Introducing our new content marketing series, Pause For Thought (P4T)
Brands despite having a wider range of communication channels than ever before – are failing to make the best of any of them!
Videos perform better than almost any other forms of marketing. Yet is it possible you’re only scratching the surface?
In this new series, P4T, I want to invite you to raise the bar on your content marketing. I’ll outline common pitfalls, best practices and other tips and tricks to maximise the impact of your videos.
But before I get stuck into the ‘how’, I want to explain the ‘why’:
- Why marketers don’t realise their videos are underperforming
- Why more content isn’t going to cut it
- Why brands should expect more from their videos
From where I’m sitting, now is the perfect time to rethink video marketing – and I’d love you to join me.
1. Marketers don’t realise their videos are underperforming
I think the main problem is that marketers still tend to compare videos with other content formats, which gives an awfully flattering impression of video performance. It’s a bit like congratulating a greyhound for outpacing a kitten.
Take stats like these:
- Tweets with video are 6x more likely to be retweeted (1)
- LinkedIn videos are shared 20 times more than other content types (2)
- When asked how they’d most like to learn about a product or service, 69% of consumers say they’d prefer to watch a short video versus other content types. (3)
With such an engaging medium, even mediocre videos can perform brilliantly versus static alternatives. Just imagine what best-in-class videos can achieve!
2. More content isn’t going to cut it
Marketers produce more content than ever before – and still berate themselves for not producing enough! They have more data, tools, channels and formats than they know what to do with. They strive to feed the social media machine 24/7, 365 days a year.
In a recent survey, 86% of businesses reported using video as a marketing tool and 69% of non-video marketers said they expect to start in 2021. (4) Lockdown has driven digital video growth figures even higher, with video set to make up 60% of digital ad budgets in the coming years. (5)
The competition is stiffer than ever. With 500 hours of video (6) uploaded to YouTube every minute, you don’t need to be a video specialist to see that simply creating more content isn’t going to cut it.
3. Brands should expect more from their videos
How’s all this content creation working out for us? Generally not so great. A survey by Contently (7) found that just 18% of brands are getting more than 3,000 views across an entire series of content on their YouTube videos. Plus, the dominance of ‘paid views’ means that people are largely subjected to videos rather than seeking them out. That’s a huge amount of effort for a small amount of views – and this is before we analyse who viewers are and whether they go on to engage or buy. Do brands know what value videos have to business? Not really.
In fact, it is something of a conundrum! Whilst most marketeers don’t track anything beyond a view, and 73% can’t measure (8) if videos contribute to sales, and Nielsen confirms only 47% of campaigns are seen by their target audience – still 96% of marketeers state that they are going to spend more regardless!!
I’ll return to the important topic of measurement in future posts.
Time for a rethink
The pandemic challenged the myth of more. Many of us felt the sting of loss, professionally and personally. Rather than striving to increase sales this quarter, it felt like an achievement to tread water, stay sane and avoid redundancies.
Lockdown forced us to stop dashing around. Experiences of furlough, homeschooling and homeworking prompted deep reflection. At Aspect it changed – perhaps forever – our relationship with office space. We’ve decided to swap our physical office for a big new production studio! I’ll share more about this another time.
In parallel with the pandemic, many businesses are recognising the immense planetary costs of perpetual economic growth and addressing the social and environmental measures hitherto omitted from their balance sheets.
As we emerge from this chapter of loss and reflection, we have a chance – perhaps an imperative – to do things differently. This includes branded video. Rather than producing ever more content, we can focus on creating more impact.
Learn how to get more from your content
At Aspect we’re seizing this moment to rethink video marketing. We want to challenge the status quo and question common assumptions about video marketing effectiveness. We want to help marketers get clearer about what matters to them and their customers, and give practical advice on how to improve performance.
The best part: It's way more inspiring than simply making more videos!
For starters, we’ll explore:
- Singularity. Why to stop cramming messages into branded videos
- Action. Why likes can be meaningless
- Stand-out. Why average creative won’t cut it
- Tailoring. Why relevance matters more than targeting
In a world of ever more content, how can brands get more from it?
Join us for our new series, Pause For Thought.
