As a retail brand, video is essential to your marketing strategy. In the first of a three part series, Mark Blair, VP of EMEA at Brightcove explains how video can boost sales, enrich the customer experience and accelerate the buying journey.
Video has become a must-have marketing tool due to its proven ability to drive measurable results. The stats are certainly compelling: sites using video experience 41% more web traffic from search than those that don’t, 77% of consumers say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a video, and consumer audiences spend an average of 81% more time on sites with video than those without.
Yet, when it comes to e-commerce, video is underutilised. The majority of brands may be using video in some capacity to drive awareness, but few are unlocking the true value of video to deliver an excellent customer experience and advance the buyer’s journey. For those looking to boost sales, accelerate SEO and ultimately attract more shoppers, video content is an ideal solution – and here’s why…
A smarter strategy
76% of consumers say video is their preferred form of branded content and 51.9% of marketers agree that it drives the best ROI – attracting more people to your website, keeping them there for longer, and improving conversion rates.
Last year, Brightcove commissioned a study of consumers’ preferences for online shopping. Key findings identified gaps between the offline and online experience – gaps that video content is in an excellent position to fill.
While online shopping can be convenient, one of its shortcomings from a consumer perspective, is the lack of tactile interaction. The inability to touch and feel an item, to test its quality and see how it works means some consumers are still wary of completing the shopping experience online, and may even take a detour offline – visiting a physical store – before making a purchase.
Using innovative new technologies, such as 360-degree video, allows buyers to truly understand how a product looks, moves, and behaves through an immersive experience. Video enhances the consumer experience by lowering basket abandonment rates, increasing overall basket size, and building customer loyalty. It can also be adapted to fit any point of the buyer’s journey – even post-purchase.
Phase 1: Awareness
Want your e-commerce store to attract more shoppers? First things first: you want to make your offerings come up first when potential customers search for products and solutions. Google loves video. If you’re trying to attract buyers to your site, then having video content on key product pages is going to help push those pages up the search rankings where video is a best match for the searcher’s intent.
Think about creating videos that capitalise on the trends that your audience actively searches for. These are called hygiene videos. These types of videos help you take advantage of common search queries and draw in visitors by using SEO-friendly terms that describe each video’s value. To create successful hygiene videos, think carefully about your keyword and video metadata strategies.
By optimising your videos for SEO, they are more discoverable, both on search engines externally and internally. Integrate SEO-friendly videos throughout your e-commerce website and your site’s search function will be able to pull this information, allowing audiences to easily find videos that show how to assemble, use, and maintain your products.
Social video is another big must when it comes to driving brand awareness. Around 62% of consumers discover new video content by scrolling through their news feeds, while 49% discover it when it’s shared by others on their network. To ensure your content doesn’t get lost in a chaotic newsfeed, think about which networks your audience use and the type of content that performs best on each platform. For example, videos using Facebook’s native player will auto-play, typically without sound, so adding subtitles, captions and engaging video lead-ins can help prevent customers from scrolling past your content. Bonus: these all have added SEO benefits.
Top online retailers know e-commerce success is determined by a seamless, enjoyable user experience. Creating an easier and more engaging online shopping experience through video reaps dividends – greater brand awareness is just the beginning…
Stay tuned for parts two and three of our video for e-commerce for series, exploring how video can be used for engagement, conversion, retention and advocacy.
by Mark Blair
VP of EMEA
Brightcove