Lights, Camera, Action: Why Web Video Means Big Returns in the Marketing World

Have you ever tried telling a story that no one could really picture, so you end up drawing or acting it out to get your point across? Well, this is the idea behind video marketing. As the web continues to grow in both webpages and pictures, marketers are finding new value in the production of web video for businesses. Remember the old adage that says that a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, according to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words—equivalent to written content on 3,600 webpages. So exactly how much does video resonate with people and how can it benefit your marketing efforts? Let’s breakdown the facts and take a closer look at the benefits of video marketing.

Video Marketing by the Numbers

It has become clear that businesses that implement video as a regular part of their marketing strategy enjoy higher engagement rates than those that do not. In addition, the incidence of click-through and conversion rates is higher as well. According to a recent study by the analytics company comScore, which measures internet use and engagement, the use of video as a marketing tool has some impressive numbers supporting its effectiveness:

In addition, Forbes magazine found that 75% of executives watch work-related videos online and of that number, 65% clicked through to the marketer’s website after watching. The Online Publisher’s Association has reported interesting facts that point to how memorable video marketing can be as well. According to its study, the Association found that 80% of online users can recall a video they’ve watched within the last 30 days and of that 80%, 46% took action as a result of watching the video.

What the Trend Says About Humans

According to the 3M Corp, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text. But what do all of these statistics mean? Well, they mean what we have known since the very beginning: humans are visual creatures and visuals like video and graphics will always be more appealing than a block of text. Web copy has changed over the years thanks to fickle human minds that skim, rather than read large amounts of text. Look through any website today and you will see headings, sub-heading, bullet lists and bold facts (see?) that draw the eye downward. Since the eye is immediately drawn to sound and moving images, videos as a marketing tool are right off the single most effective tool for engagement that any website can have. Thanks to the added bonus of video analytics, you can now pinpoint even further who is watching your videos, for how long and when they exited the video which in turn will only seek to enhance make your future video strategies, earning you an even better return on investment.