The following is part 2 of a 3-part market research report I had created, on behalf of a client, to determine the trends, usage and effectiveness of videos implemented as part of a marketing strategy employed by small businesses. Through my research, it became evident that video is an ideal medium for small businesses to use to brand storytelling pieces, which can live on a website, social media channels and can be used in press releases and email campaigns. Whether sharing the brand values, brand origin, or brand mission, video immerses your audience in your story and offers a richer, more nuanced experience than other media. It’s clear that a video content strategy has become a non-negotiable part of modern marketing, helping with everything from building brand awareness, engaging with potential customers, driving traffic to a website, capturing more leads and converting buyers faster.

Small Business Video Marketing Trends

Enormous Viewership. Year after year, the enormous number of video viewers continues to increase. Current statistics are as follows (from Forbes Insight – http://tinyurl.com/hnu3mu8):

• 65% of executives visited vendors’ websites after watching their video.
• 59% of executives prefer to watch a video versus reading text if both are available.
• More than 80% of executives watch more online videos today than they did one year ago.
• 75% of business executives watch work-related videos at least weekly.
• 54% of senior executives share work-related videos with colleagues at least weekly.

Videos and ROI. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth 1.8 million words (Forrester). Statistic after statistic proves that video may be one of the best investments a small business can make. 52% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with best ROI. (Invodo white paper – http://tinyurl.com/hxvxdo8)

• Video increases purchase intent by 97% and improves brand association by 139% (Unruly)
• Animoto’s research says that 96% of consumers find videos helpful when they are making purchase decisions online. Moreover, 58% of them consider companies that produce videos to be more trustworthy.
• Dramatically improves ROI when used in conjunction with a small business marketing strategy. More than 80% of marketers are utilizing video marketing, and of that percentage 70% report video yielding higher conversion rates than any other content. (Vidyard/Demand Metric). Some key examples of increased ROI when implementing marketing strategies using videos:

SEO Strategy

• On average, Google ranks websites with video five times higher than websites without them (Forrester).
• YouTube drives brand performance and is the second largest search engine in the world. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/241453
• Video increases conversation rates on website landing pages by 80% (Orion 21/Unbounce). The average internet user spends 88% more time on a website with video than without. (Mistmedia)
• Free video hosting sites such as YouTube and Vimeo have useful tools that allow you to upload your videos and use keywords to draw interest to them.

Email Campaigns (Forrester & Constant Contact)

• Using the word “Video” in an email subject line boosts open rates by 19%
• Improves click-through rates by 65%
• Reduces unsubscribe rates by 26%
• Using the statistics above if we send out a 100k piece email campaign and use the average email success rates via Constant Contact, we can conclude that sales yielded from using the email with video will be 25 times greater number of sales if we did not use video. (http://tinyurl.com/h8sn8y8)

Press Release Creation/Distribution

• Press release with video gets 55.4% more views than one without and 1% more link clicks – (Reelseo http://tinyurl.com/hausxfp)
• Video holds advantages over text press releases, AdWeek reports in their article “The Rise of Video Press Releases”. Eighty percent of viewers will watch an entire video release, while just 20% read an entire text release.
• Video releases have an average half-life of about 40 days, compared to nine days for text releases.
• Small business case study on video press release vs. text/photo press release: Business Wire, content marketing agency SEO-PR and technology company Get City Dealz compared the results of releases on three different New Orleans merchants. The press releases with video attracted 55.4% more views and 6.1 percent more clicks than the text-only release. The release with a video had 5,059 views and 230 link clicks. The release with a photo had 3,406 views and 181 link clicks. The release with no multimedia had 3,255 views and 169 link clicks.

Social Media & Blogs

• According to Twitter and an article from the Huffington Post, titled “Why Video Marketing is the New Darling of the Marketing World” http://tinyurl.com/hrmrevb, videos and photos get the most retweets.
• 71% of consumers who have had a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others. (Ambassador)
• According to the 2015 B2B Content Marketing Report, YouTube is in the top three (out of 9) most effective B2B social media platforms. (55% of this survey’s participants were from small companies).
• BuzzFeed brand dominated the Facebook video rankings with two of its food-related pages featuring in the top 10 most viewed Facebook video publishers chart. With a combined 2.6 billion video views on Facebook last month, BuzzFeed Tasty, and BuzzFeed Food were the most watched branded pages for the publishing giant in February 2016.
• Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. (Source: HubSpot)
• Video posts average 62% more engagement than photos on Facebook (study by Quintley).