Video marketing is at an all-time high, with 91% of businesses now using some form of video media as a marketing tool. If you’re just getting started, it can be difficult to decide which one is right for you. If you read our previous blog discussing why you should use animation in your marketing, you’ll know that the brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text, so you can see why marketers are capturing the attention of audiences in this way.
At Browndog, we can create exciting and engaging videos and animations, but which one is best for your business? We’ve put together a list of the advantages of each so you can see for yourself!
Video – a recording of moving visual images made digitally
There are predicted to be 48 billion digital video viewers in the world by the end of 2023, so what better way to reach your target audience? Here’s three reasons why you should use video in your marketing:
1. Give insight into your business
Are you a family run business? Do you have state of the art facilities or machinery? Do you want to show off your offices, studio or factory? A video puts the focus purely on you and your offering; showcasing what makes you special to your consumer and helping you to stand out from your competitors. By sharing real footage of the things that differentiate you from your competition, you help your audience get to know you and see the people behind the business.
Many businesses use actors or stock imagery for their websites or advertising materials, but in our opinion, nothing beats seeing the real people. It gives authenticity and builds a level of trust with your audience; this is key when you want to build strong relationships. We can work with you to film key areas of your business to showcase your expertise. We recently did this for our long term client Winder Power, who took us through their manufacturing process from design to installation.
2. Share first-hand experience/thought leadership
Getting your point across isn’t always easy in written form. It’s one of the many reasons we often tell clients it’s better to just ‘jump on a quick call’. Hearing you explain your process, your software, or tell your story for example, in your own words, is much more emotive, thought evoking and hard hitting than hoping that words on a page are correctly conveying what you’d like them to.
In the example below, we decided that video was the best way to explain the recent Google GA4 update to our clients. It was a big change that needed to be carefully implemented and we wanted to make sure that our clients felt reassured that we were there to support them through the process. Sure, we could have written that down and sent them an email or written a blog about it (and we did those things too) but being able to watch Alexis explain in this video that they could watch at their own leisure; pause, playback, and share with their colleagues, built more trust and overall provided more value to our audience.
We hope you’ll agree that the video instils confidence and reassures the audience that we’re here to help with GA4 and we’ll navigate the changes together!
3. Take advantage of current trends
The rising popularity of video content across social media platforms has grown exponentially in recent years. Can you afford to be behind the curve?
The beauty of short form video content such as reels and TikToks, is that they are easy to digest and can quickly grab the attention of scrollers. We’re fairly certain that most people that have worked in marketing have at some point in their career been asked to create content that will ‘go viral’ (we know, it’s not that easy!) and there’s an obvious reason why. The more viral your content, the more people that see your message, the more awareness for your brand. Video makes your message easy to digest, easy to share, and when done right, desirable too.
Of course there’s many considerations when creating short form content for sharing on social media platforms such as TikTok; you need to think about consistency, values, objectives and opportunities; but that’s another blog!
Animation – a method where visuals are designed, layouts are added and photographic sequences are used to show activity.
According to Marketing Charts, people spend at least 100 minutes every day watching online videos. In fact, according to Cisco, they make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic. These are greats stats for marketers to be armed with, especially when you consider that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to just 10% when reading it in text (Invisia)
We’ve already concluded from these figures that video is an essential tactic for your marketing playbook, but now let us explain why animation is the specific type for you:
1. Get creative
Video is fabulous, we promise we’re not knocking it! BUT. Animation gives you total creative license to bring something to life that is only limited by your (or your creative’s) imagination. You can build as much personality as you want into your animations, working within your brand guidelines to make sure your audience immediately recognises what they see, but hopefully with much more personality.
Animation is an opportunity to use visual effects to pull out key facts and figures, or use exciting movements to make otherwise boring instructional videos interesting and engaging.
2. Make changes with ease
If you change your branding or update your services, the last thing you want to do is have to cast aside all of the lovely video content you have created. Animated video can be constantly re-adjusted to suit your business and revise its messaging. It is a much more cost-effective approach that saves time and money when compared to the resources needed to update real life video content that might need the use of actors and expensive camera equipment, for example. We can continuously update your animation, or re-purpose bits from it to use separately.
3. Make your Content Inclusive and accessible
We want to make sure everyone is considered and represented when creating an animation. Animation allows us to use every colour, shape, size and style we can think of; like we said earlier, we’re only limited by our imagination. When considering animated content, it’s important to be EDI friendly. This means tailoring your animation for equality, diversity and inclusion. For those who struggle to see; we include voiceover and music, and those who struggle to hear; text and images tell the story.
Who says you need to make a choice? We think a mix of both video and animated content complement each other perfectly in this video that we created for Kirklees Council:
If there’s one thing that you take away from this blog, (and to be honest, any other blog about using video content in your marketing strategy), it’s that using video content is a great way to boost engagement and should be considered a great tool to add to your marketing arsenal.
