How to Use Video to Boost Customer Engagement

Smart business owners know that long-term success doesn’t come only from consistently acquiring new customers. It also requires retaining customers that return again and again. Effective customer engagement increases brand loyalty, enhances the customer experience, and boosts sales funnel velocity.

Video content is an effective way to grab consumers’ attention and boost engagement. Video is one of the most in-demand media formats globally, with 54% of consumers preferring to see video content from brands and businesses over any other format.

Video engagement is no longer a “nice to have” if you want to maintain a successful business or brand in the future. It’s a must.

Read on to find out how to tap into the power of video engagement for your brand or business.

7 tips for driving video engagement for your brand or business

If you’re going to rely on video to boost customer engagement, you have to do it right. The marketplace is saturated with video content. YouTube alone sees 500 hours of video uploaded every minute, every day.

To stand out in this crowd, you’ve got to be prudent in how you plan, create, and disseminate your content. Follow these tips to get started.

1. Develop a customer-first concept

If you want to boost video engagement, you have to put your customers at the center. What kind of content do they want to see? When planning your concept, focus on how you can create value for them.

Here are some of the different styles of video formats you might consider:

• Case study: Highlight success stories related to your service or product, emphasizing how it can improve the consumer’s life with real-world, authentic examples.
• Educational: You’re an expert in your field. Prove it by sharing fact-based, informational content with your customers. This builds credibility and nurtures trust.
• Testimonial: Get referrals from actual customers and clients. Your customers shouldn’t have to take your word for how great you are. Discover the benefits of a video testimonial.
• Customer-created: Use customer-created snippets to put together a compelling campaign. A live event can be a great opportunity to source customer-created content to use (with their permission, of course).
• Creative sequencing: This type of video showcases different aspects of your product, brand, or service using a mix of brief video ads.
• Expert conversation: This is another excellent way to boost credibility. Featuring an interview with an acknowledged expert in your field shows the authenticity of your brand voice, proves your credibility, and provides valuable information.
• Curiosity quencher: What are some of the most frequently asked questions you get from consumers? Quench their curiosity (and alleviate the burden on your customer service team) with a quick video addressing these salient points.
• Humorous content: Last but not least, a well-crafted funny video is a great way to entertain and engage customers. Not every piece of content has to be serious! This also serves a purpose—making people laugh—which is truly invaluable. Best of all, it can reflect positively on how your brand is perceived, and help your marketing messages be remembered.

Whatever style you opt for, incorporate video advertising best practices to increase your odds of success. For example, you should capture your viewer’s attention within the first 10 seconds of the recording.

2. Use storytelling to convey your authentic voice

If you’re having trouble coming up with a concept, get inspired by what other people are doing. Check out this list of the top five video marketing campaigns in 2019 or this roundup of the 15 best startup videos of all time.

All of these video engagement efforts have one thing in common: They utilize storytelling. Storytelling helps to create an authentic, trustworthy voice that resonates with consumers. It’s a powerful marketing tool.

You can use this marketing tactic to naturally convey information about your company, product, or brand. It centers on creating narrative-based content that people can relate to. Great video storytelling pushes on people’s pain points and provides a satisfying solution. It should further spark an emotion.

Considerations when creating a storytelling-style video include plot, purpose, people, place, and audience. This guide to video storytelling provides more detail and explains how to harness the power of storytelling effectively.

3. Include a clear call-to-action

If you want your video to get engagement, it’s essential to include a CTA (call to action). You want customers to feel like they are part of your brand family, and encouraging them to act is one way to do that.

What is the end goal of the video? You might want the customer to:

• Buy your product or service.
• Visit your website.
• Follow your YouTube channel.
• Like or comment on the video.
• Share the video with others by passing it on.
• Respond to the video in some other way – for example, if you create a Q&A-style video, you might invite questions for future videos.

Whatever your chosen CTA is, make it clear. Include the information (such as links) that viewers need to follow through on the action you expect of them. For example, if you want them to share the video, provide easy-to-access sharing links for diverse social media platforms.

4. Make your message mobile-friendly

If you want to maximize customer engagement, you have to make your video mobile-friendly. This is essential. Why? About half of online activity today takes place via mobile devices like cell phones and tablets.

You don’t want to alienate your viewers because you’ve created a video that presents well on desktop but comes across as irregular on mobile. For example, by ensuring your video is viewable in portrait mode, you spare the viewer the hassle of turning their phone horizontally.

Other steps to optimize video for mobile includes ensuring a responsive design, providing fast loading times, and keeping videos short and to the point. Modern attention spans are short, and you want to get to your key message quickly.

It’s also great to use readable captions or subtitles so people can get the key messages even if they can’t listen (e.g., if they’re in public without headphones). As an essential bonus, this ensures accessibility for a broader community (such as the hard of hearing audience).

5. Disseminate your video content broadly

Once your video is created, you have to get it out there. Don’t stick to just one platform when sharing video content. Diversify as much as possible.

So where should you share your video? Your brand or business website is an obvious first choice. YouTube is also essential. This is the world’s second-largest search engine (after Google) and the dominant video-sharing platform. You can’t miss it! Follow these best practices for promoting your YouTube video channel, like creating attractive thumbnails and including engaging titles.

You may also want to share your video via social media. If you’ve created a more extended clip, consider making a shorter snippet to tease on social media and direct people to the full video.

6. Respond to video engagement

Customer engagement is a two-way relationship. Don’t just put your videos out into the universe and never look at them again. You will want to respond to customers who comment on your video, for example.

Why is this important? It presents your brand or business as being engaged and genuinely caring about their customers. Even if people leave negative comments, it can often be worth responding instead of remaining silent. Many companies have gone viral for clever quips in response to feedback.

As a bonus, going through customer comments on your videos is an excellent way to source inspiration for future content. When watching an FAQ-style video, customers might ask questions of each other in the comments that could inspire an additional “Part 2” FAQ video, for example.

7. Track your results for future reference

One of the great things about digital marketing tactics like video is that they are easy to track. Monitor the results of your video engagement to see how well your content is performing. There are several key metrics you can measure towards this end, including:

• View count: How many people have viewed the video.
• Play rate: The ratio of visitors to the page that clicked play and started watching the video.
• Engagement: The number of likes and comments the video has garnered.
• Sharing: The amount of social media sharing your video has experienced.
• Click-through rate: The ratio of viewers that watched the video and followed the prescribed link-related CTA (e.g., if they clicked to follow a mentioned link in the video).
• Conversion rate: The number of viewers who converted. It’s up to you to define what qualifies as a conversion. Examples include completing a form, subscribing to your channel, or making a purchase.
• Qualitative feedback: See what viewers have to say in the comments.

The final word on video engagement

Video engagement can be a valuable way to connect with consumers, drive brand awareness, and foster a loyal following – if you do it right. The above guide provides some tips and tricks to help guide you on the path.

Follow these pointers, and you’ll be on track to creating compelling content that gets users clicking, liking, commenting, and sharing. For more helpful information, check out this complete guide to online video advertising.

With resources like these, you’ve got all the knowledge you need to harness the power of video engagement.