How to Create Engaging Video Content

Video content marketing has grown beyond limits as most businesses are switching to video content to reach the customers. Videos have emerged as the most preferred medium of content for all the customers and are bound to grow as the latest study by Cisco has suggested that more than 80% of all the traffic on the Internet will be directed towards video by 2020. It has also been proved that if the same content is present on the Internet in the form of text and video, nearly 72% of people will prefer watching it on video. Looking at the trends it is clear that irrespective of the size of your brand or business if you have to survive you will have to give serious thought to video marketing strategy. However, it is of importance to note that merely creating videos is not enough unless those videos are watched by the target audience. This typically means that your videos have to be meaningful, should spur viewer interest and engagement.

Importance of Good Videos to Your Business

Videos have the potential to present information in a more emotionally engaging and compelling format as compared to the typical text and other restricted capabilities of images and infographics. The videos have to well-planned and properly produced taking care of minute details. Well-designed videos can help build a lasting image of the business. Here are some facts which will help reinforce the view about the growing importance of video content marketing:

• More than 81% of businesses have switched to different types of video content
• It has been seen that video marketing strategy has helped businesses attain 49% year-on-year growth.
• It has been observed that almost 64% of customers who watch videos are much more likely to make a purchase.
• All landing pages which have videos have 80% more chances of having conversions.
• One-third amount of time of people on the internet is spent on watching videos.

Tips to Create Amazing Videos

There is no doubting the fact that making engaging video content is the future of marketing. There is already no time to lose and the longer the businesses take to embrace this reality the greater is the risk they carry of falling behind the curve and hence can also lose a good chunk of their market share to the competitors who already enjoy a great video presence. The best way to move forward is thus to create videos which are able to resonate with the minds of the customers.

• Well-Defined Goals: The first step of every video marketing strategy is to have your objective in place. Every video which you make should be well-tailored to your complete marketing strategy and not just an isolated feature used for promotion of the brand. It is imperative to spend time working out what role your video will play to define your strategy and what results in you want from it. E.g. your videos should be able to generate more leads, spread awareness of the brand, engage prospective customers, etc.

• Knowledge of Audience: Before you make any video, you have worked out the personas of your customers. It is very important to know the basic demographic profile of your target audiences, their needs, desires, wants, socio-economic status, etc. This will help you give shape to videos which are a true reflection of their daily lives, schedules and even buying behaviours. Not diving deep into the customer profiles is a big mistake made by most businesses. It is a sheer waste of resources if your video is not able to deliver the desired message to your customers.

• Use Psychological Cues: Grabbing attention and holding the attention of someone are two different stories. This means that your video should not only have an enticing opening but should also offer enough substance over its course to keep the audience glued to it till the end. This can be done by:

1. Sparking Curiosity: Curiosity can be sparked by the fact if your audience is able to see a real gap between the information which they already have and what they want to know. Catchy and thought-provoking titles usually work a great deal in fuelling curiosity.
2. Smart Beginnings: The first few seconds of any video usually act as deal-breaking time. It has been proved that the attention span of humans has dropped to as low as 8 seconds and as per the Study conducted by Twitter and Omnicom Media Group that the best performing videos are less than 15 seconds long. This intensifies the fight to start the video with something revolutionary which will keep them hooked till the end.
3. Triggering of Visual Senses: The best videos bank high on visual storytelling as recent research has proven that humans have the ability to process an image to which they were exposed to for just 13 milliseconds. Thus, every cue matters ranging from the tone, colour, and even the style.
4. Strong Narrative: Stories are proven triggers to memory and build easy connect with their customers. Human purchase decisions are heavily dependent on emotional triggers rather than any kind of logical deductions. Stories have the power to create strong emotional triggers which not only lead to conversions but also ensure customer loyalty.
5. Trust-Building: All claims in videos or other forms of advertising should pass through the filers of statistical backing or case studies and validated by experts. Such validations help build trust.

Engaging video content, which is build factoring in all the above cues have great potential for building your brand and taking it to new heights. 

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