This month, we’re taking a deep dive into the meteoric rise of video content in digital advertising over the past few years.
Of course, this kind of content has been around since the birth of social media and YouTube especially, but there have been many more developments in its favour more recently.
And since Agency Stack has built a brand upon high-quality digital marketing content, we’ve come to understand the ins and outs of video content for various clients.
Whether your clients need content that’s entertaining, informative, eye-catching, or simply reaches a lot of people, we can tailor content to your needs.
Today, we’ll discuss the reasons for video’s rise in popularity, such as its engagement levels, its accessibility, and enablers like TikTok, Instagram reels, and other platforms prioritising video content.
If you need further advice on which kind of content suits your needs, or how you can leverage it to reach your goals, then keep on the lookout in the coming weeks for parts two and three of this blog series.
High Engagement
In a highly competitive attention economy, creating engagement with your audience is one of the more important steps on the way to converting them into loyal customers.
Sprout Social reported that short-form video (under 60 seconds) was the most engaging, according to its 2022 Index data. In fact, two-thirds of consumers reported this form of video to be more engaging than any other kind of in-feed content.
To double down on this point, that’s probably why Biteable’s survey found roughly half of marketers use video to engage their audience.
When executed well, video content allows for deeper storytelling for a more emotional connection to the brand. It also allows for a more complex depth of information to be conveyed within one post than a static image with text overlaid.
Accessibility
Previously, video content had issues with buffering and lower-quality screens on user devices. These days, both issues have been solved as technology has improved and social media has become like a short film every time you open a new app.
Not only has access to video content become easier, but that accessibility has been extended to those with physical disabilities with the introduction of closed captions.
Most video content on social media will now be produced with captions as influencers and brands seek to reach a wider audience. And if they fail to add captions to their videos, then the platform will usually do it for them.
This helps the deaf community to enjoy content as much as anyone else. It also benefits anyone using social media in a noisy setting where listening to the content isn’t possible.
Social Media Impact
If you couldn’t tell already, the rise in video content is all thanks to the rise in social media usage.
Most estimates report that more than four billion people use social media to some degree, and video content can be published on almost all of them — certainly the most popular ones.
Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing report for 2023 surveyed 528 marketing professionals and online consumers to gather a range of interesting data points on video content.
What caught our eye was that 91% of businesses used video content as a marketing tool in 2022.
As for the platforms they used, there’s no prizes for guessing the most popular one for video marketing content… that’s right, it’s YouTube.
90% of Wyzowl’s respondents have used YouTube as a marketing platform, followed by Facebook (86%), LinkedIn (79%) and Instagram (79%).
As for the most effective platforms, the survey found this order was slightly different, with Facebook dropping past the latter two to fourth position.
Most surprisingly, entertainment juggernaut, TikTok, placed seventh on both metrics with only 35% of companies having used it for marketing and 27% saying it was most effective.
Another way to measure the impact of video content besides how many people are consuming it is how well the information is understood.
The Wyzowl report also measured how much video marketing has increased user understanding of companies’ products. Promisingly, this figure has remained above 90% since 2016 and currently sits around 96%.
To really push the benefits of video content, 91% said it had helped increase traffic, 90% said it increased lead generation, 87% said it increased dwell time on their website, and the same figure reported more sales from video content.
We’ll just leave those stats with you for a moment…
Contact Agency Stack
If you need support creating video content or even more proof of its potential, get in touch with our friendly team and we’ll guide you through all you need to know.
To learn more about the most effective video format for your clients, or how to leverage it as part of a broader marketing campaign, tune in next week for another instalment on video content dominance.