With 81% of businesses using video for marketing purposes in 2018 and consumers watching an average of 1.5 hours of video per day (according to HubSpot), video marketing has never been more important than it is today. In 2018 we saw some shifts in consumer behavior that should inform how marketers plan their video production strategies for 2019. Stay ahead of the curve by keeping these trends in mind when planning your video production strategy for the year.

Use Customer Insights to Incentivize Action

In 2018, brand marketers were able to use video advertising to optimize for measurable direct response objectives. Viewers were able to do more than just watch an ad—they were able to interact with it by signing up for something or buying something. People are bombarded by 10,000 brand messages every day (according to the American Marketing Association), so it’s important to make our ads stand out and really grab the attention of viewers. The way to do that is through knowing your customer, or customer insight. Luxury e-commerce retailer Yoox Net-A-Porter did a great job using customer insight to drive sales over the holidays. They knew that their target audience is impulsive and values exclusivity, so they took that information and created ad campaign that would entice that specific audience. The resulting ads were a pre-roll videos that gave viewers a countdown starting from 25 seconds to click on a link that took them to a webpage that allowed them to purchase the unique piece of clothing that was advertised in the video. If they didn’t click on it, the great offer disappeared forever. That strategy drove a marked increase in sales for Yook Net-A-Porter. View one of the videos in the campaign below:

 

Videos Became Shorter, Slimmer, and Quieter

Videos started to be formatted so they could be played vertically or in a square format and so that they could be enjoyed without sound, and for good reason. Marketers came to the realization that people use their mobile phones to surf the internet and scroll through their Facebook and Instagram feeds hold their phones vertically and with the sound off, so when they’re serving people mobile ads, those ads better be optimized for that usage. When a viewer is holding their phone vertically, horizontally videos only take up 25% of the screen, whereas vertical videos take up 100% of the screen and square videos take up 50%. If videos rely heavily on dialogue or voiceover, people watching on buses, trains, in waiting rooms, or while scrolling on their phone silently before bed, potential customers miss out on the content that could be very relevant to them. The International Advertising Bureau (IAB) recommends that vertical videos be filmed vertically from the outset. We completely agree with that (even for square videos), because the videos don’t look right and viewer experience lacks. It can feel almost claustrophobic to watch a video that was filmed horizontally but cropped vertically and they are not quick to edit because each shot must be resized individually. In regards to people viewing videos without sound much more often than not, all videos that will be shown primarily on social should include closed captions when there is dialogue and VO, and when possible, videos should be written so that they don’t include dialogue or VO.

Send Consumers the Same Message All Along Their Journey

Traditional thinking would suggest that each time we touch the consumer along their journey, the messages we send should be unique and tailored for that particular stage. This is not the case, according to Google Think. When the Google Pixel team tested this theory, the results were astounding. Google Pixel’s full-funnel marketing strategy used the same message in different formats, including a YouTube Masthead ad, a six-second ad, and a 15-second ad. Additionally, viewers who searched Pixel after seeing the ads were then targeted with search ads. Google Pixel saw a 20% increase in brand awareness and a 113% larger click-through rate to purchase the Pixel as compared to previous campaigns. This makes sense from a psychological standpoint. Studies suggest that when people are frequently exposed to the same messages over and over, they perceive the messages as more truthful than those that are repeated less frequently. Now that you are equipped with tools to make your videos perform better than ever, give us a call so we can bring your company to life through video production.