Is your business utilizing all the creativity its marketers can muster and still not increasing sales? Improving your marketing strategy requires not just creativity but also the right medium.
Nowadays, and for the foreseeable future, the medium of preference for potential customers is video on social media. For that reason, it is the most promising tool to use to attract them to your business.
But you must be knowledgeable and strategic in your creation and dissemination of videos if your campaign is going to be effective.
Houston Video can teach you all about the current trends in consumer behaviors resulting from video consumption on social media. Once you understand what makes potential buyers respond positively, you will have a better idea of how to shape and share your content to expand your business’s market.
Table of Contents
The goal of social media video marketing is to increase awareness of a company’s brand, to market products and services online, and to expand the company’s audience.
Social media is the best place to do video marketing because of the high percentage of people that utilize it and the increasing amount of time they spend watching videos.
Here are some of the main ways social media affects video marketing:
- Improves SEO – Social media search engines prioritize video over regular content.
- Provides value to social media users – Video provides more information than text only, so it is more valuable to consumers.
- Encourages sharing – Video is more engaging than picture or text only, so people are more likely to share it with their friends, family, and followers.
- Enhances branding – People can share their opinions about products and services, so brands that are effective gain more credibility and authority.
- Mobile friendly – Mobile devices are the main way people engage with online content.
- Appeals to younger audiences – Younger social media users prefer video content, but because they watch so much of it, they are harder to impress.
- Social selling – Consumers tend to buy more products when they see influencers using them rather than as advertised by businesses.
- Long shelf-life – Videos tend to be watched long after publication.
Video is becoming more important to users than any other form of content in social media marketing. It is also very popular among businesses as a major marketing tool. A market research study on video trends shows that video on social media will likely continue to increase in use and value for businesses trying to promote their products and services.
Houston Video helps businesses create video content and guides them in how to incorporate them into their marketing strategy.
#1: Best Social Media Platforms
The following statistics show how wide a reach a business can have through video marketing on various social media platforms, and the numbers appear to be continuing to grow.
- YouTube – 1.7 billion people visit this platform each month. Ads have the potential to reach 2.56 billion users.
- Instagram – Its 500 million daily users see videos on IGTV, Stories, and Reels. 62% of people are more interested in a brand after viewing it on Instagram Stories.
- Facebook – Video options include the Facebook Watch tab (1.25 billion visitors per month), Stories (300 million visitors per day), and Facebook Live.
- TikTok – One of the fastest-growing social media platforms in the world, its more than one million users (62% of whom are aged 10-29) spend on average 45.8 minutes per day using the app.
- Snapchat – Its 238 million users spend on average 30.4 minutes per day on the app. Brand Profiles allows users to subscribe to certain brands. Other components of Snapchat also facilitate advertising, including Discover and First Commercial.
- Pinterest – Of its 445 million users, 72% feel inspired to make a purchase even when they aren’t actively searching for products.
- Twitter – Of its 436 million users, 55% log into the app daily and spend, on average, 34.8 minutes per day.
#2: Emotion
People tend to invest more attention in what they feel emotionally connected to. For that reason, the more emotion you can elicit from your audience, the larger your consumer response will be. Controversial topics are emotional triggers that you’ll want to avoid, but there are many other ways to connect emotionally with your audience.
#3: Short-Form Content
Attention spans are short, so content also needs to be short to hold viewers’ attention. More and more people prefer easily digestible, bite-sized information. The longer your video, the more compelling your content must be to hold the attention of the viewers.
The leading platforms for short-form video are TikTok, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, and Snapchat. Each differs in terms of what is considered “short” (for TikTok, 15 seconds to 10 minutes; for Facebook, 1-3 minutes; for YouTube shorts, 15-60 seconds).
#4: Engagement
Videos, especially short-form videos, attract more likes, shares, and other reactions. More responses make your brand more visible to potential customers.
#5: Silent Videos/Captions
Most videos viewed on Facebook are viewed without sound, mainly to maintain propriety in public places. If you optimize the soundless playback for your videos or even make videos that don’t need sound to be understood, more people will watch your videos and still get the relevant information they need to make a decision for or against your products or services.
Along with YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, Facebook’s videos are adopting an audio transcription feature. Audio transcription and captions can increase a business’s ranking and visibility because they can be used as keywords.
#6: User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) can be more effective than content generated by the marketer because people tend to trust other users more than the marketers themselves. A Stackla survey showed that people are 2.4 times more likely to trust UGC than brand-created content.
This kind of content can appear in short form on various platforms. Types of UGC include testimonials and demonstrations of a given product. These videos add authenticity to your business and help you to connect more closely with your audience.
#7: Brand Building
Many types of videos can help you raise awareness about your brand and show how it is different from and superior to related brands.
TikTok has branded hashtag marketing, which allows users to create advertisements for a brand campaign. This offers an incredible boost for awareness and encourages audience engagement with your business’s product or service.
#8: Virtual/360 Degree Videos
You can use virtual video to give a tour, document an event, or show consumers your production line.
360 videos provide an immersive experience that gives consumers the sense that they have more control over how they view a product or service. They can virtually demo a product before buying it.
#9: Influencers and Brands
Influencers have a significant effect on consumers’ purchase choices. In the United States, one-third of people who follow an online personality say their choices are influenced by that person.
Partnerships between brands and influencers are likely to become longer-term and more complex. The influencer assists the brand so much that he or she receives a kickback, and the influencer gains popularity by assisting the brand.
To remain competitive in the current market of social media enthusiasts, your business needs to incorporate video in its advertising campaigns in more diverse and strategic ways.
Houston Video is abreast of the trends that govern the effects of different types of social media advertising and can utilize its knowledge of these trends to create the most compelling and effective videos to draw consumers to your business.
Contact Houston Video today to begin the process of video production that garners the results you’ve always wanted from your advertising endeavors.
