How to Use Video Marketing to Boost ECommerce Sales

The importance of high-resolution product imagery on an ecommerce site is evident, but the implementation of video to provide further detail into said products is still not commonplace. Video can break down one of the most considerable barriers to sales that ecommerce brands face; giving customers a tangible experience. When you’re in a brick and mortar store, you can actually feel a product. A video is how you can provide, if not the same, then a similar experience online. A picture says a thousand words, a video tells the whole story.

And, while product videos can help boost conversions, they do come with an extra expense. Obviously, a photo is less labor-intensive. However, if you’re trying to manage your purse strings while still adding another visual element to your product line, then there are ways to negate the cost. It’s best to focus on bestsellers, new releases, and products with a higher ROI rather than trying to film a video for everything in stock.

Fancy a stat attack?

• Media consumption is up since the COVID-19 outbreak, and it’s primarily video-based: “87% of U.S. consumers and 80% of UK consumers say they're consuming more content – broadcast TV, online videos, and online TV streaming take the top spots overall for increased media consumption.” (Global Web Index)
• 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool — up from 63% in 2019. (Hubspot)
• Mobile video consumption goes up 100% every year. (Insivia)
• In 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic — 15 times more than it was in 2017. (Cisco)
• 78% of people watch online videos every week, and 55% view online videos every day. (HubSpot)

So, it’s clear that if you want to differentiate yourself within the ecommerce market, videos are a way to keep you a step ahead of your competitors. While they’re following a mainstream marketing strategy, you can use the power of video marketing to add another dimension to your product offering.

Advantages of Video Marketing

• People pay more attention to videos.
  With so much content posted daily on the web and social media, most people avoid long blocks of text (except for this blog, obviously). Videos capture our naturally shrinking attention spans, and this is its key benefit.
• Videos boost SEO rankings.
  Google values two things above all else: content quality, and its relevance to the original search terms. To determine both, Google doesn’t just scan the text on a page. It also examines other types of media to precisely view what a page has to offer. If your ecommerce site has a mixture of not just text but also quality visuals like videos it shows your pages are both varied and educational — thus boosting your rank.
• Video builds brand awareness.
  By uniforming your product videos' style and tone, you’re adding another dimension to how people interpret your brand. Not only that, but a well-made video improves your credibility in the consumer’s mind as well. Making your video ‘shoppable’ is also easier than ever before, integrating them with most CMS’s is simple, requiring no coding at all!

Source: Incisive Edge (https://blog.incisive-edge.com/blog/video-marketing-content-easy-tools)

Types of videos customers will love

Now that we’ve nailed the basics, here are a few ecommerce video types you can begin shooting today.

Mobile marketing videos

Most videos are consumed on mobile devices, meaning your videos need to reflect this. To preserve customer data, it’s best to get to the point (as mentioned above) and ensure clips are compressed without sacrificing quality (even though we’re living in a 5G age). Add subtitles for users who have hearing issues, and for those who are watching in public.

If you’re promoting your video via SMS marketing tools, use a URL shortener and include a brief description of the video in the text as well.

Product Tutorials and How Tos

Beginning with the obvious, purchasing anything online from a retailer requires a degree of trust. Unless you’ve been in-store, you can’t touch or see all a product’s details from a standard image. A well-produced product video allows customers to view products in a deeper context – displaying its primary features, functionality, and size – which is likely to increase the chance of a sale and reduce returns.

If your products require some assembly or aren’t plug and play, creating a series of videos displaying how to build them or explaining their features can push some customers in the right conversion direction. For more industry-specific products like software, or building tools, providing videos that help show how to properly use them positions you as an authority in the field. You can easily make these videos shoppable by listing the products as they’re shown in the video, and linking these to your product detail pages. Better content management systems and digital experience platforms make this process easy for marketers and other business users.(see video below)

Products Embedded in a Story

As good as product tutorials and how tos are, using a video that organically embeds your product in a story is even better. Examples include:

• Inviting a famous chef to cook a tasty dish using your company’s dishware.
• Leveraging an athlete’s video on your website as they’re wearing your company’s sneakers.
• Educating your audience about how to maintain a healthy body with exercise while embedding your company’s fitness apparel in the video. (and of course making the video shoppable so that one or more products in the video can be viewed or purchased with one-click as they appear)

Product reviews

Using videos to take your reviews to another level can help you achieve a considerable uplift on sales. 62% of consumers seek a visual testimonial before proceeding with a purchase (see video below). Whether you seek testimonials on a product level, prefer service feedback through a contact center platform, or encourage more organic clips like unboxing videos, it all adds to your brand’s social element and boosts third-party endorsement.

Try incentivizing video feedback with discounts or giveaways. The best retail loyalty programs, too, can also incorporate an incentive to leave feedback.

Go Live

Live streaming has really taken off in the last few years, with all social platforms and YouTube making ‘going live’ as simple as pressing a button. These present ecommerce retailers with an ideal opportunity to engage with people in real-time. In terms of the content, you could make use of live video to show off new products, give more in-depth insight to your brand with a behind the scenes tour of an office or warehouse, prepare a Q&A session, or invite an influencer to demonstrate how to use a product.

Live streaming brings with it:

• Increased brand exposure
• A sense of urgency
• Improved audience engagement
• Inspired action through CTAs
• A targeted audience

Social media videos

Video sharing took off across social media in the last five years, with the rise of native players on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. As a result, the newsfeed algorithms restricted the reach for non-native videos shared from exterior sources. That makes it vital to upload the clips natively. While it’s tempting to create one video to use across all three platforms, it’s best to tailor the videos for each channel’s audience:

• Instagram – 30 seconds
• Twitter – 45 seconds
• Facebook – 1 minute
• YouTube – 2 minutes

No matter the channel, your videos should be straight to the point, branded, and end with a CTA that links back to the product in question. You’ll also want to ensure that the landing page has all the relevant information like the product price, reviews, and your business contact information. You could even get a business phone number specifically for your social media campaign. That way you can track the campaign’s success more easily both online and off.

Tell your story

A video can be used to sell yourself, as much as to sell your product. Help build your brand by telling your story, where you’ve come from, and where you want to go. Put a face to the name, introduce your customer support staff, and let people into your space. Authenticity means more than most factors in terms of customer support.

Now that you’re aware of some videos to try, it’s important you get these things right before publishing them online:

Short and sweet

Give customers all the critical information they expect, but keep clips short enough to retain attention. In an ideal world, videos should be no more than 2 minutes long. If you’re detailing, for example, how your VoIP phone service functions, you shouldn’t be trying to force all its features and details in there. Instead, introduce it, discuss one or two key features, and wrap it up. If customers want to know more, then further information can be provided on the same page or in the infobox.

Crisp audio

Worrying so much about what customers see can mean some videos neglect to worry about what they’re hearing. Be mindful of what your microphones pick up in the background, and if you’re going to use music, then please avoid the cheesy, overused corporate type. You know the one, with the xylophones and marimba. You can hear it now, can’t you?

Source: Hubspot (https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-trends-preferences)

Keep it quality

Shooting videos can be an expensive task, but there are ways to negate that. Smartphone cameras shoot just as well as digital ones, and in some cases they have built-in collaboration tools and editing software. You can also get a second-hand lighting kit online for quite cheap. That said, you shouldn’t cut corners and shoot a video just for the sake of the content. Keep your framing consistent and your subject lit and in focus, to ensure your investment isn’t wasted.

Source: LearnInbound (https://learninbound.com/blog/ecommerce-videos-to-increase-conversions/)

Depending on your production values, video can be expensive. That said, there’s certainly a case for incredible ROI. Adding a visual element to your ecommerce website gives customers confidence before making a purchase. This is before we mention the SEO benefits that come with video integration.

Video brings with it an added element of dynamism and engagement, increasing your chances of people coming back for more. Just remember, the video shouldn’t just exist for its own sake. You need to have a clear plan, compelling and well-shot content, and an excellent product to make it all worth it.

So if you think you’re ready to take the plunge (make sure you film any plunging), then don’t wait around. Keep your customers in mind, monitor your metrics, and watch the business roll in.

Lights, camera, action!