Stepping up Your Video Marketing Game: The Top Video Marketing Trends of 2022
Video is taking over more and more of our Internet time. According to the Digital Marketing Institute, the average person watches 1.5 hours of video every day.
That’s good news for marketers. In the same survey, 76% of marketers reported that video helped them increase sales for their companies.
Video can do the same for your company. Here are just some of the top video marketing trends you can take advantage of today that will help turn 2022 into your most successful digital marketing year yet.
First, we’ll look at some of the types of videos you can create for your company. Then we’ll look at how these videos are getting made in 2022 and what it is about them that makes them hot.
Types of Videos
There are so many different ways you can use video to build your business online that it’s not hard to see why video itself is one of the hottest digital marketing trends in 2022. Each video you make should try to fill only one of these video types to be the most successful it can be:
- Branding videos: tell a story about why your company is the best
- Promotional videos: show how a product or service will solve a particular need
- Training videos: teach someone how to use your product or service or how to do business with you
- Testimonial videos: build third-party credibility for your products and company
- TV commercials: reuse and repurpose TV spots on the Internet
- Explainer videos: dig deeper into the reasons to use a product or the benefits of doing something a certain way
Of course, even if you try to keep each video separate from the rest, there will be some overlap. That video you created to explain how to install your product may wind up convincing someone to buy it.
It could wind up being both a training and promotional video, but if you set out to create a video that does both, you decrease your chances of doing either really well.
Video Marketing Trends
Production technologies are where we’re seeing the biggest trendsetting changes in video today. The most common denominator does seem to be the capabilities of a smartphone.
Smartphones have replaced whole studios full of equipment for production of some types of videos. It’s the increase in production values and capabilities that are propelling the popularity of other types.
Live Video
Live streaming on Facebook, Instagram, and now LinkedIn continues to grow in popularity. Cisco predicts that live video will account for 13% of all video traffic by 2020. Considering that Facebook Live just launched in 2016, this is unprecedented growth.
Live video promotes your brand as authentic and approachable. Because there is the “anything can happen” quality to your live stream, audiences trust these videos more and stay tuned to them longer than prerecorded videos.
They’re economical for a company to produce two ways. First, there are no real “production” costs associated. Normally these are just a person talking into the camera.
While some sales made during a live stream or live video webinar undoubtedly stem from FOMO (fear of missing out), recordings of the video do still exist on the platform, so there is residual value as well.
Storytelling
No one likes to be “sold,” but we all love a good story. No matter what type of video you are creating, if you use storytelling to get your point across, you should see better results.
This was proven in an anthropological experiment in 2012. Items that had been purchased for an average $1.25 at a garage sale were sold on eBay for up to $8,000 as a result of the story that was told about the item.
How we tell those stories has been adapted to fit new social networks. A good story still needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. Now, however, those pieces can be broken up in a Snap Chat story or flow from a Facebook teaser ad to a YouTube video.
Square and Vertical Shapes
For a while, it seemed we were headed toward a standard online video format. The 16:9 wide horizontal video looked like a winner.
Then came mobile-first web design and development and the rise of square images on Instagram. Most people do hold their phones vertically most of the time, but those horizontal videos do not look good when viewed vertically.
Square videos already work on Instagram and Facebook. YouTube is making adaptations to improve the display of square and vertical videos there, so this is one you can expect to pick up steam as the year progresses.
360-Degree Videos
Panoramic, or 360-degree videos, are also gaining traction. These videos are shot with one or more cameras shooting in every direction simultaneously. Unless they are displayed on several screens set up in a sphere, much of the depth is lost.
Enough depth and dimension remain for these videos to be particularly popular in travel, real estate, and experience videos. Augmented reality videos are also moving into high-end product promotions. As the technology matures, we can expect to see their use increase.
Textural Elements
Increases in the ability to mix text and video together are blurring still more lines. Closed captioning and subtitles are helping Google make more sense of video content, which is, in turn, ensuring more videos show up in search results.
Other uses of text in videos, like annotations or live links, are allowing marketers to use video as a more pivotal piece of the sales funnel.
Explainer Videos
Explainer videos as a type of marketing video began to emerge shortly after infographics proved popular. They are also one of the hottest trends to watch in 2021 because of the way they are produced.
The idea of breaking complex information into bite-sized nuggets with engaging visuals is an ideal use for animation, which has been a staple of video production for nearly 100 years. However, new tools are emerging daily that make it easier for ordinary people to put together stunning graphical stories that explain how or when or why to do something.
Putting It All Together
It’s easy to see why video is has captured the imagination and attention of the Internet and why so many companies are planning on investing more into producing videos for their business.
What’s not so easy to see all the time is just how you should put each of these video marketing trends to work for you. Should you start with a brand story video? What should you talk about on a Live Stream video?
One place to start is to check out these examples of how other companies are using video to help vision meet viral.