Video marketing for e-commerce: all you need to know

Summary

The decisive boost to improve the usability and effectiveness of your e-commerce is, without any doubt, video. In this post, we will analyze the main benefits and best strategies of video marketing for e-commerce. 

The importance of e-commerce

E-commerce has never been more important than it is today, for companies of all sizes and in almost every industry. The pandemic has only accelerated this trend. 

Of course, it’s not enough to have a well-designed and technically efficient e-commerce storefront: it’s of little use if you don’t have a solid marketing strategy to bring users to these platforms, to make sure that they come back often, that they are able to easily  make purchases, and, perhaps, that they feel like coming back to buy from you again. 

All of these results can be achieved with the right mix of digital marketing tools. But where to start? Or, rather, what digital marketing tools guarantee the best performance? 

The answer to these questions leaves no room for doubt: video is the most effective tool. Why? 

This is exactly what we will focus on in the continuation of this post, which is all about video marketing for e-commerce. We have structured it in two parts. 

In the first, we isolated and listed the five main benefits of video marketing for e-commerce, supporting it with data. 

In the second, we point you to the three best practices that underlie the best strategies. 

The benefits of video marketing for e-commerce 

Without getting lost in further preamble, let’s proceed in order and start with the five main benefits. 

1) Capture attention 

Digital marketers know how complex the challenge of capturing the attention of online users has become. In fact, we are all constantly bombarded by stimuli, coming at us from the most diverse sources and through different devices. 

Video is the best tool for meeting this challenge and for a very simple reason: it is the digital media that meets people’s preferences. The one that we are used to. The data says so: 

• By the end of this year, video will make up 82% of total Internet traffic. In 2017 the percentage was already very high, at 73%, and the growth has been strong and all the more so after the stages of the Covid-19 pandemic (source: cisco.com). 
• By the end of 2021, there were about 2.3 billion monthly active users on YouTube worldwide (source: oberlo.com). 
• More than 1 billion hours of video are viewed daily, also on YouTube (source: oberlo.com). 

In conclusion, here are two figures related to the topic of attention: 

• 55% of people pay more attention when approaching videos than any other type of content (source: omnikick.com).  
• 85% of marketers say video is the best way to get attention online (source: animoto.com). 

2)  The ease of conveying your messages 

There is no need to dwell on this point, which we know very well. When we watch videos, we’re able to understand the messages they contain more quickly, memorably, and comprehensively than in any other type of media. 

Again, let’s repeat this with three pieces of data that need no further comment: 

• When viewing a video, the average user retains 95% of the message it contains; if we are talking about text, this drops to 10% (source: covideo.com). 
• 94% of marketers say that videos have consistently helped customers understand their products or services (source: hubspot.com). 
• 66% of people prefer to watch a video to get information about a product or service. Only 18% prefer a text post (source: elitecontentmarketer.com). 

3) Increasing the conversion rate 

After capturing users’ attention and getting the right information about your products or services across in the most engaging and understandable way, here we come to an absolutely crucial step: that of conversion. 

After all, this is the transition from the communication and storytelling stages to those focused on the actual sale. 

How valuable is video in this delicate and decisive step? 

• Marketers noticed a 34% increase in conversion rates when videos were added to their campaigns (source: explain.ninja) 

4) Improved brand awareness 

Among the benefits of video marketing for e-commerce we have the direct ones related to communication effectiveness and sales of products or services. 

It’s also very important to remember the more indirect benefits, which are no less decisive. 

Among these indirect benefits, the central role is undoubtedly played by brand awareness, i.e., everything you can put on track to make your brand recognizable and “desirable”…and, consequently, your own campaigns related to individual products or services. 

Also for this side, there is no better tool than video, because of the possibility of exploiting different communicative levels at the same time: graphics, music, text, animations, live actors, calls to action.  

Knowing how to properly adjust all of these ingredients allows you to stand out from the others, to find your own immediately recognizable and memorable tone of voice.

5) The possibilities of upselling and cross-selling

• Upselling processes increase a company’s revenue by an average range of 10% to 30% (source: Forrester Research) 
• The odds of up-selling products or services to an existing customer are 60 to 70%. The odds of selling a product or service to a new customer are in the range of 5 to 20% (source: Altfeld). 

These two figures are enough to demonstrate how important upselling and cross-selling processes are, especially if we are talking about e-commerce. 

To aim for these goals, again, there is no better ally than video. It allows you to offer consumers advice in a way that is engaging, non-invasive, and – most importantly – without the need for too much explanation. And it is all based on the characteristics of different target audiences and their previous choices: this is personalization, which we will focus on in one of the next points related to the best video marketing strategies for e-commerce. 

Best practices behind the best strategies 

In the second part of this post, we will isolate the best practices behind the best video marketing strategies for e-commerce. In this case, the list is divided into 3 points. 

1) Adapting videos to different platforms 

For this first point, the key word is omnichannel. 

So: video campaigns should be optimized, technically, based on the type of device from which they are viewed. And this is the basic level. 

It’s even more important to adapt both technical and stylistic aspects based on the different platforms through which the videos will be distributed. 

Think, for example, of the differences between a video uploaded directly to the company’s website, a video distributed via email, and a video posted on social media…and then, even deeper: a video for TikTok is very different from one for Facebook. And so on. 

So, it’s a matter of knowing how to adapt to different contexts without losing unity of tone of voice and recognizability. A matter of delicate balances. 

2) Know your audience to build personalized videos 

Let’s face it, this is the most important point. In fact, there is no such thing as a perfect video marketing campaign. 

But there is a secret that is as old as commerce itself: know your customers and target them in a diverse and personalized way. 

But how is this possible when we are talking about e-commerce and very large numbers? It’s thanks to the collection and analysis of Big Data. 

Gathering this information allows companies to have a detailed picture of their audience, its characteristics, and therefore its needs and desires. To put it another way: it allows them to no longer have a single, undifferentiated target, as many micro-targets as there are individuals. 

From this knowledge, you can start to create real personalized, one-to-one, and constantly updated marketing campaigns. And if personalization is combined with the tool of video, here the revolution is complete! 

This revolution has a specific name: personalized video. Personalized video for digital marketing is handled by specialized companies such as Babelee.

3) Recalibrate for continuous improvement 

Earlier, we pointed out that there is no perfect video marketing campaign for everyone, but there are campaigns that can perfectly adapt to the characteristics of the individual recipient. In short, in the midst of the hubbub, it is not a matter of shouting louder, but of getting closer and closer to individuals to establish a real, intimate dialog. 

But that’s not all. Even when we talk about personalized video marketing, one of the most important and delicate moments is the analysis of results. 

This is the stage where you try to understand what worked and what didn’t, investigating the whys. Again, your main ally is analytics. Video, in particular, produces data that, technically, is referred to as high granularity. 

It’s a matter of knowing how best to interpret the information, and, based on it, recalibrating your strategies and fixing what doesn’t work. In this way, you’re triggering a spiral of continuous improvement, with benefits for both the company and the customer. 

It’s win-win perspective that is also the real boost of any video marketing for e-commerce strategy.