If you own or work for an e-commerce store, there are three goals you need to keep in mind:
1. Driving more traffic
2. Helping your customers buy more products
3. Helping your customers buy more often
What if I told you there’s one marketing tactic that can help you with two of those three goals?
No, it’s not a “magic tactic.”
It’s not a “black hat” unethical tactic.
It’s video marketing, and it works amazingly well.
Here are five reasons why video marketing is one of the most powerful tactics you can use to grow your store and drive more sales.
Reason #1: People love to consume videos
It’s probably no surprise to you that people spend a lot of time watching videos. According to Hyperfine Media, one-third of online activity is spent watching videos, which represents an average of 32.3 videos every month. It’s simple to understand why people like videos so much: they are fun to watch and easy to consume.
Since people are used to watching videos, Animoto found 1 in 4 consumers tend to lose interest in a company if it doesn’t feature any video on their website. What’s more, nearly two-thirds of consumers say companies that use video know how to reach their customers. In other words, people perceive companies which use video to be more savvy and interesting than those that don’t use it.
The passion people have for videos doesn’t change for e-commerce: BigCommerce found 30% of online shoppers want more video from e-commerce sites, which includes product descriptions, tutorials, and customer testimonials.
To make people watch a video, you need to focus on engagement. That means, make videos that are interesting, fun, and easy to understand. This can motivate people to watch the whole length of a video, which can increase the chances of people being influenced by it.
Even if you create engaging videos, it’s important you create videos that aren’t too short nor too long. According to Wistia, videos that are up to 2 minutes long get the most engagement. This is why people spend on average 2.6x more time on pages with video than without.
Finally, it’s important to make your videos load properly. Otherwise, 4 out of 5 users will leave your website if the video stalls while loading.
Reason #2: Video drives more organic traffic
Organic traffic is one of the largest drivers of visitors to any e-commerce store. Companies spend countless hours and dollars trying to get linked to high-quality sites. Doing so can help stores increase the authority of their site, which in turn, will help them increase their position in the SERPs and, finally, the amount of organic traffic they receive. The higher the quality of a website in the eyes of Google, the more it can attract organic traffic.
One way Google analyzes the quality of a website is through its bounce rate. Whenever a site drives its visitors away soon after they arrive on a site, Google concludes that website is low quality. Since Google doesn’t want low-quality websites ranking high, only websites that are able to keep their visitors for a good amount of time tend to rank higher.
That’s why it’s important for an e-commerce store to have a low bounce rate. If you can manage to reduce the bounce rate of your site, you will be able to drive more organic traffic.
Engaging your visitors with your store is one of the best ways to reduce your bounce rate. As you have seen, video has high levels of engagement. By using video, you should be able to make your site attract more organic traffic.
Before you start using video in your store, you must be able to distinguish between two types of videos. First, there are sales-focused videos, which include customer testimonials, demos, and promotional videos. They can work great, but only after a customer is ready to make a purchase.
Then, there are engagement-focused videos, which goal is to educate people and make them aware of your company and its offerings.
According to Wyzowl, 62% of businesses who use video think video has helped increase the amount of organic traffic they receive.
One company that has been able to drive more organic traffic thanks to video is Step2, the leading manufacturer of kid’s toys and preschool items. Step2 has been using video marketing in order to show their products in action. Since 2011, Step2 has created more than 100 videos featuring their products.
Thanks to their videos, Step2 has been able to make video viewers 174% more likely to convert than non-viewers.
Reason #3: People use videos to learn about your products
As a business-focused person, you are probably surprised but not very affected by the importance of videos and engagement. Sure, people may like videos, but how does that impact your business? You want people to think about your products and buy them, not just laugh and upvote them on YouTube.
As it turns out, videos have a big impact in the purchase-decision process. According to Wyzowl, 98% of the people surveyed said they had watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service. Not only that, but 90% of people interviewed said that product videos were helpful in the decision process.
The previously mentioned study carried out by Animoto found the majority of consumers find it helpful to watch a product video more than once before making a purchase. Moreover, Hyperfine Media found 64% are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video.
The reason so many people like watching videos has a deep relationship with the way video affects how they process and understand information. People who watch a video retain 95% of a message compared to 10% when they read it in text. Also, according to Animoto, there are four times as many customers who would rather watch a video about a product than read about it.
Video doesn’t affect online purchases alone. According to a study done by Google, almost 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store.
The power video has in the purchase decision process explains why, 93% of businesses who use video believe that it has increased user understanding of their product or service, which affects their conversion rate (see below for more information).
Reason #4: Video drives more conversions
Since video has a large impact in the purchase decision process, it’s not a surprise to see it can also help you increase your conversion rate.
Wyzowl found 74% of the people interviewed who watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service ended up buying it. That same study found 77% of consumers say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a video. This means, not only does video help people engage with your brand and learn more about your offerings, but it also helps them pull the plug and purchase your products.
Following the previous insights, Adobe found online shoppers who view demo videos are 1.81x more likely to purchase than non-viewers.
The higher likelihood of people buying a product thanks to video helps to increase the conversion rate considerably: websites that use video have had a conversion rate of 4.8%, compared to 2.9% for those that don’t use video. What’s more, a study done by the Aberdeen Group found companies which use videos in their marketing enjoy 27% higher CTR and 34% higher web conversion rates than those which don’t.
For this reason, 72% of businesses who use video believe that it has improved the conversion rate of their website while 64% of them believe that it has directly led to increased sales. Finally, Wyzowl found 76% of businesses who use video believe that it provides a good ROI.
Reason #5: Marketers find video very effective
People love videos and it can help you attract more traffic and get more conversions. But what do marketers think about video?
Actually, there’s no surprise to see 87% of online marketers use video content to grow their businesses, while 88% say that video is “an important part” of their marketing strategy.
The only problem is, according to a survey carried out by Ascend2, half of today’s marketers believe video is the most difficult form of content they create, despite the fact it’s also their most effective.
Not all videos are alike, however. The same study done by Ascend2 discovered half the marketers interviewed find customer testimonials (51%), tutorial videos (50%) and demonstration videos (49%) to be the most effective type of video marketing.
Wrap up
Throughout this post, you have found over two dozen facts that have shown you the power of video for any e-commerce store.
First, you saw how consumers love to watch videos and engage with them.
Thanks to the attention you can get with video, you can increase the relevance of your website and attract more organic traffic.
Video also helps consumers learn more about your company and your products. Thanks to that, video affects their decision-making process and makes them convert more.
Finally, you found that marketers love video marketing. A study by Social Media Examiner found 73% of marketers were going to increase their use of videos in their marketing strategy in 2017.
Right now, it makes sense why: video is one of the best ways you can grow your e-commerce store.