When a visitor arrives on your website, do they stick around? You want to do everything you can to get them to linger, explore and learn more about you.
Online video is without a doubt one of the best methods for keeping the right visitors on your site longer. When you align your content with what your ideal customer wants, it’s easier to get visitors to consume more on your site and the longer they’re there, the better chance you have to makie a connection, establish a personal brand, win their trust as an expert authority and/or make a sale.
People go online for many reasons, often to search for solutions. whether they want answers or to be entertained, if they find your site and you don’t deliver, they’ll be gone in an instant. And the second that visitor clicks away, you have lost them; they are unlikely to ever return.
Studies show a video on a site can increase the average amount of time a user spends on a site by about two minutes. That’s two whole extra minutes to convert them into a customer!
Over the past few years, the Internet has become a highly visual place. If all you have is text on your website, you are missing a great opportunity to attract and hold more attention.
If someone sees nothing but words, they will most likely read only the headline. If it does not grab their attention, they are gone. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to have them read the first paragraph, but it’s even better to have something on the page to catch their eye like photos and video.
When a new visitor arrives on your website, you have very little time to make a good impression or seal the deal, but it is not difficult to get people to watch video. If you have a video front and center on the page, there’s something that compels people to click that play button.
People today simply don’t want to read pages and pages of text. Given a choice the majority will choose video content over copy. Most people are conditioned to watch rather than read.
People have usually spent years slumped on the sofa watching hours and hours of television. In the past decade, they’ve added browsing YouTube! Now with a smart TV, they can easily switch back and forth between TV programs and online video.
As a business owner, this trend works to your advantage. It’s a great time to use digital media to build a platform to showcase your expertise. It is much easier and more interesting to establish your authority, show personality, educate, inspire or convey a marketing message in a video than it is in text.
Do you remember “Show and Tell” in grade school? Did you enjoy it more than reading the lessons? Do you still remember some of the presentations? I certainly do.
Your videos can use the same approach. Show people the features and benefits of your product or service in visual form. Tell them exactly how it is going to help them.
If you sell a product, show viewers how to use it, how it works and what to expect. We all know people who refuse to read manuals or instructions. Sometimes following written information is confusing. Video demonstrations and step-by step tutorials are a different story and less easy to misinterpret.
If you offer a service, do a video with a brief outline on how you work. Show examples of how your service helps people solve problems and tell their success stories. It’s especially persuasive to see individuals who have benefited from your service talk about their experience themselves. (testimonials)
Naturally, you still need some copy on your website; search engines can’t “read” video, at least not yet. Plus both consumers and search engines want to see a variety of relevant content on a site. Mix it up! Include different types of quality content in videos, photos, articles and infographics.
Putting videos on your website will help people stick around your site longer. Distributing your videos beyond your website, on social media sites, on video-sharing sites, in email, etc. will increase your visibility and drive more traffic to your website.
You notice I said videos? One video is nice, but one is never enough. A single video won’t make much of an impact in the marketplace. To see real results, your video marketing campaign should widely circulate multiple entertaining, informative videos online as a magnet to attract your target audience.
I recommend you produce individual videos for various purposes on your site (ie – landing page, about page, thank you page, sales page) and/or create the online equivalent of television with your own Web TV Show/ Channel on YouTube or another platform for what I call “You-TV.”
Just be sure your video content is engaging and useful to your target viewers so they watch all of it.
If you are not using videos, it’s time to take a serious look at it. Online video is a powerful tool that can grow your business by turning more visitors into fans, followers and ultimately paying customers.