A startup’s brand can be one of the most valuable assets for growing its team.
“People want to work for a cool, exciting company that they’ve heard of,” said Franky Athill, the head of marketing for Patch Plants, a popular urban gardening startup in London.
Athill was Patch’s fourth team member, and it has since added more than 40 others.
He shared his advice with Business Insider about two key things to remember when it’s time to add talent to your startup.
This article is part of a series on growing a small business, called “From 1 to 100.”
The search for talent presents a significant challenge for many startups, and the ability to recruit the best people is one of the most critical factors for success.
Startups with strong brand engagement can have an advantage in this respect by reaching a wider field of potential hires.
Franky Athill does exactly that as the head of marketing for Patch Plants, a popular London urban-gardening startup that he has helped grow from four to 45 team members since 2017.
The idea for Patch came about when founder Freddie Blackett was looking for a better way to keep his houseplants alive on the balcony of his girlfriend’s apartment, and he discovered that many other would-be green thumbs in the city shared the same frustration.
After Blackett spent a few years refining the idea in a startup incubator, Athill joined Patch as the fourth employee.
Up to that point, Athill’s career included stints with several other marketing outfits, most notably with famed fashion photographer Mario Testino, whose digital operation he set up and built to 2.8 million subscribers.
Athill spoke with Business Insider about how he uses his marketing channels as a recruiting tool to grow the Patch team.
Use your brand engagement to reach potential hires
Over the past three years, Athill has overseen the growth of the brand’s social reach to more than 200,000 Londoners. Over the same period, he said, daily sales have gone from just 10 to 1,000.
That pool of social followers is also where he has sourced the 40-plus new members of his team.
While a gardening startup may not have the glitz and glamour of a Testino photo shoot, Athill says Patch’s brand engagement is strong. After all, growing your team isn’t simply about finding more people, it’s about finding the right ones.
“That has helped us a huge amount because it means that we’ve been able to hire really good people through our own networks and through our own marketing channels.”
Generating engagement and excitement for your brand is vital for a startup, Athill says, and not only because it drives sales.
“Without it, it’s very hard to compete in the job space for the very best people,” he said. “They want to work for a cool, exciting company that they’ve heard of.”
It all comes down to a numbers game for Athill, who said that reaching a wider audience improves the odds that he will find a good fit to join the team.
Get help from a pro to filter your prospects
Once you’ve amassed a sizable applicant pool, Athill recommended that early-stage startups outsource the screening process to a recruiter as they grow beyond 10 people or so.
“A good recruiter can pay back their weight in gold,” he said. “Use your digital marketing skills and brand to fill a huge funnel [of applicants], and get [the recruiter] to assess that funnel.”
Having an independent perspective can help you save your energy and attention for the most promising candidates.
“Don’t let yourself get in a position where you’re going into interviews hoping that the person is great, because then you’ve left it too late, and now you’re under a lot of pressure to fill that seat,” Athill said.
And there can be a real cost to making a bad match, especially if one of the core leadership has to find a replacement for a new hire that didn’t work out.
“If one person is focused on hiring for a week, that’s a very big distraction. So I would avoid doing that,” Athill said.
One of the largest national home warranty providers encountered a conundrum: how could they keep their audience interested and engaged between annual membership renewals? We aligned content and link strategy, to drive banner performance with staggering improvements in year-over-year traffic and engagement that drove brand awareness for new and existing users.
Insight
A home warranty is purchased or renewed once per year, with the only other touchpoint being service claims. But customer loyalty and market expansion requires brand awareness — and search visibility requires continual traffic and engagement. Our task? Engage existing customers and appeal to prospective audiences year round.
Solution
Our strategy empowered a trusted, authoritative brand position in the minds of its audience, the industry, and to Google’s algorithms. We developed a content strategy with blogs that answer homeowners’ burning questions, inspire them with DIY tips, solve their home maintenance problems, and inform them on home-related topics — all rooted in longtail keyword research. We supercharged this content with backlinks from high-quality sources, utilizing relevant anchor text.
Results
Thanks to its keyword relevancy and backlink-boosted authority, this content ranked for a numerous variety of longtail and traditional search queries that drove traffic to the blog. And users found tons of value, too, staying on the pages longer. In comparing performance from March 2019-March 2020 to the previous year, we drove organic search performance to increase brand engagement and reach.
25% Improvement in blog traffic, driving more users to the brand
27s Additional time on page, with averages rising to 4 minutes, 58 seconds
No matter how well-established a brand is, there may come a time when it needs to reinvent itself. Whether the company is working to keep up with modern sentiments or reach a new target demographic, the process of reinvention should be carefully considered and implemented. Otherwise, you may end up alienating the very customers who built your brand in the first place.
To help businesses that are considering a rebrand, we turned to the experts of Ad Age Collective for their insights. Below, they share nine steps a company should consider when reinventing a well-known brand.
1. Leverage your historical emotional insights.
When brands need to reimagine their future, it is important to understand why customers had an emotional connection to the brand in the past. Leveraging that emotional insight to refresh the branding and marketing around a product in a new light is often where you can start. – Kristen Anna Roeckle, Concentric Health Experience
2. Conduct research and reinvent based on data.
Reinventing a well-established brand doesn’t mean starting from scratch. Be sure to conduct research with your customers to find out what they currently think of your brand. What parts of your brand are still relevant? What parts need to go? What do customers believe you can credibly stand for? Use a fact-based approach to create a refreshed brand that audiences will connect with. – Aaron Hall, Siegel+Gale
3. Involve your existing fans and employees.
Reinvention can be exciting, but for some it means changing the brand they have come to know and love. Avid fans and employees should be considered in any reinvention plan. How do you ensure continuity and inclusion for this passionate base? Involve them early and bring them along for the ride. This will ensure they are not left behind and remain ambassadors for the new brand. – Maggie O’Neill, Peppercomm
4. Expand the audience, but don’t alienate the core.
We are frequently tasked with repositioning a well-established brand to reach a younger demographic. An important step in this process is to consider options for a reinvention that avoid alienating the existing core consumer. For a brand that has established equity, new strategies should expand brand relevance to a younger audience, not leave long-time brand fans behind. – Issa Sawabini, Fuse
5. Test your strategies first.
When reinventing your brand, it’s vital to test the changes you’re going to make. Make sure that you do your research and test your new brand image with a small group of your core audience. Continuous testing and getting feedback will ensure that you don’t alienate your core audience. It will also help you make changes in the right direction. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
6. Go back to your ‘why.’
Brands often need to reinvent themselves because they either lost their way or their momentum fizzled. They probably lost their way because they lost their “why.” Or, they lost their momentum because they lost their drive. If companies can retrace their steps to remember why they started the business in the first place, they can inspire new direction or refill the tank with passion. – Reid Carr, Red Door Interactive
7. Make sure you have a clear path to engage new customers at scale.
Ask 20 adults to rewrite history or direct a do-over and what’s the response? No one chooses a gradual approach. Huge success scenarios with visions of landmark breakthroughs are voiced. This also applies to brands reinventing. Pursue outsized results by driving trials with solely new prospects. Proceed only if a path to engage new customers at scale is evident. If not, why reinvent? – Sean Cunningham, VAB
8. Stay true to the core brand.
Staying true to the core elements of a brand that have stood the test of time with the consumer should not be undervalued. A brand can do a face-lift by updating color scheme, images, messages and even refocus themes, but this should not deter dramatically from its brand equity and the value it spent building over time. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne Advertising
9. Have fun and give the keys to your new brand ambassadors.
Classic brands like Converse and MINI really set the pace in terms of giving the keys to the brand to their customers. They didn’t necessarily need to reinvent themselves. But by allowing their customers to collaborate and use digital tools to “design their own Chucks” or “dream cars,” they got crucial brand insights while appealing to modern shoppers. What they did is now common. – Lana McGilvray, Purpose Worldwide
While many of the countries around the world who are currently in coronavirus lockdown, try to figure out the right balance between fighting the spread of this deadly virus and the right time, and approach, to restart their economic engines, professionals in brand communications are faced with a conundrum of their own.
We should feel their frustration because theirs, too, is a choice they must make between pushing product and service, on one hand, and communicating the work their brands are doing, ‘playing their part’ – with no obvious profit motive (wink wink!) – to help curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Must they remain in hibernation – not seen nor heard (in case they might say the wrong things that might come back to haunt them) – until the coronavirus has passed and the dust settled? Must they go for a tandem of pushing product and service in some messages, and their brand’s community outreach initiatives in others? Must they overlay their communication with messages demonstrating their brand’s social conscience? Must they simply ditch all pure brand communications during this time and focus on ‘playing their part’ and demonstrating the extent of their brand’s corporate citizenship, and heart, with the hope that that is the approach that will ensure memories of their brand’s social conscience remain top of mind when the dust has settled?
And, for those who are in a hurry to start pure brand communication campaigns, when will the right time be for this? Just before the lifting of the lockdown, or just after? This is assuming, of course, that brand communicators are also taking this time to assess and understand the possible ramifications of this lockdown, and the ‘new economy’ currently being shaped right before our eyes, on their old ways of communicating their brands’ messages.
By the look of things, it will no longer be entirely ‘business as usual’. The lockdown is helping many consumers around the world open their eyes to goods and services they really do not need that they had been conditioned over time – often thanks to great, even invasive and manipulative, marketing messages – to believe they needed.
Are brand communicators thinking about all of this and working hard, behind-the-scenes, on new approaches to authentic, less manipulative, multimedia brand communications with a heightened social conscience and a reloaded online focus?
What smart brands are doing during lockdown
All around the world, smart corporate (and person) brands have found impactful ways to remain in the minds of their customers, followers, and markets by leveraging their good names without pushing traditional offerings.
Now, Giorgio Armani makes aprons for doctors; Gucci designs face marks; Ferrari develops much-needed medical respirators; several airlines have turned their planes into cargo transporters for Protective Personal Equipment (PPE) and other emergency supplies; DHL is using its planes to provide the same kind of assistance.
A number of celebrities (e.g. Dolly Parton, Trevor Noah, Lupita Nyong’o and many others) have joined a program to read bedtime story books to children through an online platform that is being replicated by A-listers around the world, including South Africa. Tattoo artists have given away their gloves and protective gear to healthcare providers; many known and less known artists have taken to providing free online entertainment to help keep the spirits high and to underline the importance of community and social connections in the face of forced physical distancing. Free, globally accessible online libraries have sprung up to also mitigate growing levels of boredom and difficult access to books in some communities.
The list of efforts by private individuals who have come up with innovative ways to help elderly neighbours, or those with other health problems, is growing every passing day. Even trained dogs and drones are being used to deliver groceries and medical supplies to people trapped in their homes by age and other forms of infirmities.
Be discerning
With all of this happening – and the whole world is focused on the need to reach out across traditional divides of political, ethnic, religious and geographic frontiers in its battle against a common, invisible, and deadly enemy – it must be hard for brand communicators with one eye on products that are not moving, stuck on shelves and in storage facilities under lockdown, to determine the right moves to make without being seen to be too opportunistic, politically incorrect, or socially insensitive.
The brands mentioned above, those who have turned to manufacturing and supplying Covid-19 related goods and services, as well as providing other forms of community outreach, have got it right on two grounds.
A fine ‘covinundrum’
First, they will remain top of mind, visible, in the minds of their stakeholders during a time when it seems insensitive to be pushing traditional products and service, as well as appearing to be out to draw financial benefit from consumers who seem only concerned with surviving the deadly virus and an uncertain economic future; many of them worried about their battered livelihoods. Secondly, they stand a good chance of being remembered for having been there when the world needed them the most. Their brand equity will certainly come out having been positively boosted, cushioning them with generous levels of consumer goodwill and market standing. They must simply be smart, strategically measured, in how they use these benefits when the lockdowns get lifted and a semblance of normalcy returns, ushering with them the new economy; else they too might find themselves on the backfoot, with good reason.
No doubt, the lockdowns around the world present traditional brand communicators with a fine “covinundrum” to deal with. But only those who would have had their ears on the ground and their eyes on new media consumption patterns during this period – and managed to align their approaches to fast changing consumer preferences and sentiments – will seamlessly integrate the new economy.
It will be a different world when the dust finally settles; and opportunities will be plenty for those who can spot them and use them for shared, long-term gains instead of narrow, short-term profit.
By Solly Moeng
* Solly Moeng is brand reputation management adviser and CEO of strategic corporate communications consultancy DonValley Reputation Managers. Views expressed are his own.
Social media can be pretty intimidating for some people—especially those who tend to shun the spotlight and avoid self-promotion. That being said, there’s no denying that social platforms can and do allow individuals to build personal brands that afford them greater professional opportunities.
Having a robust social media presence is an asset to your long-term career growth. In a survey by recruitment platform Tallo, 87% of Gen Z respondents saw the career significance of online personal branding. These competitive young workers and employees-to-be are making it imperative for candidates of any age to up their personal branding game online.
No matter what career stage you’re in, you can use social media to your advantage to improve your personal brand. Here are three strategies that will help.
1. Look beyond LinkedIn
Most people assume that when it comes to career growth, the only social media platform worth spending time on is LinkedIn. This is a myth. While anyone who knows me has heard me tout LinkedIn as a crucial starting point (with over half a billion users worldwide!) there is real power in supplementing it—as long as your image and messaging remain consistent across all platforms and your goals are tailored to what each one does best. For instance, LinkedIn is indeed essential for delivering your digital first impression and expanding your professional network, but Twitter is ideal for sharing content you’ve published and starting a discussion. Should you have a professional presence on every major social platform? It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
Brian Freeman, CEO and founder of microinfluencer platform Heartbeat, believes it’s a mistake to overlook newer, trendy platforms like TikTok if you want to bulk up your audience. “TikTok makes it easier than any other platform to go viral and gain a new following, then pass that following on to other social media platforms where you have a presence,” he says. “Whether it’s Instagram, Twitch, Twitter, or YouTube, you can go viral on TikTok and gain thousands of new followers on a second platform at the same time.” Most social media users are active on multiple platforms. When someone decides to follow you on one, follow them back—and then follow them on a different app to win their views across social.
2. Publicize your expertise
“Thought leadership” is a term often used in the content marketing world to describe content produced by company executives aiming to position themselves as experts in an industry or topic area. It can take myriad forms, but its goal is always to reinforce the credibility of the brands (personal and corporate) that produce and byline it—and it’s typically quite effective. Good news: It can work for you, too.
While publicists pitch the media, asking journalists to write about their clients, thought leadership lets you become the author of that coverage, not just by publishing your content in traditional outlets but also by publishing it through social media. If you’re an expert at something, let the world know by sharing your knowledge and ideas. Speaking at conferences, serving on boards and interacting with journalists and other influencers in your field of expertise will of course allow you to learn from and teach others, and it will also get you acquainted with people who might be able to help you achieve personal and professional goals. But taking a proactive approach to sharing your expertise on social media shows the world that you’re open to professional interaction and eager to answer questions. Engage in group discussions, provide thoughtful commentary on relevant posts and make an effort to introduce others to helpful resources, and you’ll be surprised by the opportunities that come your way.
3. Advocate for your organization
You’re serious about your career, so you want to be taken seriously—whether that’s at your current company or at the one you aspire to join. Your social accounts, when consistently and professionally branded, provide a platform for your company or college to get some free PR, which can help with both sales and recruiting on their end. Plus, by painting your colleagues and cohorts in a positive light, you’ll cement your image as a team player who cares about your organization’s future. That’s something every employer wants to see.
Doug Wilber, CEO of Gremlin Social, a social media solution for banks, understands the power of social selling (branded content posted on employee accounts). “When employees share their positive work experience on their personal accounts, they become powerful recruiting tools that can draw in potential candidates and increase employee retention,” he says. In turn, employees also benefit from brand advocacy. When you have a credible personal brand online, your words carry more weight with potential customers and other external contacts, meaning you’ll likely have more success in your day-to-day role.
Social media scrolling doesn’t have to be mindless or unproductive. In fact, social platforms give you a way to create and seize opportunities that would have been off-limits just a decade ago. Start with the three strategies above, and you’ll be amazed to see how far your personal brand can reach.
Faced with the complexity of today’s digital landscape, marketers are caught in a vicious cycle of low campaign volume, costly production rounds, endless revisions and missed advertising opportunities.
Why did things become so difficult? It’s a combination of antiquated (and often manual) ways of producing content combined with budget restrictions. Brands need more content than ever but they are struggling to meet demands around volume, scale, speed and high-quality output.
This phenomenon can be thought of as a type of content gap, in this case an internal production delta between the amount of content brands need to market and message to consumers and the resources they possess to produce and scale it — and it’s growing greater by the day. According to a Forrester report commissioned by Celtra, 70 percent of brands are already devoting more time to content creation for their campaigns than they would prefer; and for many the content production gap can’t be solved by merely throwing more money or hours at the problem.
So, what does this gap mean for marketers? How can they bridge it? Below are four common symptoms of the content production gap and how marketing teams can fix it.
1. Content output is too low (and the team needs more capacity)
While digital has given brands unparalleled opportunities to deliver personalized messages across platforms, many marketing teams lack the bandwidth to cover all of the ground those opportunities now represent. As a result, brands are failing to deliver against their media and messaging strategy.
Digital advertising goals are nearly impossible to achieve without tactics that can speed up production. For example, according to the Celtra Data Insights team, reusing assets by templatizing creative, rather than creating all of the variations manually, saves 75–80 percent on production time. By introducing automation and separating content from design, teams can design a strong asset and then scale it across numerous variations.
2. It’s difficult to produce excellent creative in the time available
The average person is served more than 1,700 digital ads per month. A marketing team’s signal drowns in all that noise unless it can generate creative that helps their brands stand out. However, when there’s a scant amount of time for getting campaigns out the door, creative quality almost inevitably takes a hit.
There’s another challenging piece here too: creative consistency. Design, quality and cohesive branding are necessary to maintain this factor across all markets, all the time. Off-brand — or worse, off-putting — content will have an impact on a brand’s bottom line. Conversely, according to a Harvard Business Review report, consistent branding across all platforms increases revenue by up to 23 percent. Similarly, and also from the Harvard Business Review: “A euro invested in a highly creative ad campaign had, on average, nearly double the sales impact of a euro spent on a non-creative campaign.”
When scaling campaigns and content, maintaining true consistency and high-quality creative can be taxing. What can help bridge this part of the content production gap is to look for automated solutions that give teams margins to generate new creative that cuts through noise, all the while controlling for human error, and ensuring that elements like text, style and translations are laddering up. If automation isn’t an option in-house, then the team should look to partnerships that can add technology to the mix.
3. Advertising opportunities are slipping away
Ideally, top-performing marketing teams should take an agile approach where they can test, learn and iterate on creative continuously. In practice though, most are busy just trying to deliver the basics for their media teams and agencies. In those cases, the shortage of content leads to missed opportunities. Marketers end up lacking the capacity to launch campaigns fast enough or try out new concepts.
Again, technology can help, allowing the team to manage the technical side of production easier and faster while granting full visibility onto each campaign asset. When the team isn’t preoccupied with repetitive tasks — when they can cut steps and time spent on feedback rounds, for example, identifying real-time toolsets for editing, commenting and previewing content — they can better focus on inventive and engaging content.
4. Your creative is too generic
According to Marketo, 63 percent of respondents are highly annoyed by the way brands continue to rely on the old-fashioned strategy of repeatedly blasting mass messages. Even when a marketing team is satisfied with content volume and creative quality, it still needs to ensure that its ads and messaging include the level of relevancy that consumers expect.
Most companies are well-aware that this is an area in which they can always seek improvement. According to the Forrester study that Celtra commissioned, 61 percent of organizations reported that improving creative relevancy is their organization’s digital advertising creative goal over the next year. However, the more personalization marketing teams add, the more variations those advertisers will need to create to keep up with that strategy.
Marketers are shifting their focus from improving longer-standing content production methods towards developing new ones entirely. New technology doesn’t just facilitate digital advertising; it establishes a new process overall, one that offers unparalleled production speed. Again, adding technology and strong tech partnerships into these efforts means opening wider margins for creativity and context-rich tactics. Software and platforms have become primary tools that help marketers bridge their content production gaps, empowering them to deliver at the speed of media.
Video marketing statistics are super important when planning your marketing strategy.
There is a ton of data available online, but not all of it is up to date. And being “up to date” is very important in the fast-changing world of digital marketing.
We gathered the most recent data we could find about video content and you can find it all below.
We’re almost halfway through the year. It hasn’t panned out the way we thought. But, we can still make it work.
Facing a lockdown, many of us have realized the importance of video content. Its power not only to entertain but also to unite and educate has shown that video content in its various forms is the future of online marketing.
Luckily for us, I did not see any decrease in the demand for our video editing services, so that’s one thing to be happy about.
If you haven’t done before, now is the right time to invest in video marketing. For those who are already using video content; it’s time to redouble your efforts.
Are you in two minds? Unsure whether to invest in video marketing?
Today, we share important video marketing statistics that’ll show investing in video content will prove to be the best decision you’ll make in 2020, or, the second-best after social distancing.
We’ll highlight the popularity of video content among marketers and consumers. Moreover, we’ll look at the predictions and plans that the brands, businesses, and video marketers have for this type of content. Finally, draw attention to social media and video channels that are doing well and those that have huge potential going forward.
This is the only resource you need to stay up-to-date and stay on top of the video marketing game.
Why is Video Marketing Important?
People are leaning towards online video content more than ever before. The numbers are there for everyone to see:
According to Cisco, soon 82% of all web traffic will move towards video content.
In 2021, an average person will spend as much as 100 minutes of his/her everyday life watching videos online.
Users are twice as likely to share videos compared to other content types.
54% of people want to see more video content in 2020.
In the United States, 56% of the young ones (8 to 12-year-olds) and 66% of the teens (13 to 19-year-olds) view videos online every day.
Bottom Line: In 2019, people spent 84 minutes a day watching online videos. The data shows, we can expect a 19% increase in time spent on videos in just 2 years.
The Head of Forecasting at Zenith, Jonathan Barnard, agrees that online video consumption has rapidly increased. Users now spend on online videos more than half of the time that they normally devote to regular television programs.
According to him, the boost in viewership has increased the demand for video marketers.
The demand for advertisers and the increase in expenditure shows that at present video marketing is the fast-growing digital channel.
Video Marketing and Return of Interest (ROI)
Video marketers seem to be real gung-ho about including video in their marketing plan for 2020.
But, is it really worth spending time, money, and effort? The following statistics seem to suggest that it is.
89% of marketers say using video content increases their ROI.
87% of all marketers say using video content has helped drive traffic to their website.
83% of all marketers feel using videos improves lead generation.
80% of marketers feel video content has increased their sales.
Bottom Line: The majority of video marketers are obsessed with videos for a reason.
No one can deny the benefits of video content in promoting and marketing brands and businesses.
For example, SAP received millions of impressions after their video marketing campaign.
Further, a marketing campaign with heavy video content helped Tiger Fitness achieve a 60% repeat customer rate, which is 3x times the industry average.
Video Marketing: Who Is Using It?
Let’s not assume anything. It’s best to start from scratch. How widespread is video marketing? Who is using it and their plans for the future?
As high as 92% of all marketers agree that video content is a vital part of their marketing strategy.
66% of B2C marketers have used video content in their marketing strategy.
71% of B2B marketers have used video content in their marketing strategy.
99% of marketers that are already using video marketing will continue to do so in 2020.
59% of marketers who did not use video marketing in 2019, said they’ll make it part of their marketing strategy in 2020.
95% of marketers say they will maintain or even increase the spending on video marketing.
Bottom Line: In 2020 and beyond, two-thirds of marketers are planning to use video marketing.
You don’t want to miss out on this opportunity. But, bear in mind, the competition for user attention is going to be fierce.
To beat the competition, make sure you learn your customer behavior and their decision-making process.
How Does Video Content Help Brands and Businesses?
Video Marketing Promotes Brand Awareness
Compared to other marketing channels, video content is more popular, engaging, and memorable, which is why it’s the right tool to promote brand awareness.
Here are the numbers to back that up.
People will spend 88% more time on a website with video content.
72% of consumers prefer video to text content while researching a product or service.
53% of people engage with a brand after watching one of their videos on social media.
68% of consumers prefer to engage with brands that use video.
96% of people view explainer video to understand a product or service.
Bottom Line: The first and perhaps the most important influencer that drives the sales process is none other than Brand Awareness.
It isn’t enough that the customers know your name. Customers also want to know the values you stand for.
No other content type, except videos, give businesses the opportunity and freedom to get creative and develop quality content that best explains their vision and mission to the customers.
Video Marketing Helps Generate Leads
From the above statistics, we know that video marketing promotes brand awareness. Does it also generate leads? Yes, here are the key numbers you should know:
81% of video marketers state videos help generate leads.
84% of video marketers state videos boost traffic to their website.
80% of video marketers say that videos increased the time visitors spend on the website.
41% of video marketers say the use of videos has led to lesser support calls.
Bottom Line: Videos, even the short ones, give you the opening needed to move the customers along the sales funnel. For example, a short 30-second introduction video from Campaign Monitor explains the benefits of signing up with them.
How do marketers use such videos for lead generation?
Marketers encourage customers to use the link provided in the video description to visit an e-mail opt-in landing page.
Marketers send a thank you message to viewers who have shared, reacted, or commented on the video. Along with the ‘Thank You’ message, they encourage viewers to subscribe to their newsletter.
Video Marketing Boosts Sales
All the effort a marketer makes is directly or indirectly aimed at driving sales. And, as the stats show, video marketing helps generate sales.
84% of consumers have made up their mind to purchase a product or service after viewing a brand’s video.
74% of consumers have made up their mind to download or buy an app or software after viewing a video.
At least 55% of people engaged in shopping watch videos while in the store.
Bottom Line: Brands believe that interacting and connecting with their customers will boost trust and pave way for more sales.
A good example, Adobe found that people who watch demo videos of their products are 1.8x times more likely to buy, than those who don’t.
What Does the Video Marketing Statistics Say about Customer Behavior and Preferences?
Only good, creative, and personalized content resonates with the customers.
Millions of videos and billions of hours of content are added to the online pool every day. You need to stand out from the crowd.
For that, video marketers need to provide content that’s personalized and tailored to their individual tastes, needs, and preferences.
Why Personalized Video Is the New Mantra in Video Marketing?
60% of all marketers say the personalization of video content will improve the quality of the leads.
48% of people want videos to reflect the products or services they are interested in.
72% of people say they will only show interest in personalized video content.
43% of consumers want to decide what videos they want to watch and when to watch.
Personalized content allows video marketers to provide highly targeted solutions to the user’s needs.
It also helps develop a customer-brand relationship and allows customers to arrive at buying decisions faster.
By giving personalized content, brands become more memorable and trustworthy.
90% of customers prefer to purchase from brands and businesses that are memorable and trustworthy.
What Does that the Statistics Say about Video Length?
Longer videos, those that are more than 15 minutes garner 50% of all video engagements.
Only 8% of all marketing videos are 15 minutes or longer.
In the case of business videos, 68% of people will watch the whole video if its length is 1 minute or less.
Nearly 80% of all marketing videos produced are under 5 minutes.
Bottom Line: The old belief that the attention span of people is shrinking will be put to test in the coming years.
The statistics show that marketers prefer to use shorter videos. There are different theories on this subject.
Some feel that shorter videos fail to create emotional connections with customers.
In contrast, there are many who root for shorter videos because they are easily digestible and more suitable for social media.
So, video marketers need to consider several factors like the nature of the business, type of content, marketing platform, etc. before deciding the length of the video.
What Type of Video Content do Customers Want to See?
86% of consumers would want brands to use more videos in 2020, and out of these, 36% prefer explainer videos and 14% want more product demonstrations.
39% of consumers want explainer videos on products or services from brands.
Bottom Line: Why is explainer video so effective? Interestingly, there is a scientific explanation for their success.
Explainer videos use the visual and audio stimulus to explain a product, service, or concept in a simple and easily comprehensible way.
The use of both communication mediums boosts message retention in the customers.
The first and foremost requirement to make an excellent explainer video is the script.
A well-written script will greatly increase the chances of the explainer video going viral.
Plus, apart from brand awareness, an explainer video is a great way to generate leads and increase sales.
What Do the Statistics Say about Video Orientation and Features?
39% of the marketers now go for square or vertical videos as compared to horizontal videos.
82% of consumers are put off by videos that are not optimized to their preferred orientation.
75% of consumers say they didn’t purchase a product due to annoying video voiceover.
83% of consumers prefer chatty and informal tone in the videos.
92% of people want to view video content with the sound off.
50% of people say that captions for videos are a must because they watch without sound.
According to Verizon, 55% of consumers want captions for tips videos, 53% want captions for food and 52% want captions for news videos.
Bottom Line: Most social media platforms have adopted square or vertical video orientation.
The reason is simple, 94% of the users hold their mobile vertically and 57% of all video views are on a hand-held device.
Next to the script and quality of the video, the tone and voice style are the most important factors that determine the success of a video. This is clearly reflected in the video marketing statistics.
Even if you have a great video in your hands, with an excellent script and casual, informal, and friendly tone, there is always a way to make it better.
One of the best video tips for marketers is to add captions. Customers like captions because it improves accessibility, boost SEO, and help the audience better understand the content.
What Other Video Marketing Tactics have Gained Traction among Customers and Marketers?
According to Magnifyre, the viewership of 360-degree video was 29% higher than regular video.
The Click-through Rate (CTR) of a 360-degree video was 4.51%, whereas the CTR of the regular video was only 0.56%.
15% of all marketers plan to use 360-degree videos for marketing in 2020.
57% of all marketers are using live videos; of which, nearly 34% of marketers use Facebook Live and 13% use Instagram Live feature.
79% of consumers feel live videos make the content more authentic and 63% feel live videos add a human touch to marketing.
21% of marketers say they’ll use interactive video in 2020.
12% of marketers say they’ll use Virtual Reality (VR) for video marketing in 2020.
Bottom Line: Use of 360-degree, Virtual Reality, and Live videos are a great way to increase viewer count, engage with customers and make them stay longer, retain their attention, develop a relationship, and, most importantly, offer them a unique experience.
These new marketing techniques also help the brand stand out from the crowd.
The Importance of Having Videos on Social Media Platforms
Most social media networks, except YouTube, started out as text-rich networks.
Lately, video content has gate-crashed their party. There has been an explosion of video content on almost all social networks.
As you’ll find out soon, after reading the statistics which are to follow, the numbers are huge.
Social Media is indispensable for video marketing because that’s where a large percentage of the online population spends their time every day.
Besides, videos and social media are good examples of a mutualistic relationship.
58% of people visit the social media page of a brand before accessing the brand’s website.
60% of users who bought a product learn about the brand from social media.
Compared to last year, 24% of users are buying a product or service because of ads on social media platforms.
YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are the top three purchase-driving social media platforms.
Why should you Use YouTube for Video Marketing?
Each day, 1.5 billion people watch 1 billion hours of video on YouTube
65% of senior executives access the website after watching a related YouTube video.
85% of all marketers have used YouTube in 2019 for video marketing.
83% of marketers feel YouTube has boosted their marketing efforts.
On YouTube, there has been a 70% increase in users who search for ‘How-to’ videos.
In the past two years alone, the number of people viewing shopping-related video content on YouTube has increased 5 times.
In a week, compared to all cable TV networks, YouTube reaches more people in the 18 to 49-year-old age group.
Bottom Line: YouTube is still the best platform for video marketing. In addition, YouTube also helps brands improve SEO, gain authority, and build trust. Although YouTube is the natural home of the video content, there are many ways to market videos without YouTube. Here are other social media platforms for videos.
Why Use Videos on Facebook?
On average, nearly 8 billion videos are viewed on Facebook every day.
79% of marketers say they use Facebook for video marketing and 85% of them feel the move has been successful.
75 million people use the Facebook Video platform on a daily bases.
60% of the users don’t go beyond the two-minute mark to watch a video.
65% of people say they skip the video if the first ten seconds doesn’t interest them.
81% of businesses say they like to use the social media platform (Facebook) for their video marketing.
Bottom Line: Let’s start with the obvious reason. At any given time, millions of people around the world use Facebook. If you want your brand to be right under the noses of your target audience, then Facebook is the platform to use. Plus, having your videos on Facebook increases their chance of going viral.
What Do the Statistics Say about Using Videos on Instagram?
Instagram has nearly 800 million active monthly users.
72% of people buy a product after viewing a video on Instagram.
75% of people take action after watching a brand video on Instagram.
65% of ad impressions on the platform come from video content.
Bottom Line: Research shows that customers have expressed interest in knowing a brand after watching a video on Instagram Stories. On top, many brands have seen a spike in sales thanks to the video content on the platform.
Why Use LinkedIn for Video Marketing?
51% of all marketers said they use LinkedIn for video marketing.
87% of video marketers who used LinkedIn say the platform proved to be a successful channel for video marketing in 2019.
Videos on the company page produce 5 times more engagement in comparison to other content types.
Bottom Line: LinkedIn is a platform for professionals, entrepreneurs, and businesses. The platform was created for building relationships between these three categories of people. As you see in the stats, LinkedIn is a great place to connect with others, present your brand, tell your story, and spread awareness about your product, service, or brand. Moreover, brands can boost their popularity and trustworthiness by displaying customer testimonials on their LinkedIn business page.
How Does Twitter Help in Video Marketing?
Although Twitter is a text-based platform, 82% of people say they mainly view videos on the platform.
72% of marketers use Twitter for video marketing and 84% say this strategy is working for them.
90% of all videos on Twitter are watched using hand-held devices.
45% of people using Twitter want more celebrity videos.
Bottom Line: Twitter can be used to share small snippets or teasers of larger videos. Twitter videos are ideal for generating hype and interest in a product or business.
Should You Be Using Snapchat for Video Marketing?
In 2019, only 11% of the video marketers have used Snapchat and less than 50% of them have benefited from using the platform.
10 billion videos are watched on Snapchat every day.
On average, 25 minutes of video content is consumed daily on Snapchat.
Bottom Line: Video marketers haven’t really gravitated towards this platform because Snapchat accepts videos that are only 10 seconds long. Hence, regular videos won’t fit in this platform.
What Do the Statistics Say About Other Platforms?
TikTok remains underused with only 10% of all video marketers using the platform and 66% of them tasting success.
15% of all marketers say they’ll use TikTok for video marketing in 2020.
79% of all marketers that have used video channels say they have benefited from the move.
Final Thoughts
Dice and slice, and analyze these video marketing statistics in every possible way. All the hard facts and figures needed to frame a video marketing strategy for 2020 and beyond is here.
If you want to reach the top of the marketing game or stay up there, it isn’t enough to simply create videos. You need to know ‘what type of videos to create?’, ‘when to create?’, ‘whom to target?’, ‘where to use?’, ‘when to use?’ Etc. The answers to all your queries are in these statistics.
Cristian Stanciu is a freelance video editor, owner and post-production coordinator of Veedyou Media – a company offering video
editing services to videographers, marketing agencies, video production
studios or brands all over the globe. I can catch up with him on hisblog or onLinkedIn.
These first-rate project portfolio management tools can help your organization excel.
A portfolio manager’s job is stressful–you have to monitor changing strategic goals and oversee and manage an entire project portfolio. Success hinges on sound leadership, a dedicated team, and a robust project portfolio management (PPM) solution. These top-rated cloud-based PPM tools can help you make smart decisions, achieve ROI, and boost your team’s performance.
These cloud PPM solutions appear in Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Project and Portfolio Management, and each one offers customizable portfolio dashboards and reporting capabilities, and is accessible from mobile devices.
Changepoint is a user-focused suite of solutions that helps perfectly align company-wide initiatives with your high-level strategy. It helps your leadership team make informed and innovative business decisions that maximize resource utilization, improve financial control, and align outcomes and revenue to corporate goals. Contact Changepoint for pricing.
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Clarizen is a PPM solution that helps accelerate your team’s performance by ensuring your workforce is connected and engaged, regardless of where they are across the enterprise. It focuses on establishing a clear line of sight across your organization’s entire portfolio. Clarizen offers an Enterprise and Unlimited edition; for pricing details, contact Clarizen.
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KeyedIn Projects is focused on transforming portfolio visibility and alignment to maximize the return on your investment. Based on your resource capability and financial constraints, KeyedIn helps you to easily select and prioritize projects across the entire organization. Contact KeyedIn Projects for pricing.
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Planview helps you focus on the strategic outcomes that have meaning and empower your teams to perform at their best. It connects strategy to delivery, with an end-to-end enterprise portfolio management and work management solution. Planview offers a professional and enterprise pricing model; for pricing details, contact Planview.
Key features of Planview include:
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WorkOtter is a PPM solution focused on helping you expediently configure and adjust your project workflows to meet your entire portfolio needs. It was created for development and IT organizations interested in maximizing their potential by removing chaos and gridlock. WorkOtter offers three plans that start at $10 per month, Time/Status, Team, and Manager.
Key features of WorkOtter include:
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How many times have you been asked to fill in an online survey? Or answer ‘a quick question’ after buying something online? It’s a lot right? That’s because customer experience data is more crucial than ever, in the eyes of growing businesses.
Companies that have seen their revenues grow over the last year collected far more customer experience (CX) data than non-growth companies, according to a new survey conducted by Gartner.
The results of the survey showed that almost 80% of growth businesses use customer surveys to collect CX data, while only 58% of non-growth organisations do the same.
“There is a clear trend among growing companies to actively collect CX data using a wide variety of tools such as surveys, usability testing, focus groups and real-time analytics,” said Jessica Ekholm, research vice president at Gartner.
“This is what we call the outside-in approach — the idea that customer value creation, customer orientation and CX will drive long-term business success.”
Data has been a hot topic in the world of tech for some time, with increasing pressure on giants like Facebook and Amazon to be responsible with users’ data. CX data is slightly different, being sourced mainly via surveys, rather than given to a company when you sign up for their service.
However, both sorts of data are contributing to the huge amounts of information that ‘big tech’ collects from users.
A Guardian report shone more light on this as long ago as 2017. A reporter requested all the data that dating app, Tinder, had collected on her and received 800 pages in response. It’s a figure that puts the importance of data – and the popularity of collecting it – into sharp perspective.
Gartner’s latest findings reinforce the fact that businesses believe your data is crucial to growth. In this case, CX data can offer real insight into what customers want from products and services. However, as Gartner notes – and as internet users well know – the sheer amount of ‘quick questions’ thrown at us online can easily lead to survey fatigue, which reduces the accuracy and quality of responses.
“Despite their widespread use, customer surveys have some flaws that limit their ability to collect quality CX data,” said Ekholm. “Recognizing this, growth companies are beginning to use near- or real-time analytics, to complement or build upon the data collected from surveys.”
“Companies that leverage AI and near- and real-time analytics applications to collect customer data will stand out as CX leaders in the next five to 10 years.”
Between survey fatigue, data breach stories and the slightly scary amount of data that companies hold on their customers, it’s easy to see why consumers aren’t always excited about the subject. However, companies are more enthusiastic than ever to collect consumer data and we shouldn’t expect that to change any time soon.
Feature Image Credit: (Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)
George recently joined the Trusted Reviews team after graduating with an MA in Magazine Journalism from The University of Sheffield. He was previously Tech Editor for The National Student and won ‘BBC…
Yet there are growing concerns over what it does with users’ data. You may think you are working from the privacy of your own home, but the software is probably sharing a lot more information about you than you realise. Zoom has an attention-tracking feature, for example, which notifies the host of some video calls if participants click away to look at something else. The company has actively promoted this feature to educators, explaining it’s a good way to monitor which of your students is slacking off.
In any article about privacy violations, it is pretty much a given that Facebook will be mentioned. This is no exception. Recent analysis by Vice found that Zoom’s iOS app was sending analytics data to Facebook, even when the user did not have a Facebook account and even though this was not addressed in Zoom’s privacy policy. This data included things such as the user’s location and the device’s advertiser identifier information, a unique ID that lets companies send you targeted ads. On Friday, Zoom issued a statement saying “whoops!’” and announcing it had updated its software to stop sending iOS data to Facebook.
I am not saying that you should boycott Zoom and communicate via carrier pigeon. However, as we are forced to live even more of our lives online, let’s not stop holding tech companies to account. Let’s not stop trying to safeguard our right to privacy. Our civil liberties are most fragile during times of crisis. Governments around the world are already using this pandemic to bolster the surveillance state. If we don’t stay vigilant, our privacy will be lost before you can say “Zoom”.
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