​5 ways video marketing can boost your ROI

What is video marketing?

Video marketing is a type of marketing that uses the medium of video to promote, educate, or bring awareness to a product or service. There are multiple formats of video marketing from YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, through to long-form interviews and explainer videos.

Different video formats have different strengths depending on what the goal of your specific campaign is.

For example:

• Brand films are best for increasing brand awareness
• Explainer videos are particularly effective for product launches
• Case study videos are great for building consumer trust

So, regardless of your specific product or service, video marketing will absolutely have its place in your marketing arsenal.

How can video marketing increase your ROI?

Video marketing improves ROI by increasing audience engagement, improving message retention, boosting conversion rates and creating reusable content that can perform across multiple channels.

This guide explains the five biggest ways video contributes to measurable marketing performance, with practical examples for B2B organisations.

1. Video improves customer understanding

Users retain 95% of the information presented in a video, compared to 10% when the same information is conveyed through text-based content. That’s a huge opportunity for educating your audience, solely by changing the format of your marketing content.

But why is this the case? Simply, video is a more engaging, entertaining and digestible form of content when compared to text or static imagery. The combination of visual and aural communication makes your messaging stick. And that’s important if you’d like to teach your audience something new.

Whether about a product, service offering, trend or intelligence, there are almost limitless opportunities for content. You can use your video to share a product demo, to inform your audience about relevant market developments, or to distribute information about your business in a shareable, concise format. It can be about your business, about your wider network, or about your industry.

Because it’s easy to repurpose, as well as being engaging, it’s a huge timesaver too, and one of the core content pillars of thought leadership marketing.

2. Video marketing improves audience engagement

Did you know internet users spend 88% more time on a website that features video?

And you can increase engagement even further by using personalised, interactive video that’s driven by customer data.

Data-driven videos work by applying data from your CRM or social audiences to video templates. These templates can then be automatically adapted based on demographics, such as gender or age. It means you can produce multiple videos targeting specific categories within your consumer data, all through one initial video outline.

There’s also the option to cross-reference video templates with live customer data. For example, if you’re an outdoor furnishing company and it’s unseasonably warm for the time of year, your videos could be enriched with weather data to promote products like barbecues, rather than all-weather log stores.

3. Storytelling is more effective in video

In the same way that people get emotionally invested in a film at the cinema, we’re equally capable of connecting with a well-scripted and strategically-produced marketing video.

Video is a more powerful storytelling medium than a written article or whitepaper, with its combination of visual, auditory and narrative techniques.

In fact, video is one of the strongest mediums to form an emotional connection with your audience. Whether you’re instilling consumer delight with a surprising video, entertaining them through character-building, or even pulling at their heartstrings with a purpose-driven film, you’re building a memorable connection with your customer – and the resulting emotion will drive their behaviour, while building positive brand associations.

This is why you’ll also want to ensure your script is written by a professional. An experienced agency will be able to help you produce a video which conjures positive, lasting emotions – think John Lewis’ festive (and now legendary) ‘Monty the Penguin’ and ‘Bear and the Hare’ campaigns.

4. Video marketing makes your CTA stick

Research has shown viewers are 95% more likely to remember a call-to-action (CTA) after watching a video, than when reading it alone.

Again, we have the multi-sensory nature of film to thank. There’s a greater chance that even a ‘grudge’ purchase could become irresistible when it’s sold through video.

Getting employees to engage in a company shares programme for example, can be a notoriously difficult sell. At P+S, we ensured our ‘YES!’ campaign for cable giants Prysmian Group was accompanied by a promotional film featuring the employees themselves.

The CTA – in short, ‘Say YES and sign up today’ – repeated by Prysmian people, saw their fellow colleagues’ sign-ups increase by a whopping 100%. We call that a triumph.

So, if you’re looking to create a direct-response marketing campaign, this could be your ideal medium for the biggest and quickest return.

5. Video allows you to repurpose content and get added value

Once you have your film ready, it’s easy to adapt and share (or ‘repurpose’) across your entire digital presence: on your website, your YouTube channel, and your social media accounts.

You can alter your video accordingly for different platforms and responses.

85% of people on Facebook watch video without the sound on – so, you might consider adding subtitles or other on-screen text cues to help you relay your film’s message visually. Plus, there’s research to show consumers demonstrate better messaging recall when an advert features same-language subtitles.

Or, maybe you want to create a ‘teaser’ or an advert-length clip. The good news is this is another quick and simple process if done by an expert team of videographers and animators.

The best explainer videos often use this teaser technique to engage their audience in advance of an event or product launch – a little like a movie trailer. This, unsurprisingly, works particularly well across social media channels.

In fact, video content generates 12 times the number of shares on social media as image and text posts – that’s 1,200% more exposure. And you can optimise your video for the particular channel it’s being featured on: whether that’s editing its dimensions and length or adding captions.

So that’s one piece of content, with multiple uses, across multiple channels, with multiplied circulation.

You can supercharge your ROI with video marketing

Using video marketing will result in higher engagement and more versatile content that has a longer-lasting impact (in a shorter period of time), and is more likely to encourage your audience to take the desired action.

Need we say more?

At P+S, we have an in-house team of skilled videographers and animators who work alongside our marketing, strategy and script-writing teams.

We’ve used our video marketing services to promote clients’ offerings, increase brand engagement on their digital and social channels, and educate their customers too.

Get in touch with us today to discuss your video marketing needs.