Video Marketing by the Numbers
Volume 005, here’s your rundown. Netflix's subscriber growth would probably be okay in the case of a recession. Saankhya Labs is ‘cellularizing’ broadcast to make mobile TV possible. Google, Microsoft getting closer to making streaming games a reality. Cinedigm buys AVOD provider Future Today for $60M. Facebook testing Watch Party features for live TV. Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband pricing scheme is a hint at what’s to come. Amid Facebook’s fake privacy pivot, social media approaches an inflection point.
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How 5G Technology Will Determine Who Is Crowned The Netflix Of Gaming
Find the original piece here on TVRev.com by Ed Tomasi
The first mobile phone appeared back in the 1980s, which many people associate with Zach Morris from Saved By The Bell. Since then, we have experienced countless mobile phone fads like the Nokia 3210, which spawned the chocolate bar; the Motorola RAZR and the thin flip; and the T-Mobile Sidekick, which introduced the slide-out keyboard.
Along with every hardware fad has been technological advancements driving increased bandwidth and data capabilities, enabling additional applications to complement traditional voice services. Second-generation (2G) notably brought the rise of SMS, while 3G and 4G offered data capabilities that turned mobile phones into pocket computers. All of these advancements were evolutionary, but 5G will be revolutionary.
Sure, 5G is expected to be 20 times faster than 4G, but this technology is destined for more than just lower latency and higher download speeds. In fact, some telecom experts think the technology could spark the fourth industrial revolution. When it comes to business, 5G has the power to enable smart factories, farms, and even cities that supply information which is used to manage assets and resources efficiently.
From a consumer standpoint, 5G makes things like 3D video and Ultra-HD streaming a reality across devices. And with 81% of mobile audiences watching more live streaming video year-over-year, 5G will play an important role in the future of creating better user experiences. This paired with the fact that 48% of viewers are more likely to start their viewing with OTT, the streaming model popularized by Netflix will be adopted by additional industries that have been traditionally riddled by bandwidth problems…like cloud-based gaming.
Netflix of Gaming 1.0
So, 5G applications are obviously endless; but what industries stand to benefit the most? Well, with the recent explosion of gaming, it’s hard not to talk about how this could apply to the booming esports industry, which is expected to be a $1.65 billion market by 2020.
Although social media juggernauts like Facebook have already poured more than $1 billion into their live streaming efforts and launched platforms like IGTV, the only vertical that has really accrued a solid, consistent viewership is esports.
When it comes to live streaming content, many people might say that Amazon-owned Twitch has already claimed the crown as the Netflix of Gaming. And in a way they have. Twitch has more than 15 million daily active users, with 2-3 million monthly active broadcasters and more than 355 billion minutes watched. Although competitor Mixer is growing quickly, the company only has a fraction of the audience size.
More than 1.87 billion people streamed digital video via a mobile phone in 2018, and gamers around the world flock to Twitch every day to watch their favorite creators, play their favorite video games, in an on-demand fashion. Currently, Twitch is most certainly the undisputed champion of streaming in the gaming industry. But 5G is going to bring an entirely new meaning to the Netflix of Gaming.
It’s Game(ing) Time For 5G
One of the biggest pain-points for some gamers is the expensive, clunky hardware that is in need of replacement every few years. And although a pipedream has always been to move video games to the cloud, issues like high latency are a recurring problem, historically leading to second-class experiences when compared to traditional non-cloud-based consoles. But 5G has the ability to remove consoles from the equation.
In fact, it might not only change the game, 5G could revolutionize it. According to a recent CNBC interview with analyst Kazunori Ito, “5G will aim to reduce latency to 0.5 milliseconds, putting it way ahead of the 10 milliseconds supported by the current 4G standard.”
The technology also stands to solve a variety of other problems in addition to latency concerns. For example; streaming old games onto new devices, enhance mobile gaming with additional “console” titles, augmented and virtual reality, as well as game creation without varying specs.
All these factors would undoubtedly lead to a better, more seamless gaming experience. For this massive improvement and disruption to the gaming industry, companies could also charge premium subscription based fees upwards of $40-50 per month. And with Fortnite showing the extent of the possibilities when it comes to additional brand dollars through a recent concert collaboration with DJ Marshmello inside the metaverse, it’s no wonder powerhouses like Amazon, Verizon, Google and Apple are all going after the crown of offering a best-in-class entertainment and gaming experience.
The numbers don’t lie; esports is destined for greatness. And when we witness a legacy brand like GameStop watch their stock plummet after posting a loss of $488.6m in Q4, the industry is in clear need of disruption. The Netflix model has resulted in great success, leading to a larger market capitalization than Disney and Comcast. Gaming consoles have always provided a solid infrastructure for the industry, but with 5G technology finally enabling cloud gaming in the near-future, why not take a chance on a proven, successful streaming model to drive wider adoption?
4 Reasons Why Your Video Strategy Needs a Marketing Plan
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
This quote by Benjamin Franklin is parroted so much it has become a cliché, but there is a reason so many repeat this saying. Plans give form to ideas, and people seek something real and affecting in the marketplace of ideas.
Creating a video strategy without a marketing plan is a foolproof way to fail. Your ideas fall by the wayside, there is no rhyme or reason to content distribution, and you lose valuable time you could use to build your business.
Your marketing plan does not need to be some big production, with multiple board meetings and planning sessions à la Mad Men. It can be something as simple as an outline, a series of goals with actions, or something you spend part of your day putting together on a shoestring budget.
The point of a marketing plan is to give you a general idea of what you should be doing with your video content. You can add or subtract whatever you want. Think of it as a guide that helps you know whether you are getting off track or not.
Most businesses think that creating marketing plans for every video is a waste of time. Almost half of small businesses spend less than two hours per week on their overall marketing efforts. These same businesses also lack an understanding of their results, and 39 percent do not even track their marketing ROI.
In other words, most businesses that do use marketing have no idea whether any of it works! You are wasting your time and money on videos and marketing materials if you cannot prove that they are helping your bottom line. So why not spend a little time creating a marketing plan to save yourself a lot of pain and frustration?
1. Understand Your Business Environment
Why does your video strategy need a marketing plan to go along with it? A marketing plan helps you evaluate the business environment. This environment encompasses your audience, potential clients, business competitors, resources, and content mediums.
Are you a small software company trying to carve out a niche in the market? Then you will probably not be competing with tech giants, but rather with other startups.
Customize your plan based on what the business environment tells you. If video on social media is becoming a popular way to get your message out, then that’s the environment where you should focus your efforts.
For example, many media companies have begun to shift from Facebook to YouTube due to the rise in long-form content. These companies saw the business environment changing, and they changed their behavior as a result.
2. Know Your Audience
It’s critical to understand not only the business environment but your audience as well. What does your target audience want to see? Do you even know what your target audience is? Creating a marketing plan will help you figure out where your video will receive its maximum ROI.
Think of TV channels. What’s the purpose of creating a channel in the first place? It’s to focus on a specific audience.
CNN is not going to be airing teen heartthrob dramas about wizards and vampires. CNN airs news, while channels like the CW air more youth-centric content.
If your video content is not created for the right audience, it will not be effective. That doesn’t mean you have to be niche-specific, but creating a plan with an effective consumer profile can help you find an interested audience.
More than 50 percent of consumers want to see more videos from brands, according to HubSpot Research. Give them what they want!
There are many types of video formats from which to choose, but not every type of video is right for your audience. A marketing plan takes the guesswork out by helping you decide what content you’ll make and what your audience should take away from your videos. One of the best ways to approach this is to create content pillars that you can build videos and campaigns around.
3. Refine Your Goals
No marketing plan is complete without a set of reasonable, attainable goals to guide you. Marketers who set goals are an astounding 429 percent more likely to report business success, according to CoSchedule research. There is a strong correlation between setting goals and accomplishing those goals as well.
In other words, write your goals down immediately. A marketing plan with goals sends a message to you and your business that you have an idea of how the future should unfold.
You should have specific, measurable, time-bound, and realistic goals when it comes to executing your video content strategy. How many videos do you want to make this year? What are your ROI goals? How many views are you looking to amass?
Figuring out answers to these questions sets your bar for success. Goals provide clarity. Goals provide focus.
If nothing else, create a series of goals for where you want to be with your marketing efforts. Just remember that a goal without a plan is just a wish. Plan how you will achieve those goals!
4. Evaluate Your Current and Future Efforts
Having a marketing plan can protect your business from the ebb and flow of trends. There are many threats to your marketing plan from the get-go; competition, consumer tech, and shifting audience trends are just a few examples. No one can possibly know the future, but a marketing plan can future-proof your efforts.
Planning allows you to understand where you are in the market and pivot when necessary. For example, video content has shifted from desktop and televisions to mobile devices over the past decade. Mobile requires different video formats, lengths, and content types in order to grab the audience’s attention.
Back in 2012, CNN published an article that asked, “Will mobile devices would kill digital advertising?” The answer to that question was an emphatic, resounding, “NO!” In fact, mobile will drive 86 percent of digital ad growth through 2022.
Imagine if you had created a marketing plan based on CNN’s forecast and then never changed it when new information appeared? The beauty of a marketing plan is that even if you get it wrong initially, you can change it and understand why you changed it. Some of your best ideas may be previously failed ideas that were tweaked to meet your new audience and marketing goals.
The point of creating a marketing plan is to give you a better shot at creating that video that people want to watch and share. That’s it. If you can’t identify your business environment and audience, don’t have goals for your videos, and lack the ability to evaluate your past mistakes, you will eventually become frustrated with the whole process.
Marketing planning may seem like extra time you could use to do something more worthwhile, but in the long run, it is incredibly valuable. Plans reduce risk and improve your decision-making process.
Good leaders, people or businesses alike, spend time planning. If you want to lead your industry and make the most interesting and shareable videos in the industry, a simple marketing plan can put you one step closer to that reality.
Learn
Video Marketing by the Numbers
In today’s marketing world, no content marketing strategy is complete without a video. People have become accustomed to seeing video in almost every corner of their lives. In fact, nearly one third of the time people spend online is watching videos, and YouTube recently reported that users watch about five billion videos on their platform every day.
Cisco estimates that this year (2019), video will account for 80 percent of global internet traffic and over 85 percent in the US. Video has taken over.
Why has it surpassed more static marketing techniques across the internet? It’s hard to pin down one specific reason to explain this video phenomenon. Increase in internet speeds, burgeoning OTT services like Netflix and Hulu, and dissatisfaction with cable providers are good places to start.
We are seeing a massive shift from traditional media channels to digital media. Digital ad spending will surpass traditional media ad spending for the first time later this year. The marketing landscape is ever-changing, but video has emerged as the king of content in today’s digital age.
In 2019, it’s not only important to have a video marketing strategy but also to understand some of the reasoning behind it. Take a look at these four statistics that speak to the larger trends in the industry.
Video Is the Best Post Type for Social Media by 59 Percent
Every social media platform has been gradually shifting its focus toward video content. One of the biggest shifts was when Facebook changed up their algorithm to favor engagement and video.
In 2018, the team at BuzzSumo went through 777 million Page posts to figure out the best way to approach posting on social media sites. What they found was that video was far and away the highest generator of engagement across the site.
Video posts received 59 percent more engagement than other post types and outperformed photos by 73 percent. Overall, a Facebook video will average 135 percent more organic reach than a Facebook photo.
That doesn’t mean every piece of content has to come in video form. Questions and photos still performed well despite lagging far behind video.
Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith suggests dividing up your content types according to BuzzSumo’s findings. Her recommended ratio was 70 percent video posts, 20 percent image posts, and 10 percent link posts. Your goal should be not to post more content but to post content with a higher ROI.
The Ideal Length for a Facebook Video Is Between Three and Five Minutes
Most marketing resources have been pushing two minutes as the ideal length for a social media video, no matter the platform. It’s true that 56 percent of all videos published in the last year were less than two minutes long, but there’s more to the story than that.
Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites are betting on long-form video content in order to continue building their media empires. With the success of long-form content platforms like Netflix and Hulu, other tech giants have realized the potential goldmine of longer video content.
Facebook created its Facebook Watch platform and now favors longer videos in its news feed. Instagram created IGTV, designed exclusively for longer videos from creators. YouTube has built its dominance on longer vlogs and videos from popular creators.
Optimal video length has increased from the original two-minute gold standard. BuzzSumo found that the optimal video length for a Facebook video was about three to five minutes.
If you go beyond 10 minutes, then engagement stays relatively the same whether it’s 10 or 20 minutes long. That’s because people who watch videos that long are actively engaged with the content.
Long-form content offers more opportunity for relationship and community building. While the ideal video length may be about three to five minutes, video marketers should experiment with longer-form content if they truly want to stand out from the crowd.
85 Percent of Millennials Are Likely to Watch a Company Video When Shopping Online
The much-maligned millennial generation is also the soon-to-be largest generation with the most spending power, according to Pew Research. Allegedly, millennials have been killing industries left and right, but the one industry they have been actively creating is the video marketing industry.
Online video is a huge part of the average millennial’s life. A study by Brightcove found that 85 percent of millennials purchased a product or service after viewing a video about the company. This may be because video is the most memorable and engaging form of content, according to that same Brightcove survey.
The emergence of these trends is partly due to the creation of the “experience economy.” Millennials, in general, want to be sold on experiences and not products. Video provides brands a direct way to engage the millennial consumer and show what kind of experience the consumer could have while using the brand’s product.
Think of it this way. If you want to purchase a new smartphone, which would more easily convince you to purchase it: a photo showing just the phone in all its static glory, or a quick two- or three-minute video that demonstrates how the smartphone works and what it feels like to use one? Ninety-six percent of people say they have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.
Clearly, a video is far superior as a persuasive tool. Since millennials have grown up with the internet, using online video marketing can be an effective way to build a rapport with this generation and future generations as well.
84 Percent of Marketers Say Video Helped Increase Their Site Traffic
What good is a website for your brand if no one ever sees it? One of the best ways to drive internet traffic to your site is to use video on social media platforms. Videos on landing pages can also increase your conversions of people on your site by over 80 percent according to Eyeview Digital.
Video can dramatically increase the SEO of your website itself. A well-optimized video can make you 53 times as likely to on Google’s coveted front page by as much as 53x. Video is also heavily favored by all of the current algorithms used by social media sites like Facebook or Instagram.
Video marketing can be a powerful way to get ahead in today’s marketing world. The digital world is ever-expanding, and there are exciting new ways to reach these new swaths of customers via content like brand films and virtual reality.
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Network + Collab
This section is going to be dedicated to you. If you have a project where you need creators, or you’re a creator wanting to work with other creators, brands or agencies, either tweet me @vincenzolandino or shoot me an email and let me know. I’ll look through responses and drop them in this spot each edition.
My good friend Brian Fanzo asks the question: Should You Start a Video Blog or a Podcast?
