To Use Video, or Not to Use Video, That Is the Question!
A picture might be worth a thousand words, but in the online marketing world, an explainer video is worth much more. How much? About 1.8 million words. A study from 2013 showed that 87.1% of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online videos that year. With our lifestyles becoming faster and our attention spans alarmingly shorter, that number has since been on a steady rise. So much so that in 2015, Internet users spend more time watching videos than doing anything else online, including visiting social media websites.
It comes as no surprise then that over 90% of marketing companies use explainer videos regularly. With everyone from start-ups to corporate giants increasingly relying on videos for their marketing campaigns, it looks like explainer videos are here to stay.
If you’re among the minority of those still having doubts about whether using explainer videos is a savvy marketing move or just a temporary fad, you might want to check out the following statistics showing comparison between success rates of companies who use video based marketing and those who don’t.
Increased conversion rates
Explainer videos have been shown to increase conversion rates anywhere from 9% to whopping 400% percent. When the top file hosting service Dropbox decided to use explainer videos as a way to expand their audience reach, they saw an increase of 10% in conversion rates. Similarly, Eric Hinson of Explainify, a company that specializes in the production of animated videos, says adding explainer videos increased his own website’s conversion rate by 23%. Testimonies of success such as these reveal one of the greatest advantages of content videos: they have been proven to have a positive impact on conversion rates regardless of the type and size of an online business.
Higher sign-up rates
Explainer videos are not reserved solely for product descriptions. It is precisely their adaptability and ease of use that accounts for their widespread popularity. Video landing pages and video-based e-mail marketing are good examples of how explainer videos can be used in more than one way to increase sign-up rates. When Criteria Corp introduced a video landing page, they saw an increase in the free trial sign-up rate of 22%. For Vidyard, the success rate was even higher: 69% sign-up rate increase. One of the more surprising revelations about using videos in email marketing came from the MediaPost, who reported that merely mentioning the word ‘video’ in the subject line meant that customers were 7% to 13% more likely to open the e-mail.
Bounce rate reduction
Bounce rate – the percentage of visitors who leave the website after a single-page session – is one of the biggest concerns of online marketers. The good news is that explainer videos are highly effective in reducing the dreaded bounce and return rates. Compared to the text and image-based websites, online pages that make the most of using explainer videos can reduce their bounce rate up to 34%. Zappos, an online shoe and clothing store, saw a 25% reduction in return rates with the help of interactive product description videos, while a study at Invodo showed that customers who watch videos are 52% less likely to return the product upon purchase.
CTA click-through rate boost
Click-through rates are another important aspect of content marketing where clever and engaging explainer videos can make a huge difference. According to a study done by the e-mail marketing service GetResponse, those companies that include videos in their call-to-action customer emails can increase click-through rates by an epic 96%. When Wistia carried out a similar study comparing click-through rates of emails that included videos and those that relied solely on text and graphics, the results showed an unbelievable 300% rate of increase in click-throughs!
If you’d like to learn more about explainer videos, go ahead and download our ebook!
