Seeing is believing

Editor's note: Based in California, Zoe Dowling is lead research strategist at research technology firm FocusVision.

Video content is becoming the new normal in brand marketing and has seen an explosion in the research space over the past 12 months. Video is being used more and more to bring the voice of the consumer into boardrooms. Video makes any viewing experience multisensory, which means that for consumers and stakeholders alike,it’s a much more visceral and relatable experience. For brands, it means bringing consumers closer to the product via a particularly persuasive and motivating medium.

Today, more than 500 million hours of videos are consumed on YouTube each day (Wagner, 2016) and nearly half of people watch over an hour of video on Facebook or YouTube every week. In fact, more video content has been uploaded to social media over the past 30 days than major U.S. TV networks have created over the past 30 years (Lister, 2017). This growth in video on social has ultimately shifted the way we communicate. Consumers engage in many online activities – such as shopping, leisure, reading the news and listening to music – but it is socializing and sharing information that most often takes place. Three-quarters of all consumers engage in social media, according to our findings. 

So what about branded video? Well, what we do know is that brands are already taking advantage of the power of video. Marketers know that four times as many consumers would prefer to watch a video about a product than read about it. Branded content can be seen across Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram. Over half of marketers worldwide say that video content, compared to all other types of content,results in the best ROI. Plus, marketers who use video even claim to grow in revenue nearly 50 percent faster than those who don’t use video. 

Actual impact

So, it’s clear that brands are jumping on this video bandwagon. But we wanted to find out the actual impact on consumer behavior. It’s true that video hosted on social media generates 1,200 percent more shares (Salce, 2016) than text and images combined, which is great for a brand’s level of awareness. But could branded videos convert to more than just awareness?

We wanted to answer a very important question for brands: Is there any connection between video likes and shares on social media and propensity to buy? To find out if this link exists,we set out to explore the online video-sharing behaviors and motivations of 1,000 consumers in the U.S. and U.K. We sought to understand how frequently consumers view and share video content, where they do it, what sort of things they like to share and how they share them. 

First, we uncovered a few not-so-surprising stats, one being that consumers really do love their funny cat videos – and videos of other cute animals and kids. But when it came to asking consumers about branded video content, we found that a majority of people (60 percent) are primarily interested in informative content first,followed by content that’s entertaining (55 percent) and then funny (46 percent). We also found that branded videos excel when they are considered thought-provoking and even inspirational. 

A powerful means

Consumers are engaging with branded videos even more than you may think and branded video content is a powerful means of engaging consumers: 61 percent have liked a branded video after watching it. Further, more than half mentioned visiting a Web site to find more information about a product or service after watching a branded video

The next step then is to get consumers to share your video. Regardless of the motive, video sharing is rooted in a personal connection between the sharer and the recipient. Those who go on to share the video are brand ambassadors who are actually helping to build the brand’s audience. People are typically motivated to share a video for multiple reasons but beyond being entertaining or funny, video sharing often carries a more purposeful tone, with the sharer seeking to convey specific information connecting to the recipient. This includes anything from lifestyle,cooking and home repair to product research and current events. Shared branded videos are actually different than shared non-branded videos, where branded content was much more likely to be described as “makes me think” (60 percent vs 50 percent) and “inspiring” (51 percent vs 41 percent). 

Most of the time, sharing takes place via social media channels, particularly Facebook and YouTube. Even though YouTube is more established as a video host site, it sits second to Facebook’s billion daily active user accounts in our study, with 83 percent of respondents typically sharing and consuming video on Facebook compared to 76 percent on YouTube. Other than social media, sharing is sometimes done more privately via a messenger app or e-mail. Either way, it’s mostly shared with friends and family, which is good news because studies show that consumer attitudes toward online content are directly impacted by the individual sharing the content rather than what it is. 

Shares from branded content directly relate to trust. Nielsen’s Global Trust report found that 83 percent of consumers trust a brand or product recommendation from family or friends and 66 percent trust consumer opinions posted online (The Nielsen Company, 2015). This means that video shared by a trusted source – whether a link within an e-mail or a shared social media post – becomes more effective in promoting a brand.

Of course, social media is a great way to create awareness and bring attention to your brand (whether it be your own personal brand or a brand profile for a Fortune 1000 company). Likes and shares will do a lot to promote your brand. But is this enough? A like is just a like after all, isn’t it? Consumers are constantly scrolling through Instagram and tapping their finger twice for an instant like. Likes and sharing are great but a consumer won’t actually just buy your product because they liked and shared a video – will they?

What if we told you that 54 percent of consumers who watched a branded video actually went on to visit the product or brand Web site? Yes, that’s over half of them. Plus, 28 percent claimed to actually buy a product. Even more, of those who shared a branded video, 32 percent went on to purchase the product or services. This indicates that sharing branded videos coincides with deeper engagement than simply watching. That’s because more discussion, online commenting and friend-tagging occurs with shared branded videos than those merely watched. So, to let that sink in, more than half visited a Web site, almost a third reported having purchased a product and over 40 percent said they had an in-person discussion after watching or sharing a brand video. 

Not only entertain

We know that video is here to stay; it’s a new element of the marketing mix and therefore should be treated as such. But for brands to successfully harness the power of video,they must understand the type of video that drives engagement. Successful branded videos not only entertain but are also informative, thought-provoking and even inspiring. When creating branded content, remember that consumers are primarily interested in the information. They actually want to learn about the products. Keep in mind though, this is not a hard sell, it’s just informative content. But video offers a means where your consumers will actually listen to what you have to say. And don’t fret; you no longer need to limit this information to the standard 30-second TV spot. In fact, it’s two-minute videos that get the most shares. As long as you use the time meaningfully, the branded videos can successfully range from a six-second snippet to a five-minute story about your product. Most of all, encourage follow-up behavior and make it easy for consumers to learn more about your brand or product and take those all-important steps to purchase.

Implications for researchers

The study shows that video content is having a profound effect on engagement with information or a product across the generations. So what are the implications for researchers? 

Regardless of the variety of industries researchers work in, or the variety of brands they work for, they learn from the culture that surrounds their consumers. Consumer culture is participatory, where creativity and expression drive how people relate to one another and the way in which information is consumed. It’s also creativity and expression that drives the best insights. This is where video comes in. Embracing video provides a way to get closer to consumers, to really empathize with them.

As consumers engage more and more with video content it provides avenues for researchers to use video to engage with respondents at the point of data collection. Whether that’s through video ethnography, focus groups or by using video open-ends in surveys, recording and posting a video as a key way of answering questions put forward by researchers now has almost no barriers to completion as video becomes the new normal. Not only do we get better, richer data from an open-ended video question on a standard quant survey, in some cases the respondent actually prefers to do it, it’s more personal and they become more engaged with the study as a result, which hopefully can lead to a positive emotional connection with further surveys. 

One of the key benefits of using more video in your research studies is the potential for stakeholder engagement. Facebook, for example, has shown that deeper engagement results with brands whose ads are supplemented with video. So it stands to reason that researchers can use video to drive engagement and calls to action in stakeholder communications. Video humanizes data and provides context to the voice of the customer in the boardroom, in a way that a PowerPoint slide, regardless of how well it’s designed, just cannot achieve. 

Grasp the power

Video is only set to grow and when brands successfully capture the power of video, it’s no surprise that they report significant growth in revenue. It’s also no surprise that the projected spend on mobile video ads in 2018 is nearly $6 billion for the U.S.alone (eMarketer, 2016). Brands and researchers must watch this space and grasp the power of video now, knowing that its rise to prominence as a ubiquitous communication channel is already underway. 

References 

Lister, M, 2017. “37 staggering video marketing statistics for 2017” Available at www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/03/08/video-marketing-statistics (Accessed December 8, 2017)

Wagner, K., 2016. “Facebook says video is huge –100-million-hours-per-day huge.” Available at www.recode.net/2016/1/27/11589140/facebook-says-video-is-huge-100-million-hours-per-day-huge (Accessed October 13, 2017)

Salce, M., 2016.Video Marketing Statstics for 2016 Available at www.responsiveinboundmarketing.com/blog/video-marketing-statistics-for-2016 (Accessed December 8, 2017)

www.nielsen.com/content/dam/nielsenglobal/apac/docs/reports/2015/nielsen-global-trust-in-advertising-report-september-2015.pdf (Accessed October 13, 2017)

eMarketer, 2016. “Mobile spearheads digital videoadvertising’s growth.” Available at www.emarketer.com/article/mobile-spearheads-digital-video-advertisings-growth/1013611 (Accessed October 20, 2017)