Video marketing is a strong mainstay in the digital marketing landscape, with over 90% of marketers adding videos to their marketing mix. Savvy marketers have also seized upon current and upcoming video trends to produce and publish videos that will resonate most with their target audience for optimal benefit.
It appears that cute cat videos will forever be a permanent staple on the Internet, but corporate video trends are always in a state of flux as a result of several factors:
- Changing consumer wants and needs
- Economic changes
- The completely unexpected — i.e. Covid 19
Being aware of how these factors and others affect corporate video trends can grant you better insight into the future and enable you to capitalize on new trends before your competitors do. Consider these corporate video trends that have emerged in 2022? How many have you seen? How many are you using right now?
Live videos
Facebook Live offered users the chance to expand their reach and attract new followers through the use of live videos. While a few innovators may have met with some success, it didn't really take off the way Facebook expected it to, and marketers found themselves wasting their time trying to garner increased brand recognition with this initiative.
But that doesn't mean live videos are completely useless — far from it, actually.
New live streaming platforms as well as popular social media and video channels such as Twitter and YouTube have caused an emergence in the prevalence of live video, and marketers are discovering new creative opportunities to utilize the growing trend to their advantage.
One key element that eluded others in the onset of live video but is now a critical factor in it's marketing success is enabling interaction with the audience. For example, allowing question and answer sessions with an audience or showcasing a product or service live while viewers comment improves the consumer experience and creates a moment among viewers that will have them talking with each other after the video feed has ended.
At Cadesign form, we're trying out this medium ourselves and have had success with engaging viewers through Q&A sessions and well planned structure of our Live Talks. Take a look at our most recent Live Talk about "The future of retail - what does it look like?" - maybe you'll get inspired to start something like this yourself. We've found, it's not that hard once you have a proper plan for executing the live stream.
You might also like: "12 styles of video that promotes your products professionally"
Breaking industry news is also a strong choice for live video — according to Livestream, the most-watched live videos offer news coverage, and both concerts and live conferences are an equal second.
Consider these other eye-opening stats from Livestream and you'll soon realize why live video is a growing corporate video trend,
- 80% of people prefer watching live videos than reading blog posts or social media posts.
- Almost 90% of people will watch a live stream if it also includes behind-the-scenes content.
- 45% of consumers would pay to see a live video from a favorite team, speaker, or performer.
It is also important to note that quality in a live video is important — of audience members polled on Livestream, nearly 70% stated that quality is the most important factor when watching a live video.
Here's another example of a Live Talk we did about the topic "Digital Transformation" if you're wondering how to get started with using more technology in your marketing mix that can engage your target audience.
Shoppable Videos
Both consumers and marketers are always seeking ways to improve the customer experience, and shoppable videos definitely fit the bill. Shoppable videos are an ideal opportunity to improve the conversion rate mid-funnel, and they also appeal to today's consumer culture that want to make a purchase with as much ease as possible.
The concept is relatively simple and can be equated somewhat to home shopping networks and infomercials, except that they appear online rather than on television. Shoppable videos are videos that showcase a product, and also feature a link that viewers can click on while watching the video, enabling them to be taken directly to the product page or even a shopping cart on an e-commerce site with the specified product already added.
Although this kind of video is mostly seen with fashion brands, we predict it'll only be a matter time before other industries such as kitchen manufacturers, home improvement companies and others take this to heart.
Here's an example from the high end fashion brand Ted Baker.
Other variations of shoppable videos include being able to purchase a product without actually stopping the video and leaving the page, or the reveal of additional information when a viewer hovers the cursor over an object in the video, or links that grant the viewer special deals.
Shoppable videos work especially well as mobile videos, where viewers can quickly and easily make a purchase with very little interruption to their day.
Learn more in this blog post from Styla: "11 examples of shoppable content"
Vlogging
Video blogs are nothing new, but the video blog has transcended from the amateurish and is now utilized to showcase everything from food to travel to engineering to beauty and fashion and so much more. Vlogging presents viewers with a human face to associate with your brand, improving engagement while highlighting your products.
Popular vlogging platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, and, of course, YouTube are inundated with brands in all industries already offering weekly content that is polished and professional.
Basically, it's blogging, but with video.
Vertical video
Who would have thought such a simple idea would gain so much traction as to be the next standard for marketing videos? Vertical videos are just that — videos shot in a vertical format so that viewers don't need to tilt their phones. This allows for a more immersive experience and puts the focus clearly on the subject without wasting unnecessary space on backgrounds and distracting side-scenery. Expect to see more variations in video dimensions in the future as more video publishing platforms become available.
Interactive 360° video
Advanced technology has allowed for a fully immersive experience via 360° video. Aided by AR and VR, brands can create truly amazing videos or showcase a location, showroom, or event in a manner that makes them amazingly unforgettable. Brands that truly want to capture the attention of their target audience and differentiate themselves from their competitors should be seeking to find a way to include this medium.
Consider these important statistics:
- 360° video / VR received higher engagement and boosted sales by more than 7% compared to regular videos.
- Nearly 70% of consumers wish to interact with brand videos.
- Thanks to improving technology, the content quality has greatly improved, and brands using 360°/VR are in all industries.
VR also offers ample opportunity for imaginative storytelling where the viewer is right within the experience. Considering how important the consumer experience is to consumers, it's expected that this corporate video trend will continue to expand and improve along with the technology.
Training, education, and how-to videos are especially popular
These videos were already popular for many years, but changing economic and societal factors have increased demand for such content exponentially. From free how-to and DIY videos on YouTube to pay subscription video tutorials and classes on all manner of subjects, not to mention e-learning in the form of educational classroom videos, many brands are capitalizing on these videos and creating specific content both for their target audience as well as for employees within the organization.
In the 2020 work-from-home climate, organizations are producing training videos for their employees to view at home and continue to learn or improve upon valuable skills.
Additionally, video tutorials that showcase how to use a product or put together a piece of furniture, for example, are not only popular, but specifically sought after by consumers.
But it's not only in the B2C world, but just as much in the B2B world that how-to and assembly animation videos are a hit. Take Geberit for instance. They very much rely on their wholesalers to do a quality job of installing their products in the end-consumer's home. That's why they chose to have a series of how-to installation videos made to make it as easy as possible for their vendors to do the job quickly and with quality. Here's an example.
Searchable videos
There's a reason major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! now include videos at the top of their search results. It's because they already know that consumers prefer videos to text. And because marketers know that videos increase conversions, they are ensuring that the videos they publish are indeed searchable via keywords in the title and metadata.
But why stop there? Why not be able to get organic search results matching your search criteria based on what actually appears in the video? It's possible with Google's new intuitive AI that actively identifies snippets of video that relate directly to search queries.
This presents marketers with a new era of optimization and it's of vital importance in ensuring top-tier search results.
It's a bit technical, but if you're interested in taking a deep-dive here's a great resource that explains the concepts of searchable videos in more depth.
Personalized videos
Smart marketers already know that targeted, personalized advertising is important, but this has rarely transcended into videos, which have mainly been produced for the audience as a whole. However, while it may not seem especially cost-effective to create a video for each individual customer, what can be done in a cost-effective manner is producing videos for specific segments of your audience.
The most known to most of us, and a great examples, is probably Facebook's "facevesary" videos, like this one:
Tailoring videos with specific messages that are customer-oriented and targeted to specific buyer personas can be highly effective in creating a personalized experience that subsequently increases engagement.
Personalized videos offer a multitude of benefits that encapsulate many of the goals of a complete marketing mix:
- Improved user experience
- Allows you to build a relationship with the viewer
- Stand out from competitors
- Delivers a tailored experience
- Addresses consumer pain points
- Improves conversions
- Helping consumers along their journey to ultimately make a purchase decision
- Improves brand recognition
Consumers today are not only focused on good customer experiences — they are also very focused on video. Combining both to meet and exceed consumer wants and expectations can result in great success.
Another example from the video platform Vidyard that takes personalization to a whole new level. No doubt this video is an examples of personalization over quantification, but we wouldn't be surprised if it has great effect on their sales reps closing rates.
Long-form videos
The standard protocol for many types of videos was to make them short and to the point, with the exception of videos such as webinars or expert interviews. But long-form video is a trend that is steadily gaining ground, just as long-form articles and blog posts have done over the last decade.
Short, concise videos still have their place, but long-form videos allow for deeper, enriching stories to be told, as well as informative documentaries that relate to an industry or brand ideal or culture. Long-form videos can be quite cinematic and entertaining, which can make them just as easy to consume as shorter videos. More importantly, they enable brands to develop a deeper relationship and even an emotional connection with the audience.
Only a few years ago, the majority of videos produced for marketing purposes were less than five minutes in length. However, studies performed revealed that videos that were longer than 15 minutes actually engaged audiences 50% more than their shorter counterparts.
More video integration within the sales funnel
A successful sales funnel works as a continuous journey for the consumer, with each point along the journey melding seamlessly with the next. Through video integration, marketers can significantly increase the power of their sales funnel and draw in a larger share of their target audience.
More brands each day are already seeking to integrate more video into their sales funnel in order to improve their video marketing strategy and achieve optimal benefits and a strong ROI. Cleverly placing certain types of videos along specific points in the sales funnel can directly influence consumer behavior to the desired effect, as well as improve the customer experience and present a more memorable buyer journey.
For example:
- Videos in the beginning of the sales funnel increase brand awareness.
- During the nurturing stage, they can address buyer pain points.
- Following that, videos can showcase specific product features and increase click conversions.
- Finally, they can convert leads to customers and provide additional support after the purchase.
OTT video marketing
The continuing movement towards over-the-top (OTT) media services such as Amazon Prime, Disney+, Netflix, and Hulu in lieu of traditional cable has forced marketers to rethink video ads and seek new avenues for video marketing on these popular platforms. Considering that these streaming services aren't just watched on Smart TVs, but also tablets, mobile devices, and desktop computers, there is a wide avenue for delivering content (although it will need to be responsive for each device and platform).
Despite the current difficulty in producing responsive videos for so many platforms, it's a worthwhile endeavor, since eMarketer predicts that OTT service users will climb to 197.7 million by 2022.
OTT video ads are highly targeted, as the services typically use algorithms to match viewers to relevant ads. This can be advantageous since you can be assured that your videos will be viewed by those who are likely to be most receptive to them.
Silent videos
People browse the Internet and view videos in all manner of environments and social situations, but not all of them are conducive to allowing videos with sound to play when it could disturb others. To that end, the allure of silent videos is on the rise. Facebook already allows an option to autoplay videos in silent mode, and a study by Verizon Media revealed that over 90% of people watch videos without sound when in public places (provided their are captions, of course).
In fact, consumers often expect captions to automatically appear when videos are played in silent mode, an expectation that has not gone unnoticed by marketers. Utilizing captions and producing videos that work just as well without sound as they do with sound has become an important consideration in video marketing, and it's a trend that is likely to stick around for a good long while.
In conclusion
While many of the above trends may dissipate or fall out of favor as new trends emerge, one thing that is most certain is that video marketing is the new reigning queen with a discernible edge over other digital marketing methods. Of course, that doesn't mean that you should eliminate some of those old faithful strategies — SEO, email marketing and others will always play a critical role. But video marketing speaks directly to the consumer like no other marketing strategy, giving the audience exactly what it wants and leaving them clamoring for an encore again and again.
The future of video marketing is bound to become more immersive, exciting, and innovative as technology continues to provide new opportunities to deliver enriching experiences. But for now, the current state of video marketing is no less exciting, as the above trends in all their diversity clearly show.
Consider how you can leverage some of these corporate video trends into your own video marketing campaign if you aren't already. And remember, your competitors are seeking the same advantages and striving to maintain their own edge, so too should you always be seeking to push the envelope and evolve your campaigns so that you can seize, hold, and grow your share of the target market.