There has been months of talk about video and how important it is to your marketing strategies but how powerful is it?
The fact that brands like Coca Cola, Virgin Media and McDonalds all use video online shows the mileage in how powerful video can be, but for smaller brands it can be difficult to work out the return on investment.
One statistic that explains the potential power of video is that after 72 hours, the average person will have remembered 10% of text, 65% of an image and around 95% of a video. So, it is no wonder that around 70% of marketers are using video as part of their ongoing marketing strategies according to a 2013 video marketing trends report.
The sharability of video is another aspect that works in favour of its power. One recent example of this is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that has been completed by hundreds of famous people across the globe, including Will Smith, George Bush and Eva Longoria to name a few. This campaign has exploded online and throughout social media in a relatively short space of time and has helped to raise awareness about a disease and has raised millions of pounds for charity.
Once an idea is acknowledged by some influential people online, the capabilities and potential reach is unrivalled in any other form of media. Although, just having a number of views on a video doesn’t necessarily make it successful. Having one person with an influence in the industry see the video has much more value than 100 people that aren’t relevant or interested.
Video can be used for more than just marketing a business though, which really emphasises the flexibility of it. For example, as well as advertising campaigns, you can create webinars, a live event stream or an explainer video that offers real value and useful information. This type of video has grown by around 900% since 2000 and there are now over 1 billion people that are enrolled on to some kind of online training course.
Video doesn’t just have to be a way to market your business in order for it to be powerful, it needs to offer something useful to the audience. Only then can we say video is a powerful marketing tool.
