Top 5 Video Marketing Strategies to Improve Your Conversions

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Well, a video is worth a thousand images. And that is also why video marketing is now an important part of any online marketing strategy.

There is a good reason for this. The basic goal of any online marketing company is to get people to convert. To keep them interested enough to sign up, fill out their contact form or buy from you.

I think you would agree with that. Why would you spend so much time churning out content after content to reach people you barely know?

Video marketing is gaining ground because of how easy it is to consume. That’s why a video, as long as it’s well done, draws more crowds than, say, an instructional blog.

The proof is in the statistics. Recent studies show that 75% of mobile traffic will be video.

In this post, we’ll take a look at five video marketing strategies that can help you increase conversions.

1- Engage your audience with interactive videos

Customer preferences change in the blink of an eye. Trends come and go. And even viral content disappears over time. To keep your audience still, you need to give them something that will keep them interested.

Lately, marketers are using interactive videos to achieve this. These are videos that allow viewers to participate and change their result. It’s kind of like how multiple-choice games work. You create a changing story in which viewers make different decisions for different results.

In a way, interactive videos give us experiences that static content cannot. Instead of a passive experience, the medium encourages the person watching to act. This drives engagement.

For example, consider Mended Little Hearts, a charity for children with congenital heart disease that uses an interactive video to show how donating money can make the lives of children with the disease a little brighter.

2- Be brief but entertaining

The average attention span of Internet users is less than that of a goldfish. That’s why we’d rather skim through the content than read every word and move on. Getting noticed is a matter of showing value right away. Think of it as a five-minute marketing pitch that you need to give to investors to sell your idea to.

Video marketing works the same way. You can’t just post long videos and expect visitors to watch them to the end. If you have hopes of conversions, your video content should be short. And it must be sweet.

Some social media platforms have made it easy for businesses to do this. Take Facebook’s video autoplay feature, for example. Videos play automatically as users scroll through their news feeds. Viewers will watch for a few seconds and then move on if your video isn’t interesting enough to hold their attention. According to statistics, the average retention rate for videos of 90 seconds is 53%, while videos of more than 30 minutes retain only 10%.

3- Don’t make it look like a commercial

What do we usually do when a commercial appears? We change the channel. The commercials may have worked before. But now we have little screens in our pockets; smartphones that provide us with a wealth of other valuable content that we would rather see.

The point is, people have more reasons than ever to “switch channels” on their video. Post a video on your social media channel? People will probably scroll through it if all you’re trying to do is sell.

Nobody looks at an ad voluntarily, unless it offers something worthwhile. Viewers are likely to engage with your content if they get something out of this experience. This “something” can be humor or perhaps a value proposition. Something unique that could drive them to convert.

To illustrate, consider a famous Heathrow Airport Christmas advertisement in which two grandparents (depicted as teddy bears) take a grueling flight to London. During the journey, the airport staff are there to help make this journey comfortable until the couple finally meet their family.

It’s quite a moving announcement. It’s kind of pulling at the fiber of your heart, reminding you how exciting it is when families finally get together over the holidays, and how worth the journey in the end. Most important of all, it makes you appreciate all that Heathrow Airport does for travelers.

4- Use lead capture forms directly on video

One trick to capturing leads is to present your lead capture actions right away. Application developers, for example, often place lead capture forms on the first page of their websites or landing pages.

So how do you do this in a video? How can you get people to convert not after watching a video, but in the middle of it?

It is possible with a tourniquet. Some online video platforms offer this feature. With it, you can insert a lead capture form anywhere in your video. It’s a great way to get high-quality leads, such as emails or first and last names, which can help you personalize your follow-up emails.

5- Use your products to teach your target audience

People learn best if they can visualize the topic. That’s why visual content, like graphics or videos, keeps students engaged longer than boring lectures.

You can apply the same technique if you want your videos to not only be seen, but also convert your audience into customers.

Some brands do it quite well. To illustrate, consider Home Depot, which airs instructional videos that teach customers how to use or assemble their products. The brand has thousands of subscribers and around 45 million views in the how-to space. By showing your products and teaching people how to use them, Home Depot gives them more reasons to become paying customers.

Ending

Video marketing offers great opportunities for those who know how to use it. In short, you can get more conversions from your video marketing strategies by getting your audience in on the action with interactive videos. Focus on keeping your content short but worthwhile for the viewer. Use lead capture forms directly on video and never underestimate the value of how-to videos.