By Lakshmi Rebecca, Co-Founder, Red Bangle
Video is the world’s number one form of content that marketers invest in today. The Global Content Marketing Industry Report 2023-2030 (by Research Dive) indicated that as compared to 63% of businesses in 2017, 87% of businesses today use videos in marketing.
With people across the globe consuming vast amounts of video content on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms – videos are not just being used for brand awareness, lead generation and lead conversion, but also for upselling, cross-selling, loyalty building and more – i.e., across brand-consumer touchpoints. Videos are being used beyond marketing communications: in public relations, corpcomm, CSR and even in internal training. Videos are everywhere and viewers want more.
So, why does the world love communicating through videos? We’ve all heard the phrase, “a picture speaks a thousand words”, so it’s that and more. People increasingly prefer gathering information and making purchase decisions in a giffy – videos help them do just that!
The process of video creation starts well before a video script is penned. It begins with a clear marketing strategy, sound consumer research and a great SEO framework. A video can be made for as wide an audience as you like, or as narrow an audience. It can be made for as much as $1 Mn or $500. And when it’s ready, it’s time to get it out in front of the TG on relevant platforms. This means leveraging digital tools to target, promote, measure and analyse a video for ranking, views and interactions in order to ensure that it delivers bang for your buck. Take a look at the graph below to see which type of video delivers the highest marketing ROI today.
A video allows you to sell a data point in interesting layers of conversations, visuals and sounds – all strung together nicely with human emotions. And there’s endless storytelling possibilities. You could make a hundred different films or videos in trying to market a watch and still have a few ideas left in your hat. This content form is an intersection of written ideas, visual ideas, design, space, texture, technology, technique, imagination and emotions.
From an ad that pops up on Amazon Prime and YouTube, to on a website, a shopping app, in your search results, in a news app, and on Instagram – a single video can be adapted to a number of channels and platforms, to be targeted at the same audience wherever they are. Videos can be interactive and personalised too. They can help drive the TG to an app, to a website, to an event in another city or to the nearest store.
Take for example, what Swiggy did with their Bowl Company ads featuring Danish Sait. Not only did Swiggy make 3 films that featured the standup comedian and digital influencer in order to leverage his influence – it also filmed a few video messages from the comedian and used AI to personalise the name at the start of these messages. It then sent out a personalised video message from Danish Sait to every target customer, inviting them to try out a bowl from The Bowl Company.
SLB, a large global manufacturing firm, decided to build an interesting technology platform that would enable faster sales and customer-solutioning. To popularise its efforts and drive adoption across its salesforce – it didn’t just make an explainer video with multiple parts, but also made it an interactive one. In case one was going to be bored by an 8-minute video explainer – problem solved.
An ultra HNI commissioned a couple of lovely documentary and promotional films on his teenage daughter’s social impact work to add gravitas to her Ivy League college applications. An Indian B2B health-tech startup commissioned a study and used the data in a marketing video targeting local government officials. An American organic food startup created a positioning and marketing video to introduce itself to customers, garner pre-orders and kick off revenues. Modiji used videos in a big way in his electoral campaigns – including the use of augmented reality – and he still uses social media videos in a big way for PR. And another Indian wellness startup is using influencer videos on Instagram as its primary marketing tool. Great video marketing examples all around us today.
Whether it’s on Instagram, Facebook, search engines, WhatsApp, YouTube, TV channels, OTT, via mobile apps or other – videos have allowed brands to communicate a myriad of messages in under 60 seconds, 30 seconds and – often enough – 6 seconds too. To get the messaging and the storytelling right in these shortening durations and attention spans takes more effort than one might imagine. A shorter film or video does not mean a shorter turnaround time. In fact, there’s more pressure to prioritise messages and communicate them well in the few words and visuals available.
Like Blaise Pascal once said, “I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”
