Why videos are no longer just an option but a necessity in digital marketing

• Akshaara Lalwani, CEO, Communicate India pens down the benefits of using videos in marketing.
• She shares how videos can offer higher brand recall, improve website visibility and increase trust among your audience.

The human mind’s fascination with moving images is a curious and continuous one. Right from the inception of the movies to our current obsession with GIFs and Deep Nostalgia—an AI tool that is bringing life to old photos—moving images are captivators of our imagination. It is no wonder why the statistics around YouTube and its video content are dizzying. According to Statista, a company that specializes in market data insights, more than 500 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute in 2019 and by 2021, users will spend approximately 100 minutes a day watching online videos. With such overwhelming evidence digital marketers are quickly beginning to understand that video has to now become an indispensible part of their marketing strategy.

Why Video?

Users today are bombarded with a myriad of messages and ads every time they go online. With hundreds of advertisers vying for their attention, most information is either ignored or superfluously processed as users scroll through their phones. The goal is to capture a user’s attention within a 1.3-seconds-long window – which is the amount of time an average user spends on each post in their news feed. Static image ads are thus just not viable enough for this ultra-competitive digital arena where catching a user’s attention is akin to striking gold.

The pandemic has also in no uncertain terms altered the course of digital marketing. Since customers and users can no longer be in stores where they can touch and see a product, they want to be able to virtually interact with it, and videos are an excellent way to facilitate this. Videos have the power to ignite a slew of emotions in people; through their power of storytelling they can create a sense of connection and bonding that can tie a user to a brand.

In addition to this, video has the power to improve the following specific aspects of digital marketing.

Website Visibility: Videos have the ability to improve click-through rates on websites and even enhance conversion rates. In fact, according to Hubspot, an American software developing company, more than 40% of decision makers contact their service providers after they have watched a branded video.

Brand Recall: Creating brand recall can often be an arduous task. And embedding a sense of familiarity in customers’ minds takes time and effort. Videos by their very nature and both visual and auditory and research suggests that viewers can retain up to 95% of a message from a video they watched, rather than when they read text. Engaging and memorable video content tugs at the heartstrings of viewers and has the ability to create some serious brand recall. Digital marketers can thus use video content as means for both storytelling and advertising.

Increased Trust: In a day and age when social media reach can be bought and reviews can be faked, brand videos have the unique advantage of authenticity. Using video to communicate a brand’s message can lead to a direct visual connect with users and customers; video can convey a sentiment honest and devoid of any falsehood.

With the meteoric rise of the OTT space in India and the world, brand solution agencies and digital marketers today understand the power that video has when it comes to reaching consumers through their TVs and multiple personal devices at all times. And when TikTok became all the rage last year, other major platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram quickly followed suit. While Twitter came up with their 6-second video ads, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat introduced their own short video ads to keep up.

Video is thus no longer a secondary option but an essential component of the marketing strategy toolkit that must be leveraged to connect with target audiences.