Online Video: The Next Step In Your Content Strategy?

There are a number of different ways to reach your consumers online, but have you ever experimented with online video? Many online marketers are suggesting that video is the future of content marketing and according to Cisco, “by 2017, video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic”.

This month, Interactive Minds hosted an event on Exploiting Video In Your Content Strategy. This event had some great speakers, including Farhad Meher-Homji (Founder of Changer Studios), Mark Blair (Vice President Australia & New Zealand, Brightcove), James Johnson (Group Digital Manager, Michael Hill) and Douglas Nicol (Partner, The Works). There were many interesting points to take from this event, but the following are the points that I feel were most important and should help shape your next content strategy:

• 80% of people watch, as opposed to 20% of people who read
• Video is easy and can be made with simple equipment like your iPhone. The trouble is that it must be done well!
• You can tell a story even if you’re not a storyteller. Just tell the why, how and what
• In Australia, 1.7 billion streams of video are watched each month
• People are 70% more likely to buy after watching a video
• According to Meher-Homji from Changer studios, video also make you 53 times more likely to feature on the first page of Google
• The Human brain processes visual info 60,000 times faster than text
• According to Douglas Nicol from The Works, a gold fish has the transient attention span of nine seconds. In the year 2000, humans had the transient attention span of 12 seconds and by 2013, this dropped to eight seconds. With our shortening attention spans, humans want to get as much information in the shortest time possible
• We are human so we relate to other humans; therefore, movement grabs attention, emotions are contagious, we pay attention to faces and human voice is a source of rich information
• The world is a very connected place, and video is very easily shared
• Ultrasound technology will soon allow TVs to link to tablets. This will enable easy shopping on the second screen.

Another thing to take away from the event was a concept called Shoppable Video. This was an idea shared by James Johnson from Michael Hill. Shoppable Video is designed to make it easier to purchase while watching a video online (for an example, click here). Johnson said that this strategy was able to provide them with the following results:

• Visitors spend more time on site
• Visitors consume more onsite content
• Visitors have a higher conversion rate
• Posts have higher social reach!

Shoppable video is also something that has worked well for ASOS. Their Urban Tour campaign resulted in having 14% of their customers purchase within seven minutes of watching the video; 46% of these visitors were also new conversions!

Video content has the ability (when well executed) to increase conversions, educate, increase branding, be shared and communicate concepts to your desired consumer. You don’t have to create a shoppable video – you simply have to tell a story. Perhaps this should be the next step in your content strategy.