Recent data shows that 94% of video marketers consider video an important part of their marketing strategy. And while marketing encapsulates many different types of inbound and outbound efforts, video is especially effective at driving the needle for digital marketing. Today, we’re going to dive into what digital marketing is and what benefits you can expect to see when you introduce video into your strategy.

What Is Digital Marketing?

Let’s start with a definition of digital marketing. The way it’s used most often, digital marketing refers to any marketing that takes place in digital channels. This includes many subsets of marketing, including SEO, content marketing, PPC marketing, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, online PR, and native advertising. While many people whose work focuses on these tactics won’t have “digital marketing” in their job title, the work they do contributes to an overall digital marketing strategy.

Why have a digital marketing strategy in the first place? For one thing, the business world is becoming increasingly digital by the day. While some companies may be able to hang on with their traditional marketing efforts and brick-and-mortar shops, the average company in 2021 just can’t make that work without some digital elements. Having a digital presence is critical, and digital marketing helps to ensure that your online efforts are working in your favor.

For another thing, digital marketing offers benefits that traditional marketing often doesn’t. It typically helps you reach a wider and more targeted audience than you’d be able to access with print, out-of-home, or even broadcast efforts. For these reasons, many companies that consider themselves to be more traditional still incorporate digital marketing into their strategies.

How to Use Video in Digital Marketing

Within the context of digital marketing, video is useful because it’s not necessarily a strategy on its own; instead, you can use video as the medium for just about any of the tactics we mentioned above. For example, video can be used to elevate your SEO strategy, your email marketing strategy, and your social media strategy, just to name a few.

What we typically refer to as a “video marketing strategy” really just means incorporating video in a thoughtful and deliberate manner into your comprehensive marketing plan.

Let’s go through a few of those examples to talk about how video affects each one of your marketing efforts.

Content Marketing/SEO

While content marketing and SEO are two separate entities, we’re including them together here because video’s benefits for content marketing affect SEO as well. In 2021, video is the MVP of content marketing. In Hubspot’s 2020 State of Marketing Report, video was the most used type of marketing content, beating out longtime favorites like email, blogging, and infographics.

Video can be used in many places throughout a content marketing plan. For one thing, posting a video is content marketing. Video marketing itself is a subset of content marketing, because posting a video is ultimately sharing new content. However, video can also be intertwined with other content types. One of the most common options is to embed video content throughout blog posts. Viewers often appreciate the option to watch something alongside (or in place of) the written content, and search engines tend to reward video-supported posts with higher rankings.

Social Media Marketing

If you’ve been paying attention to the social landscape over the last few years, you’ve probably noticed that virtually every platform is leaning towards video. “Older” platforms like Facebook and Instagram have started to introduce new video features and often prioritize video content in their algorithms. Options like TikTok and Instagram’s Reels feature are the embodiment of engaging video content. YouTube continues to dominate the online space, regularly coming out as the second largest search engine after Google.

All this is to say that your social media plan should include video. With the way the social landscape is moving, those who don’t begin to experiment with video content will be left behind. If you need to see the data before you give in to this concept, here are just some of the many stats about what video can do on social media.

• 93% of brands got a new customer because of a video on social media. (Animoto)
• Tweets with video attract 10x more engagements than Tweets without video. (Twitter)
• In 2020, 15% of all Facebook content was video. (Social Insider)
• YouTube replaced Facebook as the #1 platform that affects consumer behavior. (Animoto)

Benefits of Video in Digital Marketing

Beyond the specific benefits we shared for content marketing and social media marketing above, video delivers many tangible benefits for businesses. Here are some of the other benefits you can expect to uncover after launching a successful video marketing strategy.

Increased site traffic

Companies that invest in video marketing are more likely to see boosts in site traffic. According to Wyzowl, 86% of marketers say that video has helped them increase traffic to their website, and 83% of marketers say that video has increased dwell time on their website. This is a significant percentage when you consider what it means to bring even one additional person to your site every day, or to increase that person’s dwell time by just a few seconds. Each touchpoint gives the consumer more information about your brand and what you have to offer.

Lead generation

Wyzowl’s report also found that 84% of marketers say that video has helped them generate leads. Again, this is a big deal. It’s easy to gloss over statistics like these without pausing to reflect on what they mean for a business, but every additional lead is a new potential source of revenue for your business. Video’s success in this area is likely due to its dynamic nature. It’s easy to get a consumer to view a couple seconds of a video, which gives you a better shot at reeling them in than you’d have with text posts or static images.

Brand awareness

Video is one of the most important tools marketers have to increase brand awareness. Consumers who have never heard of your brand are unlikely to spend much time reading your brand’s content or engaging with your text- or image-based content.

What are they likely to do? Watch a few seconds of a video, because it’s eye-catching and enjoyable and aligns with the way we’re primed to consume content online today. If you can keep their attention beyond the first few seconds, even better; they may click through to your website, follow your account on social media, or just be more likely to view more content in the future.

If they don’t make it past the first few seconds, you’ve still captured their attention and they may remember your brand’s name, product, or industry in the future. Marketers know that awareness is the crucial first step in drawing in a consumer, and video is quite possibly the easiest way to make that happen.

The best way to test these benefits for yourself is to get moving on a production project (either DIY or with help from the pros) and monitor the KPIs that your digital marketing efforts are focused on. We’d love to see what you find!