Videos are prominent fixtures in today’s marketing plans. It’s essential for digital marketers and advertisers to stay ahead of emerging trends and know how to use them in their own strategies.
Ahead of our upcoming webcast, we explore four current online video trends, and when to use them in your digital marketing.
Videos that are longer or shorter than 30 seconds
It wasn’t long ago that 30-second videos were an industry standard. Now, advertisers are breaking that boundary and experimenting with shorter and longer videos to meet goals.
Videos that are ten seconds or less offer cross-platform appeal and are particularly attractive to young generations. For example, Generation Z viewers are accustomed to using various streaming sites and internet-connected devices. Short videos make their point without distracting delays.
In contrast, it’s useful to consider videos that last 90 seconds or more when attempting to incite emotion or convey deep meaning.
When to use: Use videos shorter than 30 seconds when your audience is spread out across platforms or has a short attention span. Use longer videos when your audience is likely to be deeply emotionally engaged with your content, or when you’re addressing a sensitive issue.
Calls-to-action within videos
Calls-to-action are just as important in videos as text-based content. Without them, customers are likely to feel momentarily fascinated by what they see but fail to take any concrete action that drives sales or get other desirable results.
Sometimes, an entire video serves as a call-to-action. Purple, a direct-to-consumer mattress company, for example, blew benchmarks out of the water with their collection of creative marketing videos (one even garnered more than 3.3 million views).
When to use: Use video CTAs to prompt viewers to watch another video, click on a relevant link to your site or to share discount codes with those watching your videos.
Video talks
Certain kinds of videos are extraordinarily popular with viewers from various backgrounds and age groups. TED Talks are some of the most well-known of this genre of video. Buzzfeed also launched a similar series on Twitter, bring a broadcast news feel to the social media platform.
When to use: Use a talk-style video when you want to educate your audience on a specific topic that you have a wealth of knowledge and information on. These kinds of videos shouldn’t be a general overview. Instead, readers watching video talks want to learn in-depth information about the subject your expert is speaking on.
Reddit-style AMA videos
Even people who don’t use Reddit often have typically heard of the site’s Ask Me Anything (AMA) events that feature a prolific person — such as a company CEO or a TV star taking questions from a live pool of Reddit users who want their curiosities satisfied.
Reddit began producing video-based AMAs in 2015, with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson being among the first to contribute on the site.
More recently, the “Think Faster” campaign from Audi centers on people conducting Reddit AMAs while sitting in moving Audi cars. The latest version includes celebrity chef David Chang and YouTube personality Liza Koshy fielding questions while sitting in a 2018 Audi RS 5 coupe.
But, marketers, be warned. Instances exist of company representatives coming under fire for placing too much emphasis on marketing during their AMAs, instead of coming across as genuinely interested in addressing their audiences. So remember to stay authentic.
When to use: If you’re going to create your own AMA-style video, you’ll need to be sure that people genuinely care about the questions you’ll be answering. Ideally, you should also be able to crowdsource questions, too, just like Reddit does. A good time to consider this video format might be when you’re hiring new employees.
Employees often have many questions about job positions. You could create an AMA-style video to answer applicants questions and launch the video as a multimedia tool on your employment page.
Depend on trends for the right situations
It’s never a good idea to capitalize on a video trend for the sake of following the crowd.
This list covers prominent trends, but marketers should be careful to only think about using them when they align with objectives, audience demographics and other campaign specifics.
