Did you know, 78% of people watch online videos every week, and 55% view online videos every day and by 2020, online videos will make up more than 80% of all consumer internet traffic.
There are more stats where they came from, and they show that video is the future and if your business is not using it, then you should be. While you’re busy making sure you’re on the first page of Google, you could be missing the fact that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and the most significant opportunity here is online tutorials or educational style videos as one of the biggest things that people search is “how-to.”
If YouTube is too much of a challenge right now, then continue to focus on your website. Adding video to your website can increase your search rankings on Google, Bing, and Yahoo significantly. Adding a video to your site makes the first page Google result fifty times more likely. So, not only will people find you if you have video but the average conversion rates for a website using video is 4.8% whereas those that don’t use video see just an average of 2.9% conversion rate. 40% of consumers state that video increases the chance that they’ll purchase a product on their mobile device and website visitors are 64% more likely to buy on an online retail site after watching a video.
You’ll also show up on more social feeds if you have a video. Facebook and Instagram’s algorithm changed recently to mean that they only show people the kind of content that they want to see, so it’s getting harder and harder to show up there as a business. However, creating a video will give you much more of a chance of showing up in their feeds because today, consumers are spending more time consuming digital video than they even are on social media, so the social media companies want to keep them on their platforms, not have them go elsewhere for video. Four times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it, according to eMarketer. Watching a video also provides both audio and visual stimulation and means that they are more engaged with your brand, so they automatically develop a keen interest in it. So, it’s essential that you give your audience and potential customers what they want. However, it is important to note that only 12% of people who view Instapage videos turn the sound on, and 85% of video on Facebook is watched without sound – so while people would prefer to watch a video than read a blog, it’s also a good idea to get an excellent captioning service for those who don’t want to listen.
The time it takes you to set up your camera and press record or to be honest even press record on your phone and then give the footage a quick edit will probably take less time than it would for you to write a short blog post. Creating a video will also provide you with extra data that you wouldn’t get from a blog post because you can track how long people have watched your video for and you can see areas of your video that viewers have re-watched or skipped.
Thanks to advancements in technology and developed phones and cameras, making videos is now a far easier process than ever before. Often people think that it will be expensive and that they’ll either need to hire a video production company or at least buy a load of new equipment, but that is not the case. Short videos can be done on your phone or with a decent 1080px camera then if you have some basic video editing software that’s all you need. Even something like iMovie is the perfect place to get you started.
You can use a video as your sales tool, to tell people about your product or service and you can use it to describe a stronger story as according to Forrester Research, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words. You can also make use of one video to create a couple of videos. You only need to do one video, film plenty of material in one go and then cut it up in different ways for different platforms. You should create shorter videos for Instagram or maybe mix some clips for Facebook to create a teaser-style video. This is all easy to do on iMovie.
Consumers aren’t that bothered about the quality and seeing some professional, Hollywood style video, they connect more with “real” videos, live streams or barely edited video. It’s far more relatable and accessible and shows more personality.
Companies that use video are growing revenue 49% faster than those who don’t – a rather significant amount! If you need any more convincing here’s a few more stats you should know.
Users view more than 500 million hours of video each day on YouTube.
59% of executives say they would rather watch a video than reading text.
55% of people pay close attention when consuming videos — more than all other types of content.
51% of all video plays are on mobile devices.
Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text.
So what are you waiting for? Start playing with your phone and video editing apps today!
