Video Marketing vs. Content Marketing: Trends, Advantages, & Efficiency
Traditional written content marketing has long been seen as the fastest, easiest, and most efficient approach to advertising, but video marketing is quickly catching up. Now that anyone can post a video online for free using platforms like Youtube, TikTok, and many others—and fewer people are watching video content through traditional cable TV services—creating and distributing video marketing is easier (and more affordable) than ever.
However, just because it’s easier to market via video doesn’t mean it’s the most effective way to advertise. That’s why we’re going to compare the trends, advantages and disadvantages, and efficiency of video marketing vs. content marketing to help you decide which format works best for your business.
Trends in Video Marketing
Let’s start by examining some statistics that point to the rising popularity of video among consumers and marketers alike:
- Consumers are predicted to spend an average of 100 minutes per day watching videos online this year.
- 92% of marketers list video as the top priority in their overall marketing strategy.
- Branded videos have convinced 84% of consumers to purchase a product or service.
These numbers clearly establish video as a vital tool for reaching customers and providing them with the information they want in a format they favor. More and more, marketers are shifting their focus away from solely traditional content marketing to incorporate and take advantage of the popularity and ubiquity of online video.
3 Advantages of Video Marketing vs. Content Marketing
Before investing in a new marketing strategy, it’s important to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages. How does video marketing compare to content marketing?
Videos Attract More Attention
People are visual beings, and our attention focuses much more quickly on movement than on still images or text. Videos perform well on social media platforms because they’re able to catch the viewer’s eye as they’re scrolling through a feed that’s packed with images and text. Videos are quickly becoming the most popular content being shared on social media, which is why so many marketers are seeing higher engagement with videos than other marketing content.
Video Marketing Can Generate Higher Engagement
People are much more likely to engage with and share video content than any other form of content. According to Twitter, tweets with videos are 6 times more likely to be retweeted than images and 3 times more likely to be retweeted than GIFs. In addition, a recent survey by Databox showed that video ads on Facebook had double the click-through rate (CTR) of image ads, potentially driving that many more customers to your landing pages. However, the benefits of video marketing don’t end when a consumer reaches your website.
Video Marketing Can Improve Conversion Rates
When people arrive on your landing page, they want to get the information they’re looking for as quickly and easily as possible, and video can often accomplish this better than text or infographics. According to Wyzowl’s 2021 video marketing statistics, 69% of people prefer to learn about a product or service via a short, well-crafted video. Marketers also report that videos increase the amount of time visitors spend on a website, and 78% of marketers say video has directly increased their sales. If a user can find the answers they’re looking for on your landing page in the format they prefer, they’re much more likely to purchase the product or service you’re offering.
Though the benefits of video marketing are clear, producing videos can be a challenging process or one that you have to hire out to a creative agency. Let’s compare how video marketing stacks up when it comes to efficiency and ROI.
Cost Efficiency of Video Marketing
Time and cost are two of the biggest reasons why some marketers choose not to use video marketing, because creating high-quality videos for traditional media, like television commercials, can be very expensive. However, video content for the web doesn’t need to be as polished, and according to Steven Robertson of YouTube, up to 90 percent of viewers don’t care about video quality at all as long as the audio is clear.
Engaging video content can now be created with nothing but a smartphone, a tripod, and a decent microphone, making it possible for you to take advantage of video marketing no matter what your budget is.
Sharing Your Video Marketing Content
According to Hubspot, 55% of people watch online videos every day, which means marketers can get their video content out to the masses without needing to pay for ad time on a television network. Your organization can leverage streaming platforms like YouTube and TikTok to host your video content, then easily share those videos through social media, email, or MMS messaging for a fraction of the cost of traditional video advertisements.
One of the best ways to get your video content out to consumers is through MMS (multimedia) text messages. 81% of Americans own a smartphone, and according to Salesforce’s Mobile Behavior report, consumers prefer to receive a text message from a business over any other form of communication.
Unlike standard SMS messaging, MMS allows you to embed videos in the body of a text message, so users can view your content without leaving their native messaging app. By sending users a video directly to their phone, you’re getting them the information they want without asking them to click any links or download any other apps, saving them time and earning their trust in the process.
Now that we’ve analyzed the advantages of video marketing vs. content marketing, are you ready to leverage the power of MMS to share your videos with your customers? NorthText makes it easy to craft SMS and MMS messages to enhance your marketing campaigns and better connect with your customers. Contact us today or call or text us anytime at (312) 869-9070) to learn more!