without a plan like any other marketing campaign can be disastrous.  

For video marketing to work you are going to need to find out what content resonates with your audience. You will need to think of the content they want to consume, how you are going to promote this content and figure out how content should be made for different social channels.  

Videos created for LinkedIn, Snapchat and Youtube should all be different lengths and have a different tone and objective behind them. Snapchat could be used to show behind the scenes footage of what happens in your office while Youtube could be used for longer videos that provide more detail about your product.

One brand that nails content marketing through video in my opinion is Gozney pizza ovens. If you take a look at their Youtube you can see their product style videos which get a respectable 7000 - 10,000 views but because they know their audience they have been able to create video content that appeals to the type of people who would consider buying one of their ovens. Knowing their audience has allowed Gozney to reach millions of potential customers and they have built up close to 100k subscribers on Youtube.

If Gozney had stuck with creating only product videos they probably wouldn't have been anywhere as near as successful. This is important to note for your business. Start with the basics and then expand, you can monitor your analytics to see which content gets consumed the most and then double down on creating more of that style of content.

About the author

James Mathews is the head of content creation at Bounce Color, a website that helps video marketers and videographers edit their videos to a professional standard more quickly through the use of digital presets and assets.