There is so much content out there. As a result, audiences get inundated by all kinds of messages- promotional, informational, entertaining, and more. In the current state of information saturation, it is challenging for any brand to keep its target audience engaged.
Customer engagement is the bedrock of any successful online enterprise. It’s where video marketing enters the picture. When it comes to building an emotional connection with the audience, nothing works as well as a video.
According to 2022 video marketing statistics published by Wyzowl, as many as 86% of businesses benefit from the opportunities that video offers.
Increasingly, brands are recognizing the potential of providing customer support with video. Particularly when it comes to increasing customer engagement and interaction, video marketing has become the go-to solution.
But if you are new to video marketing, it can seem like there is a lot to wrap your head around. However, that’s not true. All you have to do is keep some fundamentals in mind. By getting the basics of video marketing right, you can increase your customer engagement in no time. Below is a concise breakdown of how you can drive customer engagement using video.
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Integrate video marketing and email marketing
As per the findings of a Forrester report, the click-through rate increased a staggering 200-300% by incorporating videos in emails. Therefore, brands must integrate videos in their email and newsletters marketing campaigns.
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Experiment with different video formats
To find what best fits your video marketing strategy, you must first dabble into different forms of videos. Below are a few formats that you can try your hand at:
Testimonials from clients make for reliable social proof. According to findings published by Wyzowl, a substantial 79% of consumers learned more about a brand, product, or service after they referred to video testimonials. Not only that, 9 out of 10 people claim to have more confidence in what other customers say about a brand than whatever the brand says about itself.
These videos essentially work as referrals from your clientele. If you can do a great job with testimonial videos, you can engage with many new customers.
People want to see and hear about a brand from other people like them, not necessarily from models or celebrities. Hence, testimonial videos are one of the first video formats you should try. Through these videos, your clients can share their experience with your brand and how it positively impacted their lives.
In the current digital landscape, not much emphasis is on your educational background or qualifications. Instead, the results you deliver to your clients speak volumes about your products/services. That is why case studies are a popular form of video content.
Case studies are slightly different then testimonials. Instead of clients talking about your brand, case studies involve the presentation of results. Case studies involve a detailed account of what a brand was able to accomplish for one of its clients. For example, if you make a case study video, you would be explaining how your brand successfully solved problems for a particular client. To do that, you have to present a clear before and after scenario to the viewers, accompanied by the relevant data and numbers.
These numbers help the viewer understand just how much change you were able to make in the life of a given individual or organization. Case studies allow you to establish your authority and present proof of your knowledge and expertise in the domain.
Explainer videos is an umbrella term that covers a wide variety of videos, including but not limited to product/service demos, how-to videos, and brand culture/brand story videos. Explainer videos break down and explain the brand and its offerings to the viewers.
These videos are educational and informational. Through these videos, you can communicate to the viewer how a particular product or service would make their lives easier. Explainer videos are an excellent tool to build credibility and develop trust among your target audience.
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Use storytelling to forge an emotional connection
Storytelling is an art form that is innately engaging and entertaining. Any kind of story roughly follows the narrative structure of having a beginning, middle, and end. By incorporating these core tenets of storytelling in your video content, you can hook your audiences and make sure they watch right till the end.
Here’s is how you can create a story in your videos:
- Create interesting characters and put them in dramatic situations.
- To create these dramatic situations, you can take inspiration from the daily lives of members of your target audience. Try to understand the cultural and social context of your customer base. By incorporating the day-to-day scenarios of their lives into your storytelling, you can make the content far more relatable for your audience.
- Make sure that the story of your videos follows a narrative arc that takes the main character on a journey. First, the viewer gets introduced to the characters, then a conflict arises, and lastly, the conflict gets resolved using a solution. This solution comes in the form of products or services offered by the brand.
- This allows viewers to understand how a certain brand can solve day-to-day problems with its offerings. Depending upon how well-done a video is, it can get the viewer to emotionally invest in the brand.
- Use both visual as well as auditory storytelling elements. Include visually appealing animations and infographics, along with music and sound effects. A compelling narrative, coupled with strong visual and audio elements, makes your videos a completely immersive experience for the viewers.
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Use Video to engage in live interaction with viewers.
Custom-recorded videos can turn out great, as you can micro-manage every single aspect of the video. However, they cannot replicate the engagement and interaction that live video formats can generate. Hence, a brand should also invest at least some of its time and resources towards the following:
You can use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., to go live and interact with your audience. Going live in this manner allows you to humanize your brand/organization and establish a genuine connection with the audience.
Webinars are another incredible tool that you can use to drive engagement. You should regularly conduct information-dense webinars for your audience. These webinars offer immense value, which can help you generate leads. In addition, webinars also help you increase your email and social media subscribers.
Whether to make your target audiences aware of your brand or approach your existing clientele, videos work wonderfully as an engagement tool. Through videos, not only can you inform and educate your audience, but you can also engagingly market your products and services.
Videos enable businesses to increase their customer outreach, raising conversions in the process. So what are you waiting for? Start milking the potential of video marketing to engage audiences so that they can become your customers.