13 benefits of using video for your business

Betting on video for your business isn’t a matter of ‘do I want to do it or not’ anymore. In fact, it hasn’t been that way for a long time. Gone are the days in which investing in videos was a luxury only a few could afford. Today, creating videos for your brand is a must you can’t overlook anymore.

I know that you might still feel like videos are a little too expensive for your taste. That they take too much time to get right. Or that you truly don’t see why you would need one for your product or service. These are all valid concerns – but all of them can be addressed so you can finally understand the true value of video marketing.

That’s why I’ve compiled not 5 or 7, but 13 reasons why you need to be using videos to promote your company. Let’s dig into them!

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#1. Your audience loves to watch videos

If you were to do a massive poll with every living person on the whole planet and ask all of them how they feel about videos, the vast majority would deafen you by screaming ‘I love videos!’ See, we’re living in the golden age of videos. There wasn’t a time in which accessing them was easier nor were the people so accustomed to watching one after another for entertainment and information hunting.

The Internet and the advance of communication technologies have made it possible for people to watch high-quality videos wherever they are, whenever they want. And given how comfortable, direct, and simple video actually is, people have fully embraced the format.

Don’t believe me? Studies say that consumers would rather watch a video about a company than read about it on a 4:1 ratio. Other research says that video is processed 60,000 times faster than text. See the correlation? People with a modern attention span want things to be simple – video can give it to them. That’s why if you put out videos, you won’t have to convince your audience to watch them: they have been looking for them long enough.

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#2. They help you rank in the second-largest search engine in the world

I’ll come right out of the gate and say it – YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world by a wide margin. Did you see that coming? I bet you didn’t. But if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. If people are watching more and more videos every day, it’s just logical for the biggest video platform to be a place where they search for them.

We know that most people use Google to find out who that guy was that appeared on that episode of the 3rd season of Seinfeld. But what do people search for on YouTube? Apart from the videos from the channels to which they subscribe, people use it to find educational videos, especially how-to videos that teach everything you can imagine. A study shows that searches for how-to videos went up 70% in the last couple of years. Now, don’t tell me you don’t want to be part of the offer that covers that demand…

#3. Videos are good for ALL search engines

The videos you make for your business will go beyond YouTube to have a significant impact on your SEO. Over the last few years, search engines have been focusing on improving their users’ experiences by providing relevant and valuable results. Combine that context with the growing interest in videos and you’ll understand why search engines now consider videos as highly valuable content.

That’s the reason why you’ll see videos peppered through your Google search results (and Bing and Yahoo’s too). Now, how can you get your company’s video in there? Though search engines don’t disclose how their algorithms work, we’re pretty sure that having videos embedded on your site will help you with that. In fact, a study says you’re 53 times more likely to show up in the top Google results if you have a video on your site.
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How can that be? Well, videos increase your average visit time, which is an important ranking factor for search engines. Also important – view counts and the number of times your video got shared. Videos for businesses are essential for SEO: check out our article about this to learn more!

#4. Your target audience is more easily reached through videos

Now, I’ve already said that people in general love (and prefer) videos. However, that doesn’t guarantee that the videos you put out will reach your target audience. For that, you’ll have to think about your target audience from the first moment of the video’s creation process. Developing your video’s story and characters with your audience in mind is crucial to spark interest.

Say you’re working on an explainer video about your product. If it shows that you understand your audience’s problems and needs and you offer your product as the perfect solution for them in a direct and simple way, you’ll get your audience’s attention. For that to happen, you’ll have to use characters that look, talk, and behave like your audience to make that instant connection that can keep watchers watching.

It’s not easy to get this, I know, but if you’re able to pull this off (and you can, with the proper help from the right video marketing agency), then your engagement with your target audience will be stronger than ever. Want more details about this? Check out our article where we discuss how this works.

#5. Your social networks will thrive through videos

If people love videos, then videos are what you should offer them, especially where the people are: the social networks! Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin – all those social networks have seen the video boom from the last few years and have taken it to integrate it into their core user experience. A quick look at any of those social platforms is revealing – most people’s feeds are thriving with videos.

Yes, I know many of those videos are about cats falling into bathtubs but you can make the boom work for your business. There’s a key stat in play here: 76% of social network users say they’d share an entertaining company video. What you should take away from this is that, if you can create a funny or engaging video, chances are, people will share it with their friends and family just because of how awesome it is (even regardless of their interest in the product!). This animated ad was a total success on Social Media:

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That sharing potential can multiply your visibility and help you reach the audience you’re looking for. And given that your video will reach your potential consumers organically, the impact will be higher. How can you not want a video for your business?

#6. Mobile users choose video over (practically) anything.

You see it when you commute, go to the bank, run in the park or even at your own dinner table – people are obsessed with their mobile devices. They don’t just take them wherever they go for communication: people use those devices and go back to them whenever they have the chance. Every little break in their daily routine can be filled with a smartphone or tablet.

And you know what people are doing with mobile devices on those breaks? Watching videos! In a tendency that’s growing and growing, 33% of tablet owners say they watch about an hour of video every day, while 28% of smartphone users say they watch at least one video per day. Short compelling videos with entertainment value are perfect for those little breaks and that’s why so many people are watching them.

So, if you can squeeze videos into your marketing strategy, you too can be part of the video catalog these people go to whenever they are bored.

#7. Videos are highly recyclable

Let’s kick out the elephant in the room here. I know creating videos for business can be costly. But I have a feeling that you won’t think that way once this article is done – especially after this point. See, while you might feel tempted to see your finished video as a done deal, you shouldn’t. That’s because videos are just perfect for recycling.

What does that mean? That you can take your finished video and turn it into something different that can work in other instances in your marketing strategy. You can make GIFs out of your videos, create small how-tos for social media, get reaction shots for promotions, or even reshuffle the whole thing to get a new video that feels fresh. Remember the last video we showed you? Well look how we recycled it:

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With that attitude, you can see why videos are seen as the content that keeps on giving. Not only do they work for months on end, but they can also be turned into something else that can work perfectly in other channels.

#8. Products and services shine on videos

Remember how I said people preferred video over text when reading about a company? Here’s another stat you’ll love that comes to complement that one: 98% of Internet users say they’ve watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service. 98%! That’s an insane amount of people that are actively saying to you ‘show me your videos!’

But, why does that happen? I don’t mean to brag, but we here at Yum Yum Videos (our explainer video agency) have the answer. It’s fairly simple, actually: videos (especially animated videos) are perfect to illustrate concepts that are hard to grasp. They can show how a product or service works in less than a couple of minutes, they can be enriched with graphs and characters of all kinds, and they can all be replayed easily time and time again (check out some product video examples to get inspired!).

Combine that direct and simple nature with the fact that the brain processes videos faster and you’ll see why products and services truly shine on videos.

#9. The ROI in videos is unbelievable

Ah, Return On Investment (ROI), the measure with which practically all of our efforts are measured. What would business owners do without it? I certainly don’t know but they surely love to use it to see how successful this investment actually is. And given the cost of videos, we already know how many business owners feel about putting money into videos – they give two thumbs up to them!

52% of owners say that videos for businesses have the greatest ROI in marketing, which is a huge compliment from the financial side. That sort of confidence in videos can serve you as a guarantee that, although you’ll have to put in some serious bucks at first, you’ll see that money finding its way back to you in a couple of months after which, all that keeps coming is pure revenue.

And money will keep coming, rest assured, because of the following point.

#10. Videos boost your conversions and purchases

If videos make you more visible, more trustful and transparent, and connect you with your audience, then you can certainly expect to get more business out of them, right? Right! There are numbers backing this up, too. When comparing a website that doesn’t use video with one that does, the site without it has an average conversion rate of 2.9%. The website that does use videos shows an impressive difference – its average conversion rate is 4.8%.

There’s something else you should take into account here. 64% of people purchasing online say they did it after watching a video about the product, with 40% of mobile users saying the same thing. To put it simply, people are retorting to video to complete their research before they buy, so it only makes sense that you start developing videos now to help your target audience with that.

#11. Ads in video form rock

If you haven’t put money into a marketing strategy by now, chances are you’re spending it somewhere else – on email marketing or SEM, perhaps. That’s good and all but did you know that the average click-through rate of video ads is approximately 1.84%? If that number doesn’t talk to you, maybe this will: that’s the highest for any digital format!

Now that I’ve got your attention, let’s make this a one-two punch and say that 76% of the total Ad Recall (the amount of people that remember the ad after watching it) is achieved in the first 10 seconds. So, if you put your video together in the proper way, you can ensure that people remember you, even if they don’t watch the entire thing or click on it. That’s how amazing video ads are!

#12. Email marketing benefits from videos, too

Since I’ve mentioned email marketing, it’s fair to point out that videos can help your business with that too. The power of video for businesses is so big that just by using the word ‘video’ in your subject line, your email campaign will see a boost in its open rate that goes from 7 to 13%.

Videos don’t just get your emails opened – they raise your click-through rate, too. Since you can’t embed the video in the email, you’ll have to put a thumbnail representing it but even that can work wonders. In fact, some studies say that the click-through rate gets multiplied by 2 just by the inclusion of a video thumbnail!

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to market your products. You can make it even better with videos!

#13. Videos give you an inside look at your audience

Finally, videos that are properly measured can serve as windows that let you see who your target audience actually is. I know this isn’t something exclusive to videos, but if you combine the data you get from videos with the one you gather from social networks, your own site, email marketing, and the other channels you use, then you’ll get a fuller picture of who you’re talking to.

Among the vast data you can get from videos, there’s the most basic stuff (like age and gender) but there’s also great indicators such as how people reacted to your videos, how many acted on your CTAs, where they went after watching, how many of your videos did they watch and more. Using that data is a must for any modern marketer since they provide a look into your consumer’s mind like no other content can give you.

Summing it all up

From practical reasons (like the fact that people truly love videos) to financial motives (like that sweet, sweet ROI you can get), these points make a remarkably strong case for videos for business. They all justify why even the startup companies or the little brands are putting money into videos – they just work! You can even check out our case study on video to see the results for yourself. 

So, if you don’t want to be left out of the modern marketing canon, perhaps we should talk about it. Contact Yum Yum Videos and let’s kickstart a video marketing campaign in which you’ll have front-row seats to finally see for yourself the incredible power of video.