The marketing and content landscapes have drastically changed in recent times. The world has moved to digital, and so are customer-facing marketing strategies. Videos have become a crucial aspect of the marketing strategies due to the change in content-preferences of customers. According to a survey by Wyzowl, 86% of the businesses surveyed use video as a marketing tool, and 93% of marketers who use video say that it’s an important part of their marketing strategy.

When it comes to videos, YouTube is undoubtedly a go-to place, and hence, it has amassed more than 2 billion users worldwide. According to the statistics, 300 hours of video content gets uploaded on YouTube every 60 seconds. More than a billion hours of videos are watched on YouTube every day.

So let me ask you this- have you been using videos as a marketing tool for your business? If not, then below are the reasons you should! This article also covers the importance of video editing and the ways you could edit the videos.

Why are videos important?

Easier to consume:

There is no doubt that people prefer watching videos to reading text, and several statistical pieces of evidence suggest the same:

- 69% of people prefer video over text when learning about a product or service.

(Wyzowl)

- Statistics show that almost 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every day.

- YouTube gets more than 30 million visitors per day

- The majority of the YouTube views come from mobile, and the average time spent on mobile watching YouTube Videos is more than 40 minutes.

Video appeals to 2 senses: auditory sense and visual sense compared to only visual sense getting used while reading text. Studies have shown that people would prefer watching a video rather than reading a text (like a blog post) from a brand. Videos have proven to be more effective than text, and hence, video marketing has witnessed a boom in recent times.

Enhances Engagement:

Apart from the visual and auditory appeal, videos are proven better at appealing to emotions. With videos, a storyline can be effectively used to convey your brand’s story. The tonality, language, and several other aspects of a video give a personality to your brand. Since videos are effective in triggering emotions, it encourages social shares by the viewers. Thus, increasing the brand outreach. According to the data by Brightcove, Videos get 1200% more shares than text and images combined.

According to data by Content Marketing Institute, people are about 10 times more likely to engage with video content by embedding, sharing, or commenting compared to a blog post or a social media post.

Search Engine preference:

YouTube is the second largest search engine worldwide, behind its parent company Google. Having a video uploaded on YouTube increases your brand’s search engine visibility. Data shows that a Video drives a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines.

Assists branding efforts:

A video facilitates longer retention & recall and thereby, it assists the branding efforts. Data shows that the viewers retain 95% of a message watched in a video compared to 10% after reading a text. If your video can effectively trigger emotions amongst the viewers with your brand’s story, or some valuable information, they would remember and recall your brand for a much longer time compared to reading a text from you.

Boosts Sales:

A survey by Wyzowl on the effectiveness of videos suggests that 84% of the people mentioned that they felt convinced to buy a product or a service by watching a brand’s video. Statistics mentioned by Insivia mention that adding a video on the landing page could increase the conversion rate by 80%.

Hence, if you are looking to use video as a marketing tool, you can be assured of much higher conversion rates compared to other marketing methods.

Budget-friendly:

Creation of video and its editing before publishing can be more economical compared to the investments in other mediums. There are several low-cost ways of shooting/creating and editing the video that can help you save up some amount in your marketing budgets that can be utilized for other branding activities.

Types of YouTube Videos you can create for your business:

Explainer videos:

Explainer videos are created to explain about product or service of a company. These are short videos and are used to explain the features and benefits of a product/service with a call to action. Product demo videos and other types of Marketing and Promotional videos generally fall under ‘Explainer videos’. Certain types of Explainer videos are/can also be used as Video Ads. Statistics by Wyzowl show that 96% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.



Educational ‘How-to’ videos:

The Educational or “How to” videos are created with the objective of training or sharing some valuable information on a subject with the viewers. The “How to” videos are among the most popular types of videos watched on YouTube.

Case Studies:

A video with the case studies of people benefiting from your product/service is as important to be shared with customers as it is for your organization. A video (probably an animated video) describing the reasons for the success (or failure) of the product/service would not only give the viewer an insight into the reasons for purchase but would also create a sense of trust for your brand.

Testimonial videos:

Videos with the testimonials of people are vital for better sales conversion. When thinking to buy or not buying your product/service, the customers look for proof of the benefits from the people who have used the product or experienced your service. Data by Vendasta states that 88% of consumers say that reviews and testimonials influence their purchase decision. Hence, promoting more testimonial videos would help increase trust among the potential buyers and help increase sales.

Behind the Scenes:

While watching your brand video, people look for authenticity. The ‘Behind the scenes’ videos are increasingly becoming popular. For example, a ‘Behind the Scene’ video of a movie scene attracts a lot of viewers. Similarly, ‘Behind the Scene’ videos of your brand, casually taken images of employees’, hard work, struggles, successes, teamwork, manufacturing process, etc. go a long way in creating a sense of trust among the potential buyers.

Company Updates:

Your customers look forward to news or an update from your company. You can keep your customers updated about the progress in the development of a product, events, and any other major update through a video or a Live Video.



What is Video editing? Why is it important?

Video Editing is the process of rearranging and combining the raw footage and refining it according to the desired flow to create an output of a video you would like viewers to watch. It is considered a post-production work as the execution happens after all the video footages are collected.

Depending on the type of video, it may take a few hours or a few days to accomplish it for a short video. For movies, this may take months or sometimes years to complete.

Here are the reasons you should opt for Video Editing before uploading a video on YouTube:

Importance of YouTube Video Editing:

Facilitates smoother transitions:

Raw footage might contain clips with several shots taken at different locations, people, times of the day, etc. In the video editing process, these footages are combined, the gaps between them are removed to give a smoother transition into the clips.

Helps remove unnecessary elements:

The raw footage may have many shots that require removal- from bloopers to some scene elements that might require removal. The video editing process takes care of this.

Addition of intro and outro:

Generally, a video contains three parts: Intro, Main content, Outro. An Intro is a clip that appears at the beginning of the videos showcasing who you are/what your brand is. It is an important element of the video to let the viewers get an idea of who you are, and connect better with the video. A YouTube Intro generally consists of a clip with a set of images, or an animated logo of your brand. YouTube Intro animations are easy to create, and you can do it by yourself using online tools or hire a freelancer who can do it for you.

The Outro generally consists of a ‘Call to Action’ asking the viewers to either subscribe to your channel, your social media links for them to connect with you, links to your other videos, or asking them to take any other desired action.

Create a proper flow of the video:

Editing a video before posting on YouTube helps in making the video smooth and organized. The major purpose of editing is to create a proper flow in the video in accordance with the set brand objectives. The video should speak, what the brand wants to convey.

Addition of Audio:

The process of adding sound, effects might not fall into ‘Video editing’ at a larger scale like movies. But it generally forms a part of video editing in general, for shorter videos. Hence, in this article, we are being flexible with the terminology.

For the videos of your brand, there might be a requirement to add some sounds, a voiceover, and other effects like Fade n/Fade Out, Blurring that enhance the quality of the video. The video editing process helps accomplish this.

Add Meta tags, Description, Video title, & upload:

If you want your video to be found on YouTube, the Meta Tags, Description, and Title of the video are of utmost importance. They should be aligned with what your brand wants to convey, and the keywords you would like your video to be found for. The right set of Meta Tags, descriptions, and titles can go a long way in making the video popular.

Additionally, Video Editing also involves other elements like Trimming, Color corrections, Frame cropping, and adjustments of Exposures that make a video upload-ready.

Ways to edit the videos?



Video Editing requires time and patience. It also requires technical know-how about several aspects of a video and decision-making. A video from a brand/business is a representation of its quality. Anything that might make the video look amateur, would give the same feeling about your brand to the viewers. Hence, Editing your business video before posting on YouTube is pivotal. It can be accomplished in two ways: Hiring a Freelancer or DIY.

1. Hiring a Freelancer:

The best way to get the video editing done, if you are not a specialist, is by hiring a freelancer who is an expert in the domain. A platform that stands out in facilitating the hire of freelancers for several business requirements is Fiverr. Hiring Freelancers from Fiverr for your YouTube Video Editing is quite simple:

- Visit Fiverr.com

- Scroll down and click on the ‘Video & Animation’ option

- From the menu that appears, choose ‘Video Editing’

- You will be able to see thousands of gigs of freelancers ready to help you with YouTube Video Editing

- Scan & choose the best according to your requirement and budget

2. DIY:

If you are well-versed with using video editing software and confident about the quality of your editing, then you can do it by yourself. There are several video editing software available to assist you in your endeavor. Some of the software are iMovie, Windows Moviemaker, DaVinci Resolve, Camtasia, Adobe Premiere Pro, Filmora, and Lightworks among others. The functionality of each of these software varies, hence you need to choose the best that works for you.

Conclusion:

With the wide popularity of the videos, Video marketing now plays a pivotal role in brand outreach. Statistics by Animoto show that Video ads were the no.1 way the consumers discovered a brand and then purchased from it later. An average visitor on YouTube checks out 8.89 pages per day, proving the higher retention of YouTube Users. The videos on your YouTube channel, if done well, can go a long way in creating a wider brand outreach.

The quality of your videos would play a fundamental role in driving traffic to your brand. Hence, uploading a quality-edited video becomes of utmost importance. If you are keen on doing it yourself or in-house, that works fine, but if you aren’t an expert at YouTube Video Editing and do not have an in-house resource, it is recommended to hire a freelancer on Fiverr who is an expert at it.





Image Credits:

Image 1: Photo by Freestocks.org from StockSnap

Image 3: Photo by rawpixel.com from PxHere

Image 4: DaleshTV, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Image 5: Photo by Jakob Owens from StockSnap Image 6: Fiverr