Use Video to Attract and Keep Digital Marketing Customers Longer

Customers today are regularly bombarded with all manners of digital marketing, whether it’s on their cellphone, a YouTube video about cats, while watching sponsored content, while playing video games or when visiting a website. Just as marketers once schemed to grab the biggest share of “eyeballs” in print marketing, digital marketers today are hoping to do the same with electronic channels. Sure, you can lure customers to your Web site or get them to open your emailed newsletter, but how do you keep them there?

The answer, many experts say, is with video. It can’t, however, be just any video. It has to provide value and interest for the customer. Studies have found that providing website visitors with text to read or photos to look at isn’t enough to keep them engaged with your brand. If you add a video, however, these visitors will hang around, on average, an extra two minutes.

“That’s time they are spending with you and not with your competitors,” said V. Michael Santoro, one of the developers of Vaetas, an online video-marketing syndication network. “The longer they stay with you, the greater odds are they will make a buying decision you’ll like.”

There is evidence that video, done properly, can have a large impact on purchasing decisions, according to Vaetas. For example, 64 percent of consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video, according to comScore Inc., a company that measures consumer behavior. Also, 71 percent of consumers surveyed by Animoto, an online video maker, said watching a corporate video left them with a positive impression.

“Video has gotten easier to create and use, which is probably why it’s become so much a part of our society,” Santoro says. “If businesses don’t take advantage, they miss out on a chance to increase sales and be even more successful in the marketplace.”

Video isn’t simply for Web sites, emails and newsletters anymore…at least, not on the desktop. Thanks to the rate at which Americans glance at their mobile device screens today (dozens of times per hour, by some measures), video can be personalized in a way it never could before. By spending a little time and energy to determine who your customers are, what they’re looking for and how they prefer to interact with you, it becomes relatively easy to customize video content for them directly, and deliver it into the palms of their hands.

“Video done properly,” of course, is no small feat. A two minute video of your VP of marketing droning on about product features is probably not going to cut it. Video content needs to be engaging and offer value (think humor, or sentimental happiness, or something cute: babies and puppies), or customers won’t continue to watch it, and they certainly won’t share it with others, which should be one of your goals. It’s therefore worthwhile to seek the services of professional video marketers when you embark on a challenge to better use video.

Using video does more than just grab customers’ eyeballs. It can also help with search engine optimization. According to a study conducted by Forrester Research, Web pages with video are more likely to rank on the first page of Google searches.

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” goes the old adage. If that’s true, then video content should be worth millions of words. Just be sure you’re using the right million words.