Video is the Content Marketing Heavyweight Champion

The bell rings and the fight begins. Shouting can be heard throughout the arena, as is to be expected on social media. Marketers debate internally about which fighter is the best pick to attract the attention of an unruly crowd. Content overload has made social media promotion into a battle of the brands. Fortunately, there is one contender that statistically outpaces other forms of content. Video enters the fray and easily takes the title of heavyweight champion. Why is video so valuable in business promotions? Keep reading for details on the content brawl.

Entering the ring as the oldest competitor is text-based content. Text has always been important and has easily won its fair share of promotions. However, as web content flourishes, text-based content begins to take a back seat. Images have increasingly won matches with text, as they receive 94% higher views than their text only counterparts (5). Text is also playing a declining role in emails. Whereas text email communications continue to serve an important function (and have less complications with email service providers), images and other visual content have assumed a dominant role. Images are important, as many readers simply scan emails (6). Images establish an emotional connection with the reader and are particularly important in lifestyle branding. To put it frankly, visual content is easier to consume than text because it uses less brain power and in crowded social spaces, it garners attention more easily.

There is more competition between video and image-based content, because they are both easier to consume than text. The fighting advantage is that unless the image is an infographic, content viewers still have to read accompanying text content. For instance, including “video” in the subject line of an email increases open rates by 13% (1). This is because of the ease of consuming video content, compared to more traditional formats. However, video’s marketing strengths don’t stop there. Video throws a left hook with higher viewer retention and engagement (2). This is directly related to consumer behavior and can be effectively demonstrated by an important concept in web design known as Flayout. Through consumer behavioral studies using eye-tracking, it was deduced that most written web content is consumed in an F-shaped pattern (3). The average user will read the headline and the first few lines of content, but reads less of the content on the right side of the page, as they get further along in the text. Since video avoids relying on eye movement and is the most visually stimulating form of content, more information can be shared with the viewer before attention is diverted.

While content overload shows no signs of slowing down, video continues to be the heavyweight contender. It even gives web pages a leg up in search page rankings and increases page views. Embedded video can increase web traffic by 55% (1) and adding video to a site can “increase the chance of a front page Google result by 53 times” (2). According to Hubspot, 51.9% of marketing professionals worldwide named video as the type of content with the best ROI (4) and it shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, by 2019, video is expected to account for 80% of all web traffic (5). As video takes the reigns, companies need to learn the best ways to incorporate it in their marketing mix. It’s vital to develop a winning video content strategy, as well as to develop ways to understand performance of video content.

Links:
1. https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/video-content-the-importance-of-video-marketing
2. https://www.vidyard.com/blog/importance-of-video-content-marketing/
3. https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/understanding-the-f-layout-in-web-design--webdesign- 687
4. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/video-marketingstatistics#sm.0000f7ujhkwrse8sqa62aq63w23fi
5. http://www.adweek.com/digital/video-is-increasingly-important-in-content-marketinginfographic/
6. https://www.groupon.com/merchant/blog/how-to-use-images-in-email-to-boost-engagementrates