Content marketing serves a very distinct purpose. It’s a strategy for delivering qualified visitors to your site with the intent of gaining qualified leads. In that spirit, more effective content – including written, audio, and video content – is always the goal.
But what constitutes effective content?
Effective content is literally any content that gets the right people (the people who want and need what your company offers) to visit your site and, more importantly, stay on your site. And that’s exactly what video content can do for you.
The Importance of a Good Content Mix
Before I go any further about video content, I want to make something clear. You cannot do only content in one format. You must use different methods of communicating with people. According to Lake Superior State University, approximately 65 percent of people are visual learners (remember by seeing), 30 percent are auditory learners (remember by hearing), and the remaining 5 percent are kinesthetic learners (remember by touching and doing).1
That means you can reach 95% of the population by creating a balanced content mix.
Because people learn through so many different mediums, there is huge importance in assuring your content is varied. Imagine doing only written blogs, giving up 35% of the people. Worse yet, imagine only a podcast, giving up 70%. Those are far too large of numbers to lose.
On top of the built-in communication value in a great content mix, you must also appeal to the different forms of search. Blogs don’t show up in Google’s video search, videos don’t wind up on the podcast list, and podcasts don’t register for SEO, all of which are critical in driving traffic.
Video Content Speaks to More People
The beauty of great video content is that it effectively communicates with a stunning 95% of the population, as it is both visual and auditory. Imagine ignoring a form of content with that high an engagement. Only a fool would, right?
But there is more to it than that.
By creating video content, you get some amazing benefits to your traffic streams. Check these out.
Video grabs attention, which means longer stays on your page by visitors. With the average attention span in 2015 at 8.25 seconds, we’ve got limited time to catch the visitor’s attention. Couple that with the fact that 17% of page views last less than 4 seconds, and you realize that the faster you can grab their attention, the better. Google wants to see that people stay on for longer, and great video content helps improve those numbers.2
If your video is really getting attention, they’ll share it, and that’s great for referral traffic. When you create great video content, people are going to share that with friends and family. The important thing here is that you create the kind of video content that your market wants and finds valuable. They’ll share it with more people like them.
And that’s when video creates sales. Seriously. A memorable, informative, and entertaining video can be the catalyst that certain products need to push sales. After all, look at what Dollar Beard Club (the antithesis to Dollar Shave Club) did with the video below. $8 million in revenue for over 8 months. Sounds ridiculous, right?3
Just like Dollar Beard Club, video content gives you a chance to show some personality. People get to know you. That connection helps to build customer loyalty, which is ultimately the best marketing you can ask for. When you get creative with it, you can really leave an impression and improve your odds of going viral.
When you go viral, and when your video content is relevant, you get the top Google spots. Google tends to feature videos before other, equally relevant content. That means you beat out your competition in rankings because you took the extra time and did the extra work to create awesome video content.
That extra work creates more visitors for your site, more leads for your follow up, and more sales and revenue for your company.
