3 Reasons to Start With Video for Your Content Marketing Strategy

When it comes to your marketing strategy, video content is the tide that lifts all ships.

Let's set a scene for you. You’re having a house party. Your friend, let’s call him “White Paper '' shows up first and you’re a bit surprised because they’re not known to be all that much fun. Blogs and Case Studies arrive and they’re great, but they tell these loooong draaaaaawn out stories. Community is that tight-knit group from high school that sticks to themselves while Social wants to talk to everyone—they just need something to say.

The party is off to a slow start. But just as people start checking the time, Video shows up and helps Blogs and Case Studies tell more engaging stories. They introduce White Paper to some people who actually find him interesting. They get Community to open up and make some new friends. And Social… let’s just say they’re not going home alone. The party was saved at the last minute. But what if it kicked off with a bang?

Video can take your marketing from snoozefest to rager by elevating all your other tactics. Plus, video connects with customers like no other content stream can. That’s why video should be the first person at your party and the first tactic of your content strategy.

What is video content marketing?

It is not enough to just create great video content, it is just as important to distribute this content, promoting your videos in a strategic manner. Video content marketing is the process of developing and distributing video content online to a target audience with the goal of converting them into leads by offering an engaging experience through video.

The percentage of marketers who say video plays an important role in their strategy increased by 10% between 2017 and 2020. Marketers should push that even further by making video the foundation of their content. The thing you should do before anything else.

Why we need video content marketing?

There are many reasons why video content, and in particular videos on social media, make sense to invest in and is important to an organization's marketing strategy. We highlight the three key reasons you need video.

1. Video content drives emotions, and emotions drive decisions
2. Video drive efficiencies and can upcycle them
3. Videos grab users' attention
   

Reason 1: Emotions Drive Decisions

Videos hit audiences right in the feels. Whether it's due to the 60,000 fallacy or the combination of sounds and visuals coming together to stimulate the senses, it’s widely accepted that video is the best way to tap into your audience’s emotions. That’s big for two reasons.

First, studies have shown that an emotional response to a video ad can have more influence over a consumer’s purchase decision than the contents of the ad itself.

Second, as Dan Carnegie said, “When dealing with people, you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.” When looking at the performance of ads, a study from the University of Southern California showed that ads packing an emotional punch performed better than those centered on rational content.

So in the face-off between emotion and logic, emotion is better for turning prospects into customers. But why is that? Sometimes people want empathy before they want a solution. Emotional connections foster empathy and empathy builds trust. And trust? Trust drives sales.

Let's bring this back to the main point—why should marketers lead with video content? Because establishing that emotional connection first will warm up the crowd, making them more open to your other marketing assets. In this way, video marketing is your Trojan Horse. It gets your blogs, your case studies, and everything else inside the walls, giving them a better chance to succeed.

So, before putting out that How-To guide, publish a video to set the table by building that emotional connection.

Reason 2: Efficiency and Upcycling

While the majority of marketing teams have seen the light and committed to video ads, 23% of marketers say they simply don’t have time to produce videos. If you don’t think you have time to produce video content, here’s a concept to consider. It’s called, “Work smarter, not harder.” And using video is really, really smart.

Today’s marketers have a lot of mouths to feed and starting with video is the best way to cook up something for everyone in the least amount of time. Let’s say you’re doing a case study. By filming the conversation with your customer—a conversation you’d have to have anyways for a written piece—you’re setting yourself up to create additional content with almost no added work. Here’s how:

• You start with a video case study.
• Then you can use the transcript of the conversation as a head-start on the written case study.
• Who doesn’t love a good podcast? Pull the audio from your video and BAM you’re on Spotify with all the other thought leaders.
• Last, chop up your video into small clips for social media and consider how the transcript could exist as a Twitter thread.

Truthfully, no one has time to create one-off content specifically made for SEO, for social, for community, for your mom’s friend Barb, and for this dog. You need to get as much juice as you can out of your content by repurposing and upcycling.

Reason 3: Videos Grab Attention

What do pop musicians do before they put out an album? They put out a single. The single doesn’t need to be the best song on the album nor does it need to be the most accurate representation of a musician’s unique sound. What it needs to do is appeal to the widest audience and get in as many ears as possible to generate the most buzz for the rest of the album.

For marketers, video content is your radio single. Not only do people spend around 16 hours per week watching online videos, but almost three-quarters of consumers prefer video marketing to text. Maybe that’s why in the time you’ve been reading this blog, almost 50 people will have signed up for TikTok.

While your whitepaper might have the most information and your demo may drive the most conversions, video builds an audience and marketers need that before anything else.

Lead the pack when you lead with video.

So did we lead with a video for this post? You better believe it. This blog started as a script. The same script that influenced the social posts, and adds the multi-media appeal to everything it touches.

Check out the video we led with here, and if you liked it, be sure to subscribe to our channel. We’re celebrating the launch of Superside’s new video production services offering by dedicating our next few videos to...well...video. We’re talking about the different types of video in marketing, which companies are killing it on TikTok, and of course running through the tips and tricks for you to level-up your video marketing strategy. Stay tuned – or better yet, get in touch today.