Inbound marketing is all about creating meaningful and insightful content that attracts customers to your product or service.
But not everyone wants to read a lengthy blog or an ebook when they could get the same information in a snappy 3-minute video.
Video is taking over the world — literally.
What is video marketing?
Video is ingrained in everything we consume on a daily basis. If you want to learn how to create a fancy new makeup look, watch a tutorial. If you need to know how to get a red wine stain out of your carpet, watch a video. The list goes on.
Videos solve problems quickly and efficiently by helping people understand what they're doing. Plus, they have a higher engagement rate than picture or text led content pieces.
Let's talk about the benefits of video marketing and how this content form can boost your inbound marketing campaign:
1. Solve problems
As we mentioned above, you can use videos to help you do just about anything. Producing video content that solves problems for audiences positions you as a trusted source of information. This means customers will return to you for knowledge, and positions you as a company who cares.
This video from HubSpot shows how to integrate Shopify into the platform. If someone is looking to use one of these companies or already does, this video gives an insight into how the two can work together.
The video is a simple 1-minute long explainer. It's engaging because of how quick and simple the images are, and it also gives enough detail for the viewer to understand the product.
2. Increase engagement
Did You Know?
4x as many customers would prefer watching a video about a product instead of reading a blog.
Video is a much more engaging form of content than blogs, but they can be positioned together. Firstly, it’s more eye-catching and on social media, it stands out from the rest of the non-photo or video posts. Take a look at our Christmas campaign:
We worked hard to create eye-catching videos that would grab the reader's attention. We then used these videos to direct prospects to a landing page where they could read related blogs and download our resources.
That way, instead of writing a blog and simply asking people to read it, you can draw them in with a video that explains the benefits of the content. This makes them more likely to download it.
3. Give an insight into your business
You might be looking to sign up a new client or recruit some new staff, a video can help them get to know you first. The benefits of video marketing for your website and social are that it shows off your company culture, values, and where you work. Videos help build your brand identity.
This video series from Unilever shows quick-fire interviews with staff members and provides an insight into the people who work for the company.
The short, snappy videos get traction on social media. The bright graphics, bouncy music and fun questions all help to position Unilever as a company with happy staff that are innovative and progressive.
4. Improve ranking
Dwell time can be much higher with videos on your page. Dwell time is how much time people spend on your page after a Google search before they head back to Google.
If someone clicks through to your site, sees a blog post that isn't for them, and clicks back to search results your dwell time will be low.
However, if someone clicks through and sees an enticing video which they sit and watch for 10 minutes, your dwell time will be high.
This metric helps to improve bounce rates and lets Google know your pages have something worth looking at, thus, improving your ranking.
Another thing you can do is get your videos to rank is to link your website in the video description.
5. Higher return on investment
Think about how long it takes to write a blog, create the images, optimise it, upload it, it can be anything from 3-4 days when you have other things going on. Videos can be filmed on demand at any time with minimal resources. Smartphones can create some of the best video content without the need for professional equipment.
This video from HubSpot shows how easy it is to make high-quality videos using the tools we have in our pockets. There's plenty of free editing software that can shift your videos up a gear, even live video to your social media channels is better than no video at all.
We set up a light in our office and used our phone to record a video for our Instagram story, it was a quick and simple way to interact with followers and didn’t cost a thing.
6. Create a video content library
YouTube can be your very own content library. We have talked before about developing a library of content that positions your business as a thought leader. The same thing can be said for video content.
HubSpot has their videos split into channels, with relevant content about each topic listed together. This makes it simple to navigate through to the videos you're looking for. Building a library also means you can suggest other videos to people while they're watching a different one, and allows you to build a portfolio of video content.
YouTube is also another place to advertise. It’s the second largest search engine after Google and its reach is global. You can target people in your industry by advertising to them on other videos surrounding a relevant topic.
7. Enhance your email marketing
Embedding videos into your emails can be costly and time-consuming, however, there's nothing to stop you from inserting a linked photo that looks like a video. It's then easy to click on the image and be taken to a landing page on the website where the video sits.
The benefit of doing this as opposed to embedding a video is you have full control over how it looks and plays. With different devices and email servers, videos can look different and sometimes not play properly at all.
Having a clickable image will direct traffic to your site, and mean the video is guaranteed to load properly. Take a look at a demonstration:
Again we have used our Christmas advent calendar as an example, we can email through a link to the video and that means the person receiving it is more likely to download resources that relate to that video.
8. Encourage social sharing
Finally, videos encourage social sharing. They're highly engaging as we mentioned in the first point, but they're also likely to get more likes, shares, and comments than a single post.
Think of the concept of ‘viral videos’ and how people tagging friends or other users in videos extend their reach to the masses.
If you wanted to get a point across a video is easier to digest and often much more powerful than just writing a couple of lines on a topic and linking a blog.
Start reaping the benefits of inbound video
Video is changing the way market to customers and the way we as consumers are marketed to. This list is by no means exhaustive, video can aid your inbound efforts in ways we might not have even thought about. What are you waiting for? Pick up your phone and get recording!
Further Reading
If you want to learn how to shoot videos, read this HubSpot guide.