Day 5: Video

Oh hi, can you believe we’re already 5 days into December and only 19 sleeps until the BIG DAY! 

What better way to spend your Monday than thinking about exciting video trends you can use in your marketing strategy in 2023.

If you have Christmas shopping to get on with then scan the quick takeaways here and come back later for more detail.

Quick Takeaways

• Live video is an essential way for brands and businesses to connect with their customers and clients on a more personal level.
• You don’t have to be a professional photographer; authentic video is here to stay
• Your SEO strategy can benefit greatly from video content
• It’s storytime kids, show off your brand personality via Vlogs and social media stories 
• User-generated content is the most trusted form of online content.
• AR/VR is as we all predicted here to stay

Here’s the detail: 

1. Live Video:

Consumers LOVE video content in general BUT they engage at a much higher rate when the content is live. On Facebook, for example, users watch live videos for 3x longer than pre-recorded videos, and live content generates 6x more interactions. 

So it’s a no-brainer! Think of ways you can utilise live video in your marketing – what will your audience appreciate the most?

Key Tip: Only a small number of businesses are embracing live video. Therefore, brands have an opportunity to build engagement and gain a competitive advantage by embracing live video right now.

2. Smartphone Production

Gone are the days when video marketing required expensive equipment and a big production budget. In fact, even brands that can afford those things are turning to smartphones to create more relatable, authentic content. We often encourage our clients to do both… Get the shiny pro videos and do the authentic phone footage too! 

Nothing makes brands more appealing and approachable than authentic and personal content.

3. Search-optimised Videos

Sounds complicated… and probably is for most businesses to be honest! What it basically means is in the coming months/years video will appear more and more in search results on Google and other search engines as answers to your questions/searches and therefore the content you produce you should optimise so it can be found easier in the searches!

A new SEO trend that will be a huge focus for companies in 2023, is featured snippets on Google search. These sometimes appear as questions with dropdown content, revealing content that provides the answer. Most of the time they feature videos that are deemed useful.

How to do this:

Important technical optimisation steps like title tags, keywords in descriptions, choosing appropriate thumbnail images, featuring keywords within the actual file name of your video, and responding to comments to drive engagement.

4. Vlogs

We know that brand storytelling is one of the most effective ways to connect with consumers, develop your brand personality, and get your audiences engaged. Vlogs (or video blogs) are a great vehicle for telling those stories. 

Key tip: Record your recent blogs with some extra personal insight to turn it into a vlog… If you’re really clever you could also take the audio and make an audio clip with it too! 

5. Social Media Stories

Like vlogs, social media stories show a brand’s personality and create a more personal connection than other video content. But social media stories aren’t exactly the same.

Stories should be the raw/behind the scenes content your users want to see to make you relatable to your audience… And, unlike a vlog you can ask your audience to engage with you too! What kind of behind the scenes content can your business show off?

6. User generated content

Basically you are sharing the content your audience tags you in which features your brand or product…

Are you thinking ‘but they never tag us’ THEN you need to think of ways to get them to or partner with a brand advocate to share content.

7. AR/VR

We couldn’t go without mentioning this… It is clever and was very useful throughout the lockdown periods for immersive and virtual experiences. Retail stores offered virtual “try before you buy,” healthcare providers used AR and VR for self-guided diagnostics etc. 

8. Product/Service Journeys

Like with social media stories, your audience will find behind the scenes content very interesting. Especially if you show the journey your products or services take during their development. 

If your business creates products, it’s a good idea to show how that product is designed and manufactured using video, without spilling too many secrets!

Showing the journey of a service, instead of a product, may seem difficult to convey. A great example of service journeys are case studies. These are generally written pieces of content, but providing a video element featuring interviews and showing how your service is provided can help customers visualise using your service as well!

Remember to tag us into your post @idomarketinguk and use the hashtag #idmcalendar2022