Guest Post by Ellie Richards
At the most basic level, video commerce is the use of promotional video materials to boost sales and increase customer awareness of your brand and its offerings. According to recent research studies, this format of information delivery is preferred by 87% of Generation Z consumers, with 71% of all potential consumers viewing it as superior to other formats of marketing content. Without further ado, let us consider the key ‘whats’ of video commerce.
What Are the Advantages of Video Commerce for Customers?
Video content is generally easier to consume. The advent of TikTok and the interest from Walmart and other corporate giants in this platform are a clear sign that traditional advertisements are on the brink of extinction. There are multiple factors explaining the interest of consumers in this type of content:
- Short promotional videos are easier to watch on the go.
- They are easily integrated into YouTube monetisation schemes and other advertising platforms.
- New technologies provide for interactive opportunities such as Instagram Live Shopping and Google Shoploop.
- Livestream videos offer a greater degree of viewer engagement and connection with the brand.
- Longer review materials are more convincing than studio photos or textual reviews since they demonstrate the unedited representation of products and services that show realistic user experience.
Overall, video materials are inherently more immersive since they show the products and services in live dynamic settings, creating a ‘real-life’ brand experience.
What Are the Advantages of Video Commerce for Brands?
From the brand perspective, the first obvious benefit of video commerce is engagement. Live broadcasts as well as Instagram Stories and other short-length materials have become extremely popular due to the following reasons:
- People love to connect with their favourite brands.
- Live broadcasts from company offices or manufacturing premises let viewers take a quick peek behind the scenes.
- Real-time streams allow people to ask questions to event hosts.
Hence, recorded and live videos show the human perspective of your company, which is extremely important to younger millennial and Gen Z customers interested in quality relationships with interesting and unique brands.
What Are Potential Implementations of Video Commerce for Businesses?
Here are some ideas applicable to most brands on how they can use video commerce to boost their marketing outcomes:
1. Product Demos
These materials allow consumers to observe your offerings in real settings and see how they work. You can also use various influencers to promote your products to their audiences.
2. User-Generated Content
Reposting short videos from your customers can be another extremely easy way to increase your marketing reach without substantial investments. This strategy also demonstrates your respect towards your loyal fans by exposing their creative efforts to the larger audience of your subscribers.
3. Live Videos
If your company is visiting some major industry event or simply has some important news to share, shooting a live video can be a powerful way to connect with your followers. These materials can be both real-time and pre-recorded depending on your competencies and capabilities.
4. Stories
This format popularised by Instagram is another engagement mechanism focused on only showing some news to your subscriber for 24 hours or less. You can also increase the engagement by inserting promotional codes or unique product links inside such videos to make your followers visit your page on a daily basis.
What Are the Key Tactics for Advanced Video Marketing?
In addition to traditional promotional videos, marketers can use some advanced tactics to instantly boost their sales using the following methods:
1. Use Shoppable Videos
Both Amazon Live, Google Merchant Centre, Instagram Shoppable Posts, and other similar services allow you to insert links to products as well as various tags right inside your videos. This works magic since customers can simply click on the items shown in any materials and be directed right to your e-store.
2. Always Insert Subtitles
Many social media sites including Facebook start auto-playing promotional videos in their newsfeeds without sound. However, hardcoded screen captions can still capture your prospective consumers and convince them to re-watch these materials afterwards. If your company is present in several markets, make sure to adjust the language of the subtitles accordingly.
3. Use Advanced Shooting Ideas
The best idea for promoting physical products is to shoot them using 360-degree views. This is far superior to simple static photos as your consumers can effectively explore your offerings in 3D. Also, make sure that you adjust all your videos to the platform format. Right now, Facebook prefers the 16:9 aspect ratio while the Instagram platform only accepts 1:1. These differences might convince you to shoot different videos for different social media or use multiple cameras simultaneously to combine settings.
4. Stick to a Schedule
If you are a content marketer or a content outreach agency, you need to ‘condition’ your viewers to return to your brand page time after time. With YouTube notification mechanisms and other online systems frequently acting funny, the best strategy is to upload new videos on the same days of the week or during the same periods of the day. This stimulates your followers to come and check for these materials regularly.
What Is Required to Start with Video Commerce?
The actual ‘jumpstart package’ may depend upon your company type and business needs. If you own a high-quality smartphone, chances are you can easily record some conversational or live stream videos by adding a relatively inexpensive external microphone to it. For more complex setups allowing you to shoot product demonstrations, promotional materials, and interviews with experts, you may require the following items:
- A quality camera;
- A PC or a Mac with a lot of RAM and processor cores;
- Professional software packages for video editing;
- Several microphones for recording your speakers (you can use room mics or lapel/lavalier mics depending on your tasks).
What Problems Can You Encounter?
Finally, let us consider some barriers to adopting video commerce as the main promotional strategy:
- Shooting videos requires expensive equipment.
- To record and edit your materials, you need to develop specialised skills.
- Video marketing is similar to SEO link building and requires time to increase your reach.
If you feel that you lack the proper competencies, you may seek external guidance or assistance from professional agencies. It is always possible to move these activities in-house afterwards as you build up your own skills in this field as a brand.
Author Bio: Ellie Richards is an online Marketing Manager for Original PhD, specialising in PhD thesis writing. She is passionate about researching and writing on various topics, including Education, Marketing, and Technology.
