Content is king. But not all content is created equal. Stock video is proving to be a game-changer for engaging targets and enriching content.
If you’re running an online business, we don’t need to tell you the importance of video for engaging customers and driving conversions.
With 5 billion YouTube videos watched every day and videos on your site driving up conversion rates by 80%, video appears to be the new king of digital marketing content.
But for small and mid-sized businesses, creating engaging videos can be a daunting process. It takes an entire team and a lot of investment to make a video, and even then, you have no clue what the finished product will look like until your money has already been spent.
The answer? Stock video footage.
In this article, we’re going to tell you why stock video is a great tool for beefing up your content marketing strategy, and we’ll let you in on some secrets to maximising engagement.
Why Use Stock Video?
Stock video is the easiest way to access millions of hours of video content at the click of a button. It takes zero time and zero effort to access clips, overlay text or voiceovers, and add your company’s message to create custom ads and campaigns that move as fast as social trends.
Imagine this: A news story titled “UK Office Workers More Unfit Than Ever” goes viral, and your product presents a solution. Instead of gathering the team to create a new marketing campaign (which could take weeks), you can purchase a piece of stock video and have a trending ad or blog post published by the end of the day.
Opportunities present themselves every day, but they are more fleeting than ever. Stock video allows you to keep up with what your customers are engaged in and to create content to match in minutes.
Not to mention, there’s a lot of footage available. You can choose your resolution and style with simple search tools and see the entire video before you make a purchase. No wondering how your video is going to look. No expensive production. No big investments.
You can potentially create new videos every week using stock footage and barely crack £500 a month. Not only does that mean 50+ videos for your YouTube channel a year (by the way, you should have a YouTube channel), but it also has big implications for SEO, as Google gives priority to sites with video content.
Isn’t Stock Video a Bit Cheesy?
Stock video is used by major marketing firms and filmmakers around the world and new and exciting footage is being produced every day. There are clips from all over the world that evoke the entire spectrum of emotion. There is stunning footage of pretty much every human interaction, animal scene, landscape, food, and time period that you can imagine and much of it is available in HD and 4K.
Stock Video Tips and Tricks
How do you use stock video to drive your content strategy in the right direction? Well, that depends largely on your product, target audience, and creativity. However, we can give you some tips to help you make the most of your videos.
- Less is More:Research shows that 40% of people stop watching a video before the 2-minute mark. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Creating short snippets will save you money and keep your audience engaged.
- …But More is Better:Publish video content often, especially if your audience is engaging with it. You should publish a video on your YouTube channel at least once a week. (WARNING: don’t publish just for the sake of publishing. Your videos should always have value).
- Use Video Everywhere:Don’t just limit video to your homepage and blog articles. Videos in emails, on other landing pages, and on social media boost click-through rates by up to 300%.
- Uniformity Saves £££:Just because you canmake videos fast, doesn’t mean you should start that way. Develop a plan for your brand and decide what type of look and feel you want your brand to have in your videos. Uniformity can help develop your brand’s image and reinforce recall. Also, it will save you a lot on stock video, because you can use the same clips multiple times.
If you dream about making amazing video ads, blog posts, social media stories, and more but don’t have the funds to hire a film crew, there is an answer. Stock video allows small and medium sized businesses to reap the benefits of video content at a fraction of the cost.
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
