How Video Marketing is Changing Digital Strategy
The transition from desktop to mobile video consumption isn't just a customer-side phenomenon. Organizations must be prepared to make this move themselves, equipped with digital video marketing experts, create compelling visual collateral specifically for the evolving mobile environment.Digital video is one of the fastest growing marketing segments currently. YouTube may be responsible for triggering the web-based video boom, but the market has been awash with a variety of online platforms in recent years such as Vine and Snapchat. Even established online enterprises like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have introduced video-oriented functions.One of the main forces driving this expansion is an increase in mobile engagement, with both social and commercial activities trending toward hand-held and wearable devices. In fact, users spent more time watching videos on their phones and tablets than they did on desktop computers in 2015, and experts anticipate mobile viewing to double desktop viewing by 2017.This growth exceeds the rates of all other categories of visual marketing including banners, pop-ups and rich media. The rise of mobile video is creating a myriad of opportunities for innovation in marketing strategy and customer engagement.
The Mobile Shift
The transition from desktop to mobile video consumption isn't just a customer-side phenomenon. Organizations must be prepared to make this move themselves, creating compelling visual collateral specifically for the evolving mobile environment.The key here is to retain the talent of marketing and video professionals who understand the mobile world. These experts can be in-house as part of the overall marketing team, or an outside firm that specializes in mobile marketing, particularly with videos. Either way, organizations will have to invest in a dedicated mobile video marketing unit that can not only create a strong mobile video strategy, but also deploy it successfully within digital video marketing.
Advancing Implementation
Implementation will be one of the most significant challenges companies will face as they make mobile video marketing a more prominent aspect of the overall organizational strategy. As with other aspects of an organization's digital transformation, the user experience will have to center around smartphones, tablets and other small-screen devices. While this is simple enough in theory, putting a mobile-centric approach into practice can be a fairly daunting task. To do so successfully, enterprises will have to pay careful attention to what works and what doesn't in the mobile market. For example, auto-playing ads may be effective at getting a customer's attention, but mobile users probably don't want promos blaring unexpectedly in their ear buds or out of their phone speakers while they're out and about in public. This is especially true if they're using multiple apps at once and have to tap desperately through their open programs to find and disable the culprit. Another issue may be screen aspect ratios which have to be able to adapt to fit multiple devices.
Potential Applications
Digital video marketing provides a more efficient way for companies to engage, educate and convert customers than advertisements and web pages full of text, and mobile videos help make this happen no matter where they are. Unfortunately, viral content is often the first thing that comes to mind when people think about digital videos. Businesses can spend a ton of time and resources trying to establish the next viral hit which, while elusive, can be a huge boom to brand awareness. However, viral videos aren't the only things that can get people interested in a company.Enterprises are broadening their employment of digital video marketing personnel so that this collateral can be utilized throughout the customer journey to build relationships, solve problems and bolster customer satisfaction. Digital video marketing can take any number of forms including:
- Customer reviews and testimonials
- Demonstration and tutorial videos
- Video newsletters and blogs
- Event videos
- Personal greetings and sales pitches
- Customer service
Videos can also showcase areas of the company that the general public doesn't usually get to see such as tours of an enterprise's art fulfillment facilities or a sneak peek into an innovative brainstorming meeting. This humanizes the business and can show a more interesting, fun side of an organization.
Increasing Customer Interaction
Recent advancements in video technology and marketing tools have given rise to more interactive capabilities, including features such as embedded links that take consumers to a product's page directly from the video. The future of digital video marketing will see even more dynamic functions including choose-your-own-content options that give customers the power to select the videos they want to see which have, in turn, have been complied based on their previous experiences with the company, social media, clickstream data, and other channels within the Internet of Things. This concept can be taken even further with video content that has been completely personalized to each customer.Mobile technology enhances these functions by adding the opportunity for location-based content as well. So if a customer is nearby, a multimedia text message containing a short video about current deals could convince them to stop in.
Bolstering Big Data
Digital video is becoming an ever-more connected medium, allowing sales and marketing teams an unprecedented view of customer behaviors. Companies can track viewing habits, the actions that took place before and after viewing, how long users watch certain videos, which embedded links produce more clickthroughs, and other components of customer interactions. Analytics can then be used to predict how customers will respond to various digital video marketing strategies, giving organizations better insight into how to approach certain segments of the customer base and them to plan for the future with confidence.