What exactly is the Power of Video? | Q and A Video

What exactly is the Power of Video? | Q and A Video

[Transcript]

Hello and welcome! My name is Marcus Seeger and I am the owner and video profit strategist here at Video Experts. Now this is our weekly Q&A which is every Monday at 12.00pm AEST. Thank you so much for joining me.

So in today’s big question, now this came up in conversation on Facebook by the way, and the question is:

“What exactly is the Power of Video?”

So you might have heard me a lot recently talking about growing your business with the power of video and this is a question that came up in conversation that came up “what exactly, Marcus, do you mean by the power of video”. So let’s get stuck into today’s question and if we’ve got time at the end we’ll see if there’s any other questions that might have popped up during the live streaming of today’s Q&A.

Alrighty then, I’m just going to go to my notes here, so once again welcome to Session 3 which is 24 March 2014, so look out for these every Monday for the rest of the year, we’re really excited to be sharing some fantastic information with you.

So what is the power of video? Now without doubt, video marketing has come of age. As you all know, a website or marketing campaign that does not utilise the incredible power of video will not fly nearly as high as it possibly could if it ignores video. So by harnessing video and incorporating it into your sales strategy it is possible to significantly increase your sales, increase conversions and increase customer retention.

Now that is all well and good but how does it work? So we at Video Experts are not the only champions of video marketing in the whole world okay, so the marketing and sales industry has really embraced video marketing in recent years and I’m going to share with you some statistics here that has been collated via research over the last two years. So this will demonstrate the actual practical applications of video marketing, then we can move onto the exactly why does it work. So let’s just see if it does work first okay, so let’s just get into some stats.

  1. Okay so first of all, really important: 90% of consumers will watch online video. Okay so there is 10% of us in the world that actually prefer to read; they find that that is their preferred medium, however, 90% so 9/10 people will prefer to absorb information through video, so people want to watch it.
  2. Secondly this is a statistic that’s been thrown around a lot in the last few years: 74% of all internet traffic in 2017 will be video, okay so this is a projection based on what’s been happening recently. Obviously video does take up bandwidth more than other online mediums so it wouldn’t be surprising that traffic increases as video usage increases. However to say by 2017, 74% of all traffic will be video so that really is quite significant.
  3. So let’s move on, shoppers who view video are 1.81 times more likely to purchase than non-viewers and retailers cite 40% increases in purchases as the result of video. Okay so this is in the e-commerce space, obviously video is working to sell stuff; it’s quite simple.
  4. Now if we look at the actual marketers in the world, what are they saying? So we’ve got a recent stat here: 52% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI. So these are marketing agencies that are implementing strategies and out of all the options that they have available in their toolbox, they are saying video has the best ROI.

So this I hope is really starting to give you an overview and examples of how video is actually working in the world of marketing. And I’m just going to do a couple more here actually based around video e-mail, this is a particular variation of using video, and I just wanted to touch base on this because it is really important.

  1. Marketers who use video in e-mail cite increased click-through rates, increased time spent reading the e-mail, increased sharing and forwarding, increased conversion rates, increased dollars generated as the top benefits. So man that really is quite significant. Video in e-mail can boost opens by 20% and increase click-through rates by 2 to 3 times, so there’s some actual concrete numbers.

So if you’re sending newsletters, e-mails to your various lists, are you using video? I really hope so because the responses that campaigners are receiving when they include video, obviously huge. Just mention click-through rates, time spent reading the e-mail, sharing and forwarding, conversion rates, increased dollars generated and the fact that they are actually opening the e-mail in the first place, having video in the subject line has also proven to increase open rates, yes in fact by 18.5%, click rates by 65% and open rates by 39%. So really, that is something to absolutely keep in mind when you’re looking at examples of video working.

So this is the question, so really at this point I think I’ve given you a really good overview of how video is working, we can see it in consumers buying more products, converting in e-mails but why is it, what is it about video that as humans we are relating to so strongly, as opposed to text for example, or photographs or music; what is it about video, why is video so powerful?

So essentially, it’s engaging. That is really the number one reason; engaging. So as humans we will love stories, we love visual storytelling and video incorporates a number of factors that enable us to actually engage, so it includes motion, it includes sound, it includes text, it can include voices, human voices, it can include music or sounds, it has the element of time. So storytelling is setting the scene, you’ve got scenes 1, 2, 3, you’ve got a time element to build up ebbs and flows of emotion, you’ve got human faces and people human nature. So the brain responds to video, in fact we’re hardwired, our brains are hardwired to respond to video, there’s a little bit of science that I’m going to share with you know. There is what we call the fusiform facial area that makes us pay attention to faces. This brain function hardwires us to use the human face as a gathering point for information and believability. When you have a video featuring a person, the visual of the human face alone captures someone’s attention. The human face actually helps us to process information in a deeper way since the fusiform facial area is connected to the emotional areas of the brain. We see someone’s face in video and we process not just the hard data but the emotional information. The human face in video conveys rich information on a deeper emotional level.

Now this is from Dr Susan Weinschenk who in 2013 4 Reasons Why Online Video is Compelling and Persuasive, that’s what I was just quoting there, there’ll be links in the transcript.

So the fusiform facial area, this is actually scientifically proven to explain why, as humans, we connect with video in such a strong way. There’s three other points that she mentions in that post, that’s Dr Weinschenk.

Number two is voice conveys rich information, so simple sound of a human voice speaking to us has an amazing way of converting information into meaningful content, more so than simple text, the tone of someone’s voice conveys a richness of information that makes audio such a huge component of video.

Okay, number three, emotions are contagious. So video is a great medium for communicating passion and excitement about a given topic. The written word alone fails to carry the emotional impact of video. Obviously the written word can be extremely powerful, I’m not actually saying it isn’t, but just keep in mind that video is more powerful.

Human emotion tends to be contagious, the video conveyed the speakers excitement to others in a human to human interaction and I think that’s really important to mention is that all of the videos that we create have people in them okay, we don’t do like explainer video animations, they have a voice-over, like they’re fantastic, but we find actually having the human face, so we do live action videos for that reason.

And lastly we’re just going to touch on movement grabs attention, so another trait that runs deep in our collective anthropological DNA is the power of peripheral motion. Since the Stone Age we’ve survived by noticing things in motion and look, and it looks like we still do, the static picture lacks the power of movement which video can capture so well.

So that reminds me of if a picture can tell 1000 words then a video can tell, I think it’s 1 million words per second based on the frame rate, so really the power of video there in motion, not only the fact that you’ve got a moving image, but going back to the element of time there, so over time we’ve got the motion of the storytelling experience. The highs and lows, if you think about watching a movie, all the emotions that you actually go through when you’re experiencing that, from the introduction of the characters through to the plot thickening to the challenge and the resolve, the end of the film. So this time element is really quite significant.

So just to recap, video is working, there’s no doubt about it, there is a million stats out that back it up, I haven’t seen any stats saying videos not working. Obviously video can work better in some instances than others depending on the strategies that are involved in making that video, and that’s something I’ve covered previously and I continue to cover, my best tip there is start with the end in mind, have a very, very clear strategy on exactly what you want the outcome of this video to be, what is the call to action at the end? Might be to sell a product, it might be to build a brand, it might be to sign up for a newsletter or a gift of some description, so just getting really, really clear on the outcome of the video will actually increase its power.

So we went through a few statistics there including e-mail, video and how powerful that is, and then really just getting into the, really, answering this question of why the power of video, what is it and really, it’s the fact that we are humans and we interact with other humans in video form, through this fusiform facial area, the voice containing rich information, emotions are contagious, and movement grabs attention, and I’d like to add time in there as another element.

So thank you very much for watching, we’ve come up to almost the end of our 15 minutes for the live Q&A. I’m just going to have a quick check to see if we’ve got any questions there that might have come up, just with the Q&A, just bear with me a moment. So you can always use the hash tag #veqanda to actually bring up any questions that you might have during our live event or you can also during the week shoot me a question and we’ll just answer those questions every week.

So it’s been a pleasure sharing this information with you, if you found it interesting I do invite you to become part of Video Expert inner circle to learn more about how you can grow your business with the power of video. I regularly share insider tips and tricks to get your video marketing strategies in tiptop shape. What I’d love you to do is head over to the videoexperts.com.au website and just click on the free updates tab at the top and sign up with your first name and e-mail for more information, it really is that easy. And of course if you’re on YouTube and watching this, just click subscriber as well to get updates on all our videos that we make. So thank you very much for joining me again, I’ll look forward to seeing you next Monday, 12.00 AEST for another live video Q&A.

So that’s about it for today, thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again soon. Bye for now.

[End Transcript]

Video Experts QandA Every Monday #veqanda

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