Video content has taken its rightful place in construction companies’ strategic marketing conversations. It provides a powerful way to communicate your brand, share your story, and build relationships through sight, sound and motion. Experts expect this year that businesses will produce an average of one video per day. This type of content continues to grow by leaps and bounds because of it effectiveness in helping clients along their buying journey.
According to Vidyard’s 2018 Video in Business Benchmark Report, 90 percent of people say video helps them make a decision and over 60 percent say that it makes them more likely to purchase. The Report also found that product videos perform well on landing pages, websites, social media, and the top performer was videos included in emails as part of a sales conversation.
So here are four video trends you should know about. They clearly have the potential to impact the way you handle and produce video content in 2019. Take a read through and consider their importance to see if they warrant action by your company.
Make it Branded Video Content
Branded content has the ability to look and feel authentic, and has been able to avoid some of the controversy surrounding video ads. Sponsored content distributed on Facebook increased over 200% and 99% on YouTube last year. And year-over-year video content on each platform continues to increase.
Pinterest is another such platform that has actually evolved from images to videos to branded videos. We’ve already covered that this is a good platform for remodelers and contractors to visually demonstrate their work, and video offers even more freedom to capture and hold potential clients’ interests.
Pinterest also provides an autoplay enhancement to its Promoted Video platform, which construction marketers are loving. It gives them the ability to run video promotions that will automatically start the moment a person scrolls across it in their home feed. The person doesn’t even need to hit the play button. Plus, in addition to showing up in a pinner’s home feed, promoted videos will autoplay in their search results. This is in contrast to other platforms that interrupt users while they are watching a video.
Now construction companies can more easily find clients looking for their type of product or service and provide them content. They can also retarget everyone who saw their video with a follow-up campaign to really hit their message home.
Dominate with Livestreaming
The usage of live video has grown exponentially over the past few years. Companies, especially those trying to establish their brand in the marketplace, need to embrace livestreaming more in 2019. It’s becoming one of the best ways to connect and interact with current and potential customers because viewers feel it gives them a better, more authentic feel about a company.
Social media platforms like Faceback have really cemented the importance of live video. According to their numbers, one in every five shared Facebook video is live, and is now watched three times longer than normal video. The engagement factor is what should be so appealing — viewers hang around longer to hear more of your story.
Go Mobile
Mobile content is on the rise. Along with it, mobile optimized videos. Many platforms are finally moving their video space into the mobile arena, which was once dominated by desktops and laptops — and thus, only horizontal video layouts. Snapchat started the trend of vertical video advertising and it is really taking off. According to buffer research, square video outperformed landscape video in views and engagement, plus costs less to engage someone on Facebook and Instagram. So even if you’re starting out your video creation efforts, remember the video format can play a significant role in how many people watch it, how long they watch it for and its overall success.
Include it with Email
Email marketing continues to provide construction services with a relevant tool to reach clients with important messaging. But, just like social and other marketing tactics today, companies need to find additional techniques to keep recipients engaged with their efforts. Interactive content in emails, like videos, has been shown to convert 70% of the time compared to 36% for passive content. Videos encourage potential clients to experience an aspect of a company in a different and impactful way, which can lead to better conversion metrics for the email campaign.
Video sounds good doesn’t it? Now you may just need some ideas about what to video. Here are a few to get you started:
- Before and after project details – great for Pinterest
- Demolition day – great for livestreaming
- New product or service vlog – good for your website
- Events or exciting announcements
- Drone or security camera footage – Facebook and Instagram worthy, especially if it’s funny
- Client testimonials
- Jobsite safety tips
There are good opportunities for videos every day. Remember to incorporate them into your storytelling brand efforts throughout 2019.