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Video Marketing Trends 2020

As we say goodbye to 2019, we have seen video content continue to become a staple of the communications mix and how organisations are building it into their digital campaigns. However, the trajectory for the use of video is only upward as the rise of stories across social media platforms, and the way in which people consume media, means that video is becoming more central to how a story is told than ever before.

Interestingly, a poll by Smart Insights found that 83% of marketers believe that video is becoming increasingly important and the brands using them as part of their digital marketing strategies. Also, HubSpot, spent some time researching what video is actually doing. Here’s what they found:

  • 70% of consumers say they’ve shared a brand’s video, and 72% of businesses say video improved their internet conversion rate
  • 52% of consumers say watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions
  • In fact, consumers prefer video above all other forms of content in learning about new products or services
  • Video usage is clearly accelerating at a phenomenal rate but many businesses, for reasons best known to themselves, are yet to add it to their marketing strategy

With smartphones and easy access to digital platforms, it means that people are spending more time watching video. Therefore, it’s not just organic content that is benefitting, but paid-for as well. As more businesses invest in digital video ads to drive engagement, this is only going to get bigger.

However, we must not forget that it’s also about being able to show how video can be useful to the outcomes of a digital strategy – does it mean more people do what is asked of them (via a call to action), increased donations or behaviour change? Video content needs to stand out in what is becoming a growing, but saturated market of content.

So, what do we see as the video marketing trends to look out for next year?

 

Personalised videos

This is certainly something that needs to be taken seriously, but it’s imperative that it is done in the right way. It is a great tactic for improving the quality of leads, as well as building a relationship with your audience as it provides them with an experience that is tailored to them, but done badly, you could turn your audience completely off your brand.

A personalised video should reflect the product(s), service(s) or cause(s) that consumers are interested in when it comes to making informed decisions. This is where audience demographic information for your organisation can play a huge part in making sure that the videos created truly reflect both sides of the content. Brands that have successfully used personalisation include Cadbury, who launched their personalised videos in 2014 and incorporated viewers’ own content to automatically generate a video that spoke directly to them. This campaign resulted in a click-through rate of 65% and a conversion rate of 33.6%.

 

Data first approach

The one size fits all approach to video marketing doesn’t deliver as it used to as organisations look to engage with a now savvier audience. Instead, a data first approach means that you’re starting from a better position as your video is targeting the right audience, with the right messaging at the right time, all in order to increase engagement and a type of conversion (depending on your organisation’s communications objectives).

This is why we must look to apply this type of data first approach to video marketing in 2020. It gives brands a better understanding of what works when it comes to their videos, including the best platform, who they need to target and the content of their videos – among other factors. This information can be hugely beneficial when it comes to returns, improving your video marketing return on investment (ROI).

 

Braving the long-form video

We’ve all been told that the human attention span is shrinking, and this has resulted in many marketers falling back on short-form videos in a bid to gain greater engagement, but this looks set to change in 2020.

There’s no denying that shorter videos are easy to consume, especially on the go via social media, but what they fail to do is allow brands to form an emotional connection that makes them memorable to consumers.

In 2017, around 80% of videos were under five minutes in length, however, these videos tended to drive less than a third of overall engagement in video content. In comparison, videos that were 15 minutes or longer resulted in 50% of audience engagement.