Video has become essential to marketing, but how can businesses be sure they’re making the right investment? Through 40 years of helping clients achieve marketing goals, we have found that making effective videos starts by answering five questions:
1. Where do you need video most?
If you don’t have video on your website homepage, that has to be your priority. According to research, "People spent on average 2.6x more time on pages with video than without." Other research shows that 68% of survey respondents prefer to learn about a new company, product or service by watching a short video rather than reading text. And it’s not just visitors that prefer video: Google and other search engines rank pages with video higher than those without.
What kind of video should you have on your homepage? For starters, you want a short video — one to two minutes. Most viewers will drift away if you go longer. Next, you want your video placed above the fold on your homepage. If it’s below the fold, it likely won’t be seen by viewers using mobile phones.
What should the content be? One popular option is an "explainer" video that shows how you help your customers solve problems and seize opportunities. Another option is to let one or more customers do the explaining in a testimonial video. This has the advantage of immediately establishing credibility, especially if the customer is from a well-known organization.
If your homepage already uses video, move on to your outbound marketing. One company found that emails with video increased click-through-rates by up to 500%. You might be wondering how this works since embedded video isn’t supported by most email platforms. Some even send video emails straight to your spam folder. But you don’t actually need to embed a full video. Consider creating an animated GIF, pulling four or five images from the full video to use as a teaser. Or link out to the video by including a static image from the video in your email with a "play" button.
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Video has become essential to marketing, but how can businesses be sure they’re making the right investment? Through 40 years of helping clients achieve marketing goals, we have found that making effective videos starts by answering five questions:
1. Where do you need video most?
If you don’t have video on your website homepage, that has to be your priority. According to research, “People spent on average 2.6x more time on pages with video than without.” Other research shows that 68% of survey respondents prefer to learn about a new company, product or service by watching a short video rather than reading text. And it’s not just visitors that prefer video: Google and other search engines rank pages with video higher than those without.
What kind of video should you have on your homepage? For starters, you want a short video — one to two minutes. Most viewers will drift away if you go longer. Next, you want your video placed above the fold on your homepage. If it’s below the fold, it likely won’t be seen by viewers using mobile phones.
What should the content be? One popular option is an “explainer” video that shows how you help your customers solve problems and seize opportunities. Another option is to let one or more customers do the explaining in a testimonial video. This has the advantage of immediately establishing credibility, especially if the customer is from a well-known organization.
If your homepage already uses video, move on to your outbound marketing. One company found that emails with video increased click-through-rates by up to 500%. You might be wondering how this works since embedded video isn’t supported by most email platforms. Some even send video emails straight to your spam folder. But you don’t actually need to embed a full video. Consider creating an animated GIF, pulling four or five images from the full video to use as a teaser. Or link out to the video by including a static image from the video in your email with a “play” button.
