The 13 Powerful Benefits of Video Marketing That Demand Your Attention

Once you see the benefits of video marketing for yourself, you’ll want to invest more in the medium.

You see, once upon a time, video was an expensive medium. People with expensive equipment would have to record multiple takes of a scene on film, then edit by hand. Then, once the video was finished, it was relatively difficult to get it published. You typically had to pay a TV station for a commercial or infomercial. This meant that video marketing was, as a rule relatively limited.

However, nowadays both the production and distribution of video are much simpler. Not only can you shoot a video with cheap cameras, but video editing software is cheap and easy to use. Plus, anyone can publish video, whether it’s on their website or a hosting service like YouTube or Vimeo.

In turn, the importance of video to our modern lives has increased. Combined with the popularity of video in social media as well as YouTube itself, it’s impossible to imagine a modern-day marketing strategy that doesn’t incorporate video. With that said, if you are in doubt or need reminding as to the many benefits of video marketing, this post is for you!

How Video Marketing Improves Brand Awareness

Because of the huge demand for video, supplying the right video in the right channels is an excellent way to get noticed in a noisy online world. Competition for a video to go viral is stiff, but you never know when this phenomenon will underline the benefits of video marketing. For instance, a video going viral often introduces your brand to a population segment you never intended.

1. Services a Demanding Medium

Not only do most Internet users watch videos, they actually prefer it over content types. For instance, one study found that over 55% of people on the internet will share videos that they’ve watched each day. Further data from the same source indicates that video tops even email and pictures on social media in terms of consumer preference.

And social media is no different. For instance, another study found that most consumers prefer to watch video when using social media. Similarly, experts find that every day people watch 100 million hours of video on Facebook alone. These are staggering numbers, and they indicate that your brand is seriously missing out on the benefits of video marketing if some kind of video isn’t published regularly.

Further Reading: The Top 34 Video Marketing Statistics for 2024

2. Leverage YouTube for Brand Awareness

If there is one area of digital marketing where we see a huge demand for video, it is YouTube. While the 100 million daily hours of Facebook video sounds like a lot, it is dwarfed by 1 billion hours watched on YouTube during the same period. In other words, Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg. Considering that many people will watch YouTube for a while to relax after work, though, it isn’t surprising that the global hours are so high.

Here’s another consideration: although many of us fail to see the connection, YouTube is technically a social media network. In fact, it’s the 2^nd largest one after Facebook, with nearly 2.3 billion monthly users. Thought of another way, that’s nearly half of all people on the internet. If your brand isn’t on YouTube, you’re missing out on many of the benefits of video marketing.

3. Reach Decision Makers

Brand awareness amongst executives and decision makers is always a challenge. That’s where another of the benefits of video marketing fits in. Since management-level professionals are often very busy doing their main job, they often enjoy having a break from all the reading. Videos let them absorb information without as much strain on their eyes. Maybe that’s why 59% of senior executives choose video over text content when given a choice on the same page.

With that said, there’s more evidence that video marketing is effective besides the anecdotal benefits. For instance, HighIQ found one company found that about 75% of managers watch videos that are related to their work each week. And for senior executives, 54% share this kind of video with their colleagues. This secondary distribution is an important advantage in the never-ending race for eyeballs.

The SEO and Traffic Benefits of Video Marketing

The benefits of video marketing don’t stop with just getting noticed. Video marketing helps your SEO and in turn, through a combination of increased brand awareness and enhanced SEO, deliver more traffic back to your website.

4. Improve Your SEO

Because YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine after Google, it should come as no surprise that video marketing can help your SEO. After all, YouTube is a Google product, and for this reason your performance on the platform does help. But there is more to it than might meet the eye.

Videos don’t impact your search engine rankings directly, but they give your website a better chance of improving them through increased dwell time, the time a visitor spends on your website, an important ranking factor for Google. The more engaging your video is, the longer people will stay on your page watching your video. This is especially true when you use YouTube as the host for your video and embed the player in other pages of your site.

The stats prove this point. For one thing, we know that if your website has video on it, the average dwell time will increase by about two minutes. This can really pack a punch, especially when you consider that a typical internet user is spending 88% more time on websites with video than those without it. And finally, one survey reported that 80% of marketers noticed the increase of dwell time for their websites.

As a result, the impact that video marketing can have on your SEO is astounding. Perhaps most stunningly, adding videos to your website can boost your chance of reaching the first page of Google by 53 times. Partially because of this fact, more than half of keyword search results here in the US has video options.

Further Reading: YouTube Video Optimization: Simple Tricks Beginners Can Implement To Rank Their Videos

5. Get More Backlinks

Not only does embedding a video into a web page increase its search engine rankings, it also offers additional SEO benefits by becoming a link magnet. And this isn’t a small improvement: because of the benefits of video marketing, embedded videos will almost triple the number of backlinks to your website.

As we all know, one of the big ways to improve SEO is to build backlinks. That’s because Google looks for something called domain authority, or the extent to which a website is seen as an important contributor around a particular discussion. In turn, the overall SERP results will rise with domain authority. From this, you can see that boosted SEO performance is one of the big benefits of video marketing.

6. Increase Traffic

As a result of improved SEO, including getting more backlinks, video marketing often drives increased traffic to your website. In fact, embedded video can increase your traffic by 55%: the video itself becomes the draw. In similar findings, sites with video got 41% more traffic resulting from search engines.

Not convinced? Think about it this way. If people prefer video to written content, then they’re more likely to choose a website that has video. And since this kind of video isn’t the (sometimes annoying) unrelated advert, people are likely to listen. Maybe that’s why studies have found a 157% increase in traffic from SERPs when a video is present.

Video Marketing Optimizes Your Funnel

We already looked at how video marketing can help you reach an audience and achieve unparalleled brand awareness from a variety of ways. What happens after they see your video? This is where the benefits of video marketing continue to shine. Because of the many benefits derived from the flexibility of video, it’s probably unsurprising that 80% of businesses get a good ROI from video marketing. Let’s break down these benefits of video marketing.

7. Video is an Excellent Way to Educate Potential Customers

If you’re like most people, market research is an important part of buying decisions. This can be as simple as finding out who has your size of clothing, to reading a bunch of literature or watching a lot of videos to decide what’s best. This need to understand what is available, then choose the best option is one reason why nearly half of internet users look for product videos. And they work well: about 80% of consumers find product demos worth watching before purchase.

Furthermore, consumers prefer video in a manner that’s similar to B2B decision makers. For instance, almost everyone says that they watch explainer videos or tutorials to learn about something. And, a staggering 44% prefer video to more traditional phone calls or reading a manual.

Marketing professionals are finding that this makes a huge difference in customer acquisition. Since over 70% of consumers prefer videos to learn about products and services, they are a critical part of the customer journey. Luckily, though, the videos work: 97% of marketers agree that video helps customers understand and select the right products. It’s fair to say that educating customer helps sell the right thing to the right person, and because of it, gain happy customers.

8. Build Trust to Influence Buying Decisions from Your Target Audience

Here’s the thing: customers typically watch product-based videos because they are interested in what the brand has to offer. In some cases, it’s just curiosity. However, one study shows that 64% of customers are more likely to buy after watching. Similarly, for 90% of customers watching the video helps them decide what, if anything, to buy.

Not only do customers buy because of videos, but 57% of them are more confident about buying online because of them. That’s all videos about a product. If the video is credible, then the chance rises even more. The meaning of this is simple: video marketing helps greatly increase sales, even for brands where you don’t think it would matter. If you aren’t doing video marketing, then your brand is missing out on a lot of consumer trust and purchase intent.

9. Better Lead Generation

Arguably, one of the best benefits of video marketing is that it improves lead generation. Especially if you use bells and whistles, such as cards on YouTube or shoppable content on Instagram, it’s easy to get people to buy after seeing how awesome your product or service is. Plus, people don’t have to “think” while consuming the content. This is probably one reason why one study found that 74% of marketers find videos to be a more effective way to generate leads.

10. Increased Conversion Rates

Similarly to the lead generation benefit, video marketing earns a much higher conversion rate than many other marketing methods. One reason for this, of course, is that shopping options can be included with your video. And, at the same time, a better-educated customer is more likely to feel confident while purchasing products and services. Especially when you consider that returning products because they don’t work out is a pain, this is a major benefit.

With that said, there are some actual numbers that bear this out. For instance we know from previous reports that when people view video, they’re 27% more likely to click through the ad, and that the conversion rate for a campaign is 34% higher. Even better, you don’t have to pay to promote your video. If you just place the video on your landing page, the conversion rate rises by around 86%.

Not convinced yet? 81% of consumers have said that branded videos convinced them to buy. And, explainer videos convince around 74% of consumers to buy. Overall, this tells us that video works to a large extent because people love to see things in action before buying.

11. Grow Revenue

Another one of the well-documented benefits of video marketing is that this modality grows revenue. Considering that video boosts sales, this is unsurprising. For the sake of numbers, though, it’s important to know that marketers that use video increase their brand revenue 49% faster from one year to the next, compared to those that don’t. In another datapoint, putting a video on a product page boosts purchases by up to 144%.

Video Marketing Enhances Your Other Digital Marketing

From email marketing to social media marketing, adding video marketing to your digital marketing mix will only leave your digital marketing program stronger. Not only can you use video to enhance your website, but there are social media networks where video is king. YouTube, TikTok, IGTV and other platforms provide a haven for video-based creativity.

Further Reading: 5 Creative Ways to Incorporate Video in Your Small Business Marketing Plan

12. Improve Your Email Marketing

It might seem counter-intuitive, but video can actually help your email marketing in ways you might have never imagined. As we’ve said before, people love to watch video. But many marketers don’t think of email as a way to distribute video or draw people to video pages. These marketers are missing out. Simply placing the word “video” in the subject line boosts click-through rates by 65% and open rates by 19%. It also helps reduce the number of unsubscribes, keeping your list more robust.

The numbers are even more impressive if you add the video to the email itself. Data suggests that videos in emails can boost both open rates and click-through rates. In other words, the overall effectiveness of your email marketing is boosted when you decide to include video in your efforts. While it may not be realistic to add video to all of your emails, you should consider doing so in strategic situations.

13. Increase Word of Mouth Marketing in Social Media

We all intuitively understand that video is the preferred medium for social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn. However, the shareability aspect of video makes it a prime vehicle to incite word of mouth in social media. This is especially true with mobile device users, 92% of whom share videos with other people.

Even considering non-mobile users, social media video is highly advantageous. It is estimated that these videos are shared 1,200% more often than both text and image posts. And, when it comes to branded videos, 83% of consumers consider sharing the ones they enjoy with friends on social. Taken together, these statistics mean that it’s unsurprising that branded videos go viral, and not just the clever home creations.

Of course, shared videos do more than just boost brand awareness and social media exchanges. Rather, they encourage discussions. Just look at any high-quality video on Facebook, and you’ll see a lot of comments. Some of the comments are even a healthy debate! Even better, this sharing is a free way for you to reach outside of your brand’s normal distribution channels.

Further Reading: 8 Types of Social Media Videos Your Company Should Create Right Now

The Final Word on the Benefits of Video Marketing

It’s safe to say that there are many benefits of video marketing. Not only does video educate the consumer, but it also boosts SEO and improves other types of marketing. For that reason, if you are going to have a balanced digital-first marketing strategy, then video is a critical component. Otherwise, you’re missing out on a lot of benefits.

Hero Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash