11 Dec Video Marketing Continues to Dominate Into 2018 — Six Trends You Need to Know

In 2018, use of video among small business owners will mature and solidify into a “must have” marketing component. Businesses able to make strategic use of video will seize critical opportunities for sales lift and market share.

Many marketers hailed 2017 as “the year of video,” and with good reason. Video marketing, video advertising and overall video consumption boomed in the past 10 months.

61% of all businesses now use video content in their digital marketing plans. Two out of every three of these businesses are newcomers to video.

Additionally, video consumption continues to rise online. Estimates from this summer predict that overall video consumption via mobile will increase by 35% by the end of this year.

All of these developments foretell a new year where digital video will be more important than ever for business owners’ success. Those who take advantage of the following six video marketing trends in 2018 will likely be in for a great year ahead.

2. Self-Made, Low-Budget Video Creates Consistent Video Content Publishing

The video trend is only gaining momentum, but this doesn’t mean you have to break your marketing budget on quality video.  Hubspot reports that 48% of marketers are planning to add YouTube Video to their marketing plans and 46% plan to add Facebook Video.

The good news is that much of this video content will be filmed on a smartphone with the aid of a tripod and a microphone.  Exciting new tools, like Magisto, now use AI to help you edit and market videos quickly.

Consistently publishing new video content is more important today than publishing a highly-produced video once a year.  We live in the age of mass video creation and mass video consumption — most of it for free.  

Business owners looking to utilize video can start by transforming existing content assets into a short (around 2.5 minutes or less) summary. Look for the assets with the most views and shares for inspiration.

Do these types of videos actually engage, though?  

2. Video Content Marketing Becomes a Must-Have for Small Businesses

Consumers’ preference for video has steered most content strategies towards a video-heavy portfolio. Business owners who steer towards video find tremendous value in the form of boosted returns.

For one, people complete video content more frequently than the average non-visual, text-based blog article. According to Vidyard, over a third of all video viewers (37%) make it to the end of the video’s run time.

Nearly all of mobile users who watch video (92%) have a tendency to share video content with others. Simply Measured also says that video gets shared around 12x more frequently than content links or text.

Other studies show that audiences retain video in messaging better than text.  Video is not merely visual, it is auditory and it is emotional.  Because we make a stronger connection through video, the messages delivered have the biggest impact.

With all of these advantages, businesses that put video content online will see higher levels of engagement, shares and conversions into their marketing funnel. Having a video component to your digital marketing strategy will therefore become a competitive differentiator in the months ahead.

A good place to start investigating this on your own is to check out your direct competitors.  What videos do they have on their website, social media, and YouTube pages?  What does viewer engagement look like for their videos?

3. Create Original Content That Doesn’t Sell

What?

Yes, that’s right.  The goal of your content is to engage your audience, not to sell to them.  The days of video ads and infomercials are fading.  Today, your audience wants to first establish a relationship with you.  They do this by consuming your content and determining if you first offer them anything of value.  If they perceive value in your content, then they will return to consume more content.

This actually isn’t a new concept.  At any given moment, only 2-3% of your target audience is “in market” to actually purchase from you.  While traditional advertising expensively chases that 3%, along with all of your other competitors, today’s savvy marketers nurture the 97% of your audience who are going to buy in the future.  

That is where your interesting content comes in.  So stop talking about your brand and start creating content people want to watch, listen to, and even read.  You can see this trend being utilized by the big brands such as Apple, Johnson & Johnson, and PepsiCo.  

You don’t need an enterprise-level budget, though, to capitalize on this trend immediately.  Here are a few tools that can help you today to create professional looking content:

• Skitch: This app from Evernote makes it easy to take and mark up screenshots so you can create polished how-to articles and ebooks.
• Snappa: This tool is similar to sites like Canva and PicMonkey but, in my opinion, much more intuitive to use. It also makes it easy to save templates so you can create images quickly. The “team save” function makes collaborating easy.
• Promo by Slidely: This video creation tool makes it simple for small brands to create seriously professional-looking videos. Includes stock music and video clips and access to music and footage editors.

4. Live Video, 360° Video, Slideshows and Other Video Formats Gain Traction

Live video presents an easy, low-budget and low-concept way to create more video content for audiences. Brands can engage with audiences in a way that feels authentic and like a 1:1 conversation.

Peppering live video into your content marketing and social engagement strategy can therefore quickly round out your digital assets without a massive up-front investment.

On the other end of the spectrum is 360° video. These assets use a special camera setup to capture a full spherical range of images. Audiences can then use a smartphone headset like the Google Daydream to tilt and move their head as the video plays, changing their viewpoint as one might in real life.

360° video results in a truly immersive and memorable experience. But the high cost of equipment and production means businesses require an airtight strategy for converting 360° videos into measurable returns.

Somewhere in between live video and 360° video are alternative video formats:

• Slideshow video — A series of connected images played in a sequence to convey motion or a story
• 6-second video — Taking a page from the Vine format, these short videos communicate messages quicker than text and in a more-engaging way than static images

Formats like these lower production costs for video — especially video ads — while still providing higher levels of engagement. Best of all, they can communicate well even without sound.

Since 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound, slideshow and short-form video assets provide substantial returns with a relatively minimal investment.

5. Video Becomes an Integral Part of the Sales Pipeline

Video not only generates awareness, it can help nurture sales in both B2C and B2B industries.

Offering video content helps turn what could be a pushy and person-intensive sales process into a self-service nurturing pipeline. Interested prospects can view video content hosted on websites or shared via social mediums to learn more about products and features. As they educate themselves, they move towards the end of the sales funnel with minimal person-to-person contact.

Self-guided lead nurturing not only reduces employee overhead, it also results in a more pleasant experience for leads. 19% of prospects claim they only want to hear from a company rep when they are actively considering a purchase. 40% of prospects want to be able to buy without talking to anyone at all.

Meeting this need involves considering how video assets can provide value at every stage of the sales/marketing funnel.

For instance, business owners can cultivate awareness by creating emotional or intriguing video advertising assets.

Video content marketing assets provided on their website next to text content can help buyers at the nurturing stage. In-depth explainer videos can help lay out different buying options or the final steps in the procurement process for those ready to close the deal.

“When you incorporate video into your sales processes, customers get what they want: a frictionless, self-serve experience on their time, and on their terms,” says WireBuzz.

Think about buyer needs that were once traditionally met with person-to-person interactions and imagine how video can replace these needs with a self-service, video-heavy customer journey.

6. Websites Expand Use of Product and Explainer Videos

Vamping off the point above, even retail consumers expect video content during their sales journey.

According to Business2Community, “25% of consumers will lose interest in your brand if you don’t have a video explaining your product or service.”

If you sell retail goods online or even exclusively in-store, your customers will want to see live demonstrations and rundowns of product features.

For a good example of how you can showcase product videos on your ecommerce or business website, take a look at RevZilla. They include a video summary with most new products and all of their best sellers to keep buyers informed and engaged.

In 2018, Video Marketing Trends Will Define Small Business Success

If 2017 was a year of pioneering growth for video, 2018 will be the year people expect business owners to give their video marketing campaigns some structure.

By using the above trends in combination with intelligent strategy and dutiful measurement of KPIs, business owners can bring in bigger audiences than ever before.