Keeping Up with Technology Advancement from A Marketing Perspective

Last night I saw in the news about how millennials are spending more time with their gadgets than their actual friends.

As a millennial myself, I thought: “Do I really?”, then I remembered that I haven’t gone out with my friends for over a week.

Alright, I didn’t see it last night. I saw it the other day when I had nothing to do at work. Being a little productive, I thought:

How do I turn this into some form of content? I asked myself.

Well, long story long, here are some ways that I thought of to keep up my marketing game with the the state of technology these days

Optimize Content for Mobile Viewing

Recent research from Google and Ipsos gathered 1,519 smartphone owners the ages of 18 and 34. They were asked to keep a detailed diary of all of their online and offline video interactions.

The result suggests that watching video on smartphones is “far less distracted than it is on TV.”

Watching video on TV was the sole activity for Millennials for just 28% of the time. The rest of the time they were watching TV was spent while doing other activities — eating, texting, chatting to a friend, or even cooking.

Watching video on their smartphone was the sole activity for over half (53%) of respondents.

Mobile video doesn’t just command our attention. It’s also emerging as the best way to explore products and offers before making a purchase.

This is the key takeaway of research conducted in February 2015 by Animoto, a company that provides an online video creation application. Vendor spin aside, the findings indicate consumers don’t want to spend time reading about a product, they want video.

Live Stream Videos

Streaming is the natural extension of video marketing. You already know how important video marketing is and why you have to take advantage of it for promoting your services on the Internet.

It opens up a whole new list of interactivity with your audience. On top of that, it induces the feeling that they are involved with your brand from the first-hand perspective. In short, live streaming feels intimate and real.

Live streaming platforms also make it much easier than it sounds. All you need to have is a reasonably recent smartphone with decent camera, an Internet connection and you’re good to go.

Platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, and Periscope are what makes the live streaming world much more accessible for us marketers. Sure thing, desktop live streaming has been a thing for quite a while, but mobile streaming has only recently came around.

Live streaming is also cost-effective. Potentially, there are hundreds of innovations you can take advantage of. The problem with these innovations is that not all of them are cost-effective.

Behind The Scenes Video

Behind-the-scenes videos are always interesting for your audience. It doesn’t have to be about your product.

Here’s the thing about modern customers: they don’t really need you to convince them to buy. They know when they want to buy something based on reviews, recommendations and product ratings.

In the modern days of online transaction, your effort in making an interesting copy is about as useful as product description at the back of a shampoo bottle.

Right now, what you need to do (beside making actually good product) is get them hooked with your brand. Having fun, behind the scenes video that connects with them is much more useful than having a blatant sellout commercial that just screams “BUY THIS PRODUCT!!!!1111!!!”.

Produce Customer Testimonials, Explainer Videos and Tutorial Videos

Now, I know I kind of bashed making a sellout commercial in the previous part, but I didn’t say anything about non hard-sell videos.

Customer testimonials and reviews have always been the best bet for companies, whether they sell services or products. It creates trust, and trust is important in the online marketing world.

Ascend2 conducted a survey on video marketing with 280 participants consisting of marketer and sales and business professionals from around the world. The survey found that the most effective type of video content is customer testimonials, with 51% participants voting for it.

However, they also found that producing a customer testimonial video is harder than making an explainer video or tutorial video.

It’s because customers aren’t always willing to spend their precious 1 or 2 hours to record a testimonial video.

Unsurprisingly, explainer videos and tutorial videos are nearly as effective as testimonials. This survey has proven that despite the fact that explainer videos are much more accessible compared to customer testimonial videos (only 29% marketers find them difficult to produce), they still have an impact comparable to that of (1% less effective) customer testimonials.

With the data gathered from professionals, the survey proves its usefulness for marketers and business owners in making better choices in the future for their video advertising plan.

Takeaways

• Analyze the devices used daily by your audience and optimize your videos for them.
• Broadcast casual videos and Q&A sessions regularly through Snapchat, Periscope, Meerkat, etc.
• Explainer videos are highly accessible with impacts comparable to those of testimonial videos.

So, have you got any plans for the content of your next video? Let me know in the comments.