For marketing agencies, is online video the future focus of their content marketing strategies?

January 30, 2016January 31, 2016Jack Yallop

With the cost of video production reducing, video is taking content marketing by storm with the demand for online videos outpacing the budgets required. According to Cisco, they predict globally in 2019, consumer internet video traffic will be 80% of all consumer internet traffic, up from 64% in 2014 (Cisco, 2015). This shows the huge potential this can provide organisations, but will this trend result in online video being the main focus for agencies in content marketing strategies? And should the marketing agencies be adopting these strategies for themselves? And how should videos be approached?

Will online video be the main focus for agencies in content marketing strategies?

The growth of video online is staggering, they are making it into every interaction we’re making online with the likes of live video feeds on Twitter with Meerkat and other methods on Facebook and Instagram (Spiceworks, 2016). According to Forbes (2015), more than 80% of senior executives watch more video than they did a year ago, and three quarters of executives are watching work-related videos every week, and given the choice, 59% of executives would rather watch a video than read an article. This shows that video will become essential in content marketing strategies, as video is perfect for reaching and informing potential and current clients.

Videos increase open rates and click-through rates, resulting in an increased brand awareness with video ads having an average click-through rate (CTR) of 1.84%, the highest click-through rate of all digital ad formats (Hoelzel, 2014). This shows that companies will be looking at video for their own campaigns, with agencies having to make sure they have the capabilities to respond to these requests, especially as Hoelzel (2014) suggests, video ad revenue will increase at a three-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.5% through 2016. Video marketing is so popular HighQ named 2015 the year of video marketing with 78% of people watching videos online every week, and 55% of people watching videos online every day (HighQ, 2015), showing the importance of video in content marketing. With these statistics, and HighQ stating video marketing is on the rise, client requests to agencies could be very much focused around video. For example, an email campaign having a link to a video created. This trend is only set to continue as Cisco suggest with consumer internet traffic on the rise.

Should marketing agencies be adopting these strategies for themselves?

With so many marketing agencies, it is essential to get your name out there. Online video would be a successful way for agencies to spread-the-word of their brand and increase their client base. When it comes to potential reach, video is unrivalled. YouTube has over a billion users with hundreds of millions of hours of YouTube videos generating billions of views, with the number of hours people spend watching videos on YouTube increasing by 60% y/y (YouTube, 2016), this is the fastest growth they have seen in 2 years, showing how online video is increasing in popularity, and marketing agencies need to take this into consideration.

With the increased hours of videos watched, and as suggested above, more senior executives are watching more video than they did before, as these are a main target audience for agencies in achieving clients, video looks a favourable method to reach these consumers.

People hire an agency to solve problems, and the skills and knowledge of the agency can be demonstrated in online videos. If they can prove they are experts in their field-of-work, clients will trust the agency to solve the problem for them, increasing the client base, and fundamentally, revenue.

So, how should online videos be approached?

Before the video is produced, the target audience must be identified, as Baines, et al, (2010) suggests, all segments must be distinct, accessible, measurable and profitable. The audience the video is intended for must be relevant, with the video being easy to digest, because if not, consumers will move on. According to Kolowich (2012), online videos need to be segmented into three tiers:

Showpiece videos – the splashy pieces that grace the front door of the website
Workhorse videos – these explain your most important product/service offering
Long-tail videos – provide prospects with a much deeper understanding of products/services offered, as well as to answer frequently asked questions

These three types of videos can be used in different content marketing campaigns, depending on the budget available. Agencies can use long-tail videos to answer the questions frequently asked in their area of expertise, to show they have the knowledge to be a worthy agency choice.

Social media must be embraced and not neglected as it needs to be promoted across multiple channels. If you want to fully realise video’s potential, you must make it easy for users to find and share it (Trimble, 2015). Mobile must not be neglected as online video in 2014 accounted for 50% of all mobile traffic (Merchant Marketing Group, 2014), proving to be a huge part of how video is consumed.

Videos must be creative, not only with the video, but the content marketing strategy adopted. Audiences want to be entertained, and to do this, creativity is vital in getting the public’s attention. For a marketing agency producing a video, putting the personality that drives the business at the centre, people will become excited about your business (Jefferson, 2015), increasing leads.

So, the answer to the question ‘For marketing agencies, is online video the future focus of their content marketing strategies?’ is YES!!!!

Want to read more, you may find the following of interest…

Online Video Advertising Is Growing Many Times Faster Than TV, Search, And Most Other Digital Ad Markets

Why online video is the future of content marketing

3 ways small businesses can use video marketing

References

Baines, P., Fill, C., and Page, K. (2010) Marketing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Print.

Cisco, (2015) Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2014-2019 White Paper. Available at: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/ip-ngn-ip-next-generation-network/white_paper_c11-481360.html [Accessed: 30 Jan 2016].

Forbes, (2015) Forbes Insights. Available at: images.forbes.com/forbesinsights/StudyPDFs/Video_in_the_CSuite.pdf [Accessed: 30 Jan 2016].

HighQ, (2015) 2015: The year of video marketing. Available at: https://highq.com/2015-year-of-video-marketing/ [Accessed: 30 Jan 2016].

Hoelzel, M. (2016) Online Video Advertising Is Growing Many Times Faster Than TV, Search, And Most Other Digital Ad Markets. Techinsider.com. Available at: http://www.techinsider.io/digital-video-advertising-growth-trends-2014-5 [Accessed: 30 Jan 2016].

Jefferson, B. (2015) 3 ways small businesses can use video marketing. mashable.com. Available at: http://mashable.com/2015/04/02/video-marketing-small-business/#AdA9w7Uuvuqt [Accessed: 30 Jan 2016)

Kolowich, M. (2012) 3 simple strategies to tame your video content budget. contentmarketinginstitute.com. Available at: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/01/reduce-your-video-content-budget/ [Accessed: 30 Jan 2016)

Merchant Marketing Group, (2014). Merchant’s 2015 Digital Marketing Predictions. merchantmarketinggroup.com. Available at: http://merchantmarketinggroup.com/news/merchants-2015-digital-marketing-predictions/ [Accessed: 30 Jan 2016].

Spiceworks, (2016) The Rise of Video Marketing. Spiceworks.com. Available at: http://www.spiceworks.com/marketing/rise-video-marketing/ [Accessed: 30 Jan 2016].

Trimble, C. (2015) Why online video is the future of content marketing. theguardian.com. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2014/jan/14/video-content-marketing-media-online [Accessed: 30 Jan 2016].

YouTube, (2016) Statistics. Youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/en-GB/statistics.html [Accessed: 30 Jan 2016].

What is more important in enhancing the credibility of a marketing agency, operating a blog or using other forms of social media?

January 25, 2016January 30, 2016Jack Yallop

How does an organisation broaden its horizons and reach to their customers? How should you communicate content? With around 45% of the world population having an internet connection today (in 1995, it was less than 1%) (Internet Live Stats, 2016), blogging and social media are great ways in reaching out to the customer, but which one should take centre stage?

This topic has popped up from my company background on April Six who do not run a blog, and are far behind their competitors in terms of following on social media. A blogging and social media campaign could be ideal to improve an agency like April Six’s credibility in the marketing world. But which one should marketing agencies focus on. To understand this, we need to know the difference between blogs and social media:

Blogging creates content that lives on your website. Social media engages with people about content (Gussif, 2014).

Benefits of blogging over social media

In-depth blog posts can help potential clients solve their problems, which cannot be achieved through social media posts that tend to be shorter and less descriptive (Scheidies, 2013). As a client see’s that you know how to solve the problem, showing expertise, they may turn to you, as they trust and respect you as an expert in the field. If they are looking for that problem to be solved further than just reading a blog post, then blogging turns these into leads, increasing the potential revenue coming in. Over time, a large network will be established as people will be viewing the blog as ‘more than an ordinary blog’.

The best blogs answer common questions that their customers have. If these questions are constantly answered through blogs, it’ll increase the credibility of the organisation. This is a very handy for marketing agencies offering a service.

SEO is so important with marketing agency’s websites, especially as there are more than 25,000 agencies in the UK alone (Marketing Quotes, 2016). Search engines, like Google, want to deliver the most helpful results to the searcher. When you write in-depth blogs, Google takes note as each high-quality blog provides an opportunity to generate traffic from searches. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter do not have these in-depth analysis posts, resulting in them not improving your SEO as much as blogs.

Blogging helps generate inbound links, with social media not being as effective. This is effective in SEO and without a blog, it can be difficult to attract authoritative links to your business website. Blogging generates inbound links, as others may cite the blog in their own (DeMers, 2015). For SEO, this is so beneficial as it generates referral traffic to the marketing agencies website.

For a further understanding, Jayson DeMers shows the major benefits of blogging.

Benefits of social media over blogging

Social network popularity is only growing. The likes of Facebook and Twitter are free to start a company page, with Facebook being the most popular social media platform. Social Media allows messages to be targeted to specific groups, which is not as achievable with blogging. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter allow geo-targeting and have tools that allow communications to your audience with the correct content. For example, with Hootsuite (a social media management system for brand management) you can target by location, language, age, gender, relationship status, interested in, and education on Facebook, and Country on Twitter. This niche targeting allows messages to be tailored to a specific audience.

The speed of reach and feedback with social networks like Facebook and Twitter is staggering. If you want to spread the word of a story, idea or question, it is must faster than blogging. While you may get similar feedback from a blog, the likes of Twitter is much faster, sometimes making decision making faster, which is vital in a fast paced agency.

Blogging can be very time consuming, and being in a marketing agency, the speed and churn of work is rapid, making it hard to fit in the time to blog. This is a huge benefit of social media sites that allow fast and quick statuses to be sent, resulting in no planning or editorial control needed. This makes communicating with customers and increasing the brands awareness easier.

For a further understanding of the benefits of social media, Jayson DeMers looks at ‘The Top 10 Benefits Of Social Media Marketing’

Which steals the limelight?

Both social media networks and blogging have their advantages and disadvantages. The main question is, which one should a marketing agency use to increase their credibility? The answer is both.

They both serve unique purposes with blogging being incredibly useful when marketing content, and social media being excellent in gaining an audience, but is difficult to publish informative well-written posts. An effective way to increase the credibility of a marketing agency is to use both. An effective strategy would use your blog to communicate well-written pieces showing that you have knowledge in the marketing world, and then use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to gain a following, directing them via links and advertisements to the blog. Blogs should contain more in-depth content, whereas social media posts should touch on it. Rational choice theory is based on how actions are rational in character, and people calculate the risks and benefits before making decisions (Eriksson, 2011). This theory shows that by creating a following, and providing relevant and informative content through blogging and social media, the credibility of the agency will increase as they will be perceived to have knowledge in their area of work.

The blog should be hosted on the company’s website as this will increase the traffic to the site, helping improve the SEO. They complement each other. It’s difficult to maintain an active social media presence without access to high-quality content, which is provided from blogs. Sharing others content on social media is good, but you want to be directing the reader to your own website. As you share your blog on social media, you increase traffic to your website.

The content is king, social media the courier, and a company blog the throne (Frassinelli, 2015)

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Month: January 2016

For marketing agencies, is online video the future focus of their content marketing strategies?