E-commerce business seems to prefer product images over videos when it comes to marketing. Marketers often shy away from investing in video marketing as they’d find the outcome unworthy. But 83% of those who use video marketing find it helpful and give their business a better ROI.
In this era of internet marketing, if you’re someone who runs an online business, consider reading this study from Google that says every one out of two users prefers to look for videos of the product before visiting the store.
Why Is Video Marketing Important In E-commerce?
The best part about face-to-face marketing is that you can look into the eyes of the customers, shake hands, and show them the product around, and video marketing is the closest thing to that. Video provides another dimension, and the audience gets a visual and auditory sense of what they’re getting into before actually buying. Now compare that to the lengthy emails and product descriptions, in the current digital scenario, hardly anyone prefers to read when they can watch.
According to the research by Berkeley, University of California, good videos activate the senses and enable the emotional receptors of the audience watching, and a reason for trust gets established, which is one of the most critical parts of the sales funnel.
Benefits Of Video Marketing
There’s a lot a still photo and some persuasive text can do to attract customers, but ask yourself- Would you still keep using a Nokia 3660 when the world is on Pixels and iPads? No? Exactly!
YouTube is the second-most visited site on the internet. According to Business2Community, putting a video of the product could increase conversions by 80%. Videos are much easier to digest, engage, and understand, and that’s why the audience likes it.
According to the folks at Techcrunch, an average person watches 5.5 hours of video content daily, and if that person is not watching your video in that particular timeframe just because you never created one, I’m sorry, but as a marketer, you have only yourself to blame for it. Videos have most certainly shaped the way how content gets consumed by going forward. Videos are equally relevant for social media marketing as well.
Two Common Mistakes To Avoid While Leveraging Video For E-Commerce
Customer Is The Hero Not The Product or Service
Businesses often make this mistake; they make their video all about their product or service. No audience wants to listen to the features of your product or how cool the product looks against a black background drop.
Don’t Try To Sell The Product, Sell The Emotion
People care about their problems, leverage that. If your product or service is providing a solution to the customer’s pain, address that pain and how you’re helping them resolve it. Make your content relatable, show them how your business is benefiting the customer.
Marketing is a crucial aspect of any business, for sure the ideology has changed with the introduction of the internet and technological advancements. Marketers need to keep ever-evolving themselves with the trends, and nowadays, many portals are offering online digital marketing courses from where you can learn at your comfort.
Videos are engaging, and it gives a better-understanding to the viewers about the product or business. Let us look at some enticing video marketing examples that showcase how the respective companies benefited from their campaigns.
How To Boost E-Commerce With Video Marketing?
Tell The Audience How To Use Your Product
Educating your audience on how to use your product will give them an idea of how it works and the functionalities that come with it.
Here’s a video from Nest, a brand from Google which markets smart home and security system products. In this video, Google very convincingly teaches its audience how to set up their door lock and connect its Nest App.
If the audience finds the video helpful, it will provide viewers with a reason to share your video, and this will increase awareness about your product among potential customers. Also, people tend to come back to the video when they get confused about its usage or to understand the functionality, and furthermore you can even know about what people think of your product based on the reviews expressed and analyzing the engagement received.
Create Testimonial & Product Review Videos
What’s better than a customer raving about your product or service? Probably hitting a lottery. Whenever a satisfied customer expresses their opinion in the video, it automatically becomes an authentic and reliable source. Everything that could be pretentious about a marketing video is scratched off.
Sometimes you could also think differently and create insider product reviews, like the one with the KAP7 guys, where both the Co-founders came together with their review of the product and also shared the review and experiences shared to them by the customers who used their ball.
To Boost Conversation
Supposedly Wyzowl claims that 74% of the audience that watched an explainer video are likely to buy the product or service. Landing pages are a great place to use videos, and it has proven to increase conversion rates to 80% by creating effective product listing. Video also gives a reason for the visitor to stay on your website for a longer time. Such strategies, when used in email marketing to nurture relationships with leads, can contribute to increased customer loyalty.
Here’s a video from Kiwi Co that they sent to their subscribers in email, marketers also claim that using “[Video]” in emails resulted in increased open rates.
Kiwi Co sends out subscription boxes to children every month, with this video they not just added additional value to their service, but also provided educational content for their audience.
Because Google Loves Videos
Having a video on the website let visitors spend more time, which builds trust and signals search engines that your site contains quality content. As Google owns YouTube, there’s very significant importance for videos that direct to your product or service’s website. According to Moovly, You’re 53% times more likely to rank first if your site contains embedded video.
Always make sure you optimize videos for Youtube and SEO by understanding your target audience’s intent for search and then customizing your video accordingly. Use relevant titles for video and always write descriptions. Don’t forget to link back to your website from the videos, provide your potential customers the path of their next step.
Get Personal
Cisco has predicted that by 2021, 13% of internet traffic will account for live videos.
Transparency is always appreciated; the same applies here as well. With the help of Instagram and Snapchat stores, you can provide your audience or your followers an insight into your workplace.
Create short intimate glimpses of your business, use their inbuilt creative tools to edit and share it with your followers. These stories last only for 24 hours, giving them a realistic touch.
With the introduction of Facebook Live, the ability to engage with your customers in real-time is at your fingertips. Using live services makes your brand credible and trustworthy; the live chat features let you take questions from the audience, and you can answer them live. Hubspot manages to provide a very comprehensive guide to using Facebook live for marketers
You can also use live to stream events that your business participates sharing insights into your work environment and routine.
Here’s an example from the renowned coffeehouse chain Starbucks, who used the Facebook live feature to stream the Nationals Voters Day event they participated in.
This not only shows Starbuck’s involvement in the community but also provided the opportunity for viewers to watch the event and also be aware of the importance and cause behind it.
Influencer Collaboration
Businesses partner with famous personalities and influencers that are credible to target niche audiences. It’s a handy and quick way to endorse your products or services.
Here’s an example where the famous mobile manufactures OnePlus Technology used an Indian content creator Jose Covaco to generate awareness among his subscribers.
Watch how Jose uses humor to leverage the audience’s attention with his honest and satirical take on phone unboxing videos, and at the same time, promote their mobile device.
I’m sure if you stuck through the entire video, he’d left in you in splits with his sharp wit while also managing to do complete justice to the sponsor promotion.
Tell a Story | Emotional Branding
Remember when we said- “Don’t sell the product, sell emotions.” Muscleblaze does precisely that with this video where they hardly mention anything about their product, but manage to communicate the importance of fitness and lifestyle through strong visuals and voiceover.
MuscleBlaze efficiently uses the tone of motivation and persistence to persuade its viewers through sentiments. Even though people won’t buy the product, such videos leave people with encapsulating visuals and brand recall values.
Staying competitive
According to this article in Hubspot, 81% of businesses use videos for marketing.
Videos are great, agreed. It tells a story within a short time and communicates messages with much more engagement quality. But what to do when everybody has joined the game? How to stay relevant? How to beat the competition?
There’s always a scope of exploring unique opportunities and finding ways to hack growth.
Last year, Instagram introduced a feature called IGTV, which offers content creators to produce exclusive content in an entirely new dimension. IGTV videos provide 9:16 resolution i.e., they’re shot or edited vertically, so that it fits your mobile device ideally.
Here’s how the BBC uses it as a mini Youtube channel to show small clips of the stories that they cover. Every video contains an enticing CTA asking its viewers to share and engage with the content.
Tips On Create High-Converting Video Content for your E-Commerce
Know Your Audience
Research your audience’s behavior, visit websites, forums, chat groups, and analyze how they talk, react, and learn their consumer habits. Create videos in their language, and your video should be able to speak to them and address their pain points.
The Ideal Length For Videos
Try to figure out the video length for your videos based on the platforms. Here are the recommended video lengths according to Hubspot–
YouTube: 2 minutes
Facebook: 1 minute
Instagram: 30 seconds
Have a Plan
Write a script, even if it is a Live video, note down points concerning the purpose of the video, and stick to it, but always have room for creativity.
Invest In Quality
Always make sure your video is crystal clear and sound perfect. A video with good visual and audio quality is irrelevant. Use the right tools to edit the videos, tons of software are available, use whatever works for you, but make sure the end product is top-notch.
Conclusion
Video marketing is relatively expensive, but it also provides the best ROI when done right. It pretty much makes sense to invest in videos, and it carves your business’s personality on to the digital world.
Video adds dynamism to your product; potential customers relate easily with the information, and making videos is also entertaining. Use social media to leverage the platform for creating awareness and engagement carefully.
