What is content marketing?
Content marketing is all about curating content relevant to your brand to build positive perceptions among your audience and, ultimately, make a splash in a heavily saturated online market.
A strong content marketing strategy will generate leads and build loyal and repeat customers. Firstly, because you can harness storytelling - with content - to paint a picture of who you are and strengthen relationships with your audience. Secondly, because the frequency and quality of your content will influence whether or not your brand stays top of mind for relevant consumers.
When it comes to what content form deserves the most attention, it’s no secret that video trumps the rest, especially when 87% of video marketers stated that video content gives them a positive ROI (Hubspot).1 So, incorporate video into your content strategy, and you’ll see engagement and awareness start to skyrocket.
Here are three content marketing video types that we believe are essential for every brand’s marketing repertoire!
Explainer videos
Explainer videos are the perfect way to get your message across succinctly to a wide audience in an engaging form. If you don’t already have one, you need one, and here’s why:
1. Brand awareness
Without brand awareness, you don’t get traffic, and without traffic, you don’t get people enquiring for your product or service. You have to keep feeding that funnel!
Plaster your explainer video across your website, social media, newsletters and wherever else may be relevant for your brand. As a result, more people will see your brand from one single piece of content than ever before. You can even put spend behind your video on social media for further reach - for example, start off with a video views campaign targeting your prospective audience, and use it to build out a retargeting audience that you can utilise in the future to drive leads or sales.
2. Clarify your offering
For a lot of businesses, it can be tricky describing your product/service and all of its benefits in a succinct way. Explainer videos combat this by being much easier to interpret than text, using visual and audio cues to help consumers understand what it is that you are offering. Not to mention, it’s far more engaging, so people will learn WAY more about your brand by watching the whole explainer video than if they were to read a couple of sentences on your website.
Moreover, if you have a complex or less tangible offering, explainer videos can help to simplify what it is that you’re trying to say. You can be more creative in the way that you communicate - whether that be visually or through sound, which does wonders for mitigating misinterpretation.
3. Increase conversions
It’s been found that conversion rates are 34% higher for marketing campaigns that incorporate video compared to those that don’t (Unbounce).2 Part of this is due to the engaging nature of explainer videos and the ever increasing preference for video content; but also, having video on your website and/or landing page is fantastic for SEO. When SERPs (search engine result pages) start pushing you up the organic rankings, it makes sense that your business is more likely to see conversions.
Testimonial videos
As with any form of digital marketing, social proof is extremely powerful, especially in the form of a testimonial. While written testimonials on their own are effective, video testimonials are much more engaging and personal, as it allows for more authenticity - which is becoming increasingly popular with online content.
Testimonial videos in a content marketing strategy are fantastic for organic posting, but also retargeting campaigns. Now that your audience is aware of your brand, a video testimonial describing what makes your offering so great may be the last push needed for consumers to convert. In fact, according to BigCommerce, when a consumer interacts with your testimonial video, they become 58% more likely to convert (BigCommerce).3
Team storytelling
From an organic content marketing perspective, no brand should be neglecting the power of team storytelling. What does that mean? Well, increasingly, consumers are favouring and enjoying content they deem relatable, which is why we’ve seen a resurgence of vlog-style content. This also explains why we’ve seen such a huge success in platforms such as TikTok, which promote unfiltered, story-driven, authentic content.
Having experimented with TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, we’ve found a significant increase in engagement from our videos that are based around our team, or day-to-day office life, compared to posting our finished work. It’s still important that you have a mixture of both polished and authentic videos, as showcasing your work is a large part of content marketing! Additionally, this form of video content marketing allows your audience to connect with your brand on a more personal level, often by covering relatable topics. If you’re not experimenting with vertical video, get on it!
Final thoughts
When it comes to content marketing, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach - strategy and implementation will look different for everyone; however, video will reap some incredible ROI and results for your brand. So, if video isn’t included in your content strategy, we strongly recommend changing that!
[1] Hubspot, 2022. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/state-of-video-marketing-new-data
[2] Unbounce. https://unbounce.com/landing-page-articles/the-benefits-of-using-video-on-landing-pages/
[3] BigCommerce. https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/customer-testimonials/