Video is the most engaging type of content: Find out why

Summary

The world of digital communication today is full of opportunities to be exploited. The main challenge for companies and brands is twofold: to gain the attention of potential customers in an ecosystem of constant media bombardment and to maintain loyalty in an increasingly fluid and accelerated market.

This is a dual challenge that starts from engagement, from the ability of brands to involve people, their customers.

A formidable weapon for overcoming this dual challenge is video, the type of digital content that guarantees the best results in terms of effectiveness (and the data speaks for itself). Video is the most engaging type of content.

The ultimate boost? Personalized videos: videos that are built based on the characteristics of the recipients, their preferences, and choices.

Digital Transformation changes the rules

Digital Transformation has forever and radically changed the face of the world in which we all live, socialize, and work.

It is a real and permanent revolution that offers new possibilities, new opportunities all to be seized, every day.

If we focus on the world of business, we can describe the digital revolution in this way: the starting point is Big Data, or rather the enormous amount of information that remains online; data that can (and must) be collected, unbundled, analyzed, and interpreted by companies in all productive sectors, in an omnichannel and dynamic manner.

The point of arrival, on the other hand, is made up of people, of individuals who, never before, are truly at the center of business, of businesses of all kinds, and this is not just a slogan.

In a previous post“How can personalization build customer loyalty”,we focused on an element that is a fundamental and primary objective for every company today: Customer Loyalty.

As emerged from a well-known study by Bain & Company, gaining a new customer costs 6 to 7 times more than retaining one (bain.com). This figure alone is enough to understand the decisive importance of loyalty.

But where does the path that leads to loyalty begin?

Simple: from the proximity to individual customers, from a company’s ability to generate engagement. Therefore, from communication that is as effective as possible, capable of attracting attention… in a world where attention is an increasingly precious commodity.

In the digital world there is a medium, a tool that can guarantee this type of result more than any other.

We’re talking about video. And that’s what we’ll focus on in this post.

The power of video – Data that leaves no room for doubt

Why is video the most engaging type of content?

Video is the king of digital content in terms of its ability to capture attention, and its ability to boost the rate of engagement, circulation, the effectiveness of communication, and the benefit for sales.

But don’t just take it from us; there is plenty of data to confirm it. Let’s take a look.

• Today, about 82% of all internet traffic is generated by video. In 2017, this was 72.3% (source: Cisco Annual Internet Report).
• More than 1 billion hours of video are viewed each day on YouTube alone (source: YouTube).
• About 100 million hours of video are watched daily on Facebook, a number that is steadily increasing (source: 99firms).
• On Instagram, posts containing videos have a 38% higher average engagement than those containing images (source: Mention.com).
• TikTok is a social network launched in 2016 and based entirely on micro-videos. Its growth has been impressive: according to the most recent data, there are now more than 800 million monthly active users (source: ScreenRant)
• Overall, 78% of online users watch at least one video every week. As many as 55% watch one video every day (source: HubSpot).

These are very telling figures, no doubt about it. But now let’s focus on the attention front, with more numbers that leave little room for doubt:

• 55% of people pay more attention the moment they approach video than any other type of content (source: Omnikick).
• When viewing a video, the average user retains 95% of the message it contains; if we’re talking about text, this percentage drops to 10% (source: Insivia).

It’s only natural that all of this is reflected in video marketing data as well. Experts in the field have been aware of this for some time now, as shown by these surveys:

• 85% of marketers consider video the best tool for attracting attention online (source: Animoto).
• 87% of marketers use video in their strategies (source: Wyzowl).
• 88% of marketers are satisfied with the ROI generated by video marketing campaigns (source: Wyzowl).
• According to 97% of marketers, video is essential to ensure that customers have a better understanding of products and services (source: Hubspot).
• Today, 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. The increase from last year was 63% (source: Hubspot).

See our recent article about the most important video marketing statistics and trends to learn more and find out why video is the most engaging type of content.

In short, there’s no room for doubt, we’ve said it from the start. But there is another side of this coin, which we will address in the next section.

The fight for attention? Win it with personalized videos

The other side of the coin is this: The internet is crowded with more and more videos, and more and more companies and brands are relying on video marketing.

The great challenge, therefore, is twofold: it’s about being able to differentiate yourself from the competition and winning the attention of an audience that is constantly bombarded by a wide range of diverse messages.

The good news is that this twofold challenge can be met with a single, cutting-edge tool: personalized videos.

But what are we talking about?

We’re talking about videos that adapt to individual recipients based on their characteristics and their browsing choices. Even when the audience of users is potentially endless.

How is this possible?

Thanks to the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data. But we are no longer talking about Big Data, collected on a large scale. Rather, we are referring to what is known as “Smart Data” or “Deep Data,” data that is focused on the individuals who make up the target in question and who are functional for the needs of communication campaigns.

In short, personalized videos combine the power of the video tool with the ancient effectiveness of personalization, of an intimate, close, one-to-one dialog. That’s why personalized video has been referred to as “the marketing breakthrough that brands need” (Forbes).

There are companies that specialize in building and distributing custom videos, for any type of business. Companies like Babelee.

With Babelee, personalization is complemented by the possibilities of interactivity: we are talking about scenes selected according to the data of each recipient, personalized and dynamic texts and banners, ad-hoc chosen images, personalized voice thanks to text-to-speech technologies, personalized calls to action, pop-ups for in-depth analysis, and useful paths for upselling and cross-sell actions.

All of this turns into a surge in engagement rates, for conversion, and for loyalty.

Translated: an increase in revenue and turnover.

But that’s not all. In fact, another way of using personalized and interactive videos is becoming more and more popular.

Such use is not only aimed at customers, but also at the first real resource of every company: its employees and its collaborators.

To put it another way, personalized videos can become a formidable weapon in the context of B2E (Business to Employee).

We’ll close this article with a quick focus on this topic, which we think is fundamental.

Personalized video and B2E: Watch out for this twist!

“Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

It’s a now-famous quote from Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group empire, certainly one of the most enlightened entrepreneurs of our time.

This quote contains not only a truth but also an indication of the opportunity available, with wide margins to be exploited.

To put it another way: the first resource of any company is its employees. It seems obvious, in words… in deeds, it is much less so. Hence the importance of investing in what is defined as the “Employee Experience“, through a good B2E strategy, i.e. real “internal marketing”, aimed at employees of any level and position.

Also for a good B2E strategy, video is the most engaging type of content.

And even in this delicate field, the most powerful weapon is personalization.

The goals?

1. Improve productivity.
2. Increase company retention rate.

To increase the involvement of the individual employee, making him feel part of the vision and mission of the company, in a conscious and active way.

Improve team spirit.

So, in the final analysis, aim for maximum Loyalty or, to put it even better, Advocacy of all the individuals who are part of a company, maintaining a healthy turnover, which remains low (beyond which, of course, begin the serious problems of economic costs and collapse of efficiency).

This is something absolutely central, especially in our present market that is open, fluid, globalized, and hyper-competitive.

It goes without saying that it’s not “only” a question of retention, it’s also the first step in increasing the external attractiveness (for customers and possible new employees) of a company.

Where do we start, then?

Again, from communication.

Communication that must be in step with the times. It must therefore be cross-channel, capable of modulating itself both on “physical” channels and – above all – on digital ones.

In this period of emergency, triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic and characterized by the enormous diffusion of remote work, we have all experienced how fundamental it is to have fluid and efficient communication through digital channels.

The best recipe?

Once again, personalization. By leveraging the know-how of specialized companies like Babelee, you can put personalized video communications on track for your employees as well.

And there you have it: the individual employee is put at the center of the company’s dynamics. Just as the customer is put at the center of the business.

The virtuous circle of growth is thus triggered.