Video content is not a “fad”. Video has become a widely used medium, by far. According to a Cisco study, 80% of global Internet consumption will be video content by 2019, and for good reason. Video content is the most effective marketing content because it grabs the audiences’ attention and enables them to retain a message through the ability to tell a story.
A study conducted by James Richie from Idea Rocket showed that 95% of subjects retained the message of short videos compared to only 10% when reading the text. Video naturally does a better job of grabbing one’s attention as the human eye is attracted to movement. Good video content makes static content seem daunting to a reader. Richie also found that 59% of senior executives said if both text and video are available on the same topic, they are more likely to choose video.
Ask any great marketer and they’ll tell you that telling a story is the key to an effective message. To pull in your audience, they need to understand how the message applies to them and why they should care. This is done through storytelling. Static text and images leave the audience to tell their own story using the information given to them. Besides creating more work for an audience that is rapidly losing attention span, this also creates the risk of the audience telling the wrong story. Video tells a story while taking out any heavy lifting for your audience. Video also eliminates most opportunities for misunderstanding. According to Hubspot, even consumers know this! 85% of consumers want to see more video content from brands. It’s hard to not use the word “goldmine” when you find a more effective tool that your audience also prefers!
For any of you “wait and see” skeptics out there, Video isn’t going anywhere. It does too good of a job of capturing an audience, retaining their attention, and communicating a message to fade away. I believe we will continue to see a drastic rise of more complex and interactive video formats with a continual decrease of text-based content.
