There’s no way around it: Any business that wants to elevate its marketing strategy must get serious about video marketing. The latest video trends suggest that soon, the majority of consumable content on the internet will be in the form of video.

So how do you create and incorporate engaging video content into your marketing strategy and not get left in the dust wondering why no one’s engaging with your static, text-only page? Let’s take a look at a few predictions for the future of video marketing to help ensure that your content is well made and well marketed moving forward in a competitive marketplace.

Authenticity Is Everything

According to Appnovation, authenticity is one of six major trends impacting the future of brand survival. Authenticity just means portraying your brand accurately. By presenting your brand’s true culture and values, you’re creating trust between you and your customer. If you don’t appear authentic in your marketing efforts, no one will want to engage with your brand.

The distance and boundaries between brands and their customers is slowly closing. Today, people expect a personalized experience that feels real. If they don’t get it, they have the option of taking their business elsewhere.

With so many options available, people today are more and more likely to seek out a personal relationship with a brand that feels authentic. Being authentic could be as simple as replying to customer comments on social media channels, personalizing newsletters, and using video to show the people behind the brand.

By presenting yourself as a real person talking to other real people, you’re giving consumers a reason to choose you and your service over everyone else in a vast and overwhelming sea of options. Authenticity is essential for being successful in the future of video marketing.

Living In a Livestreamed World

Livestreaming has become an extremely popular form of video marketing. With many tools available to make it a quick and easy process and more being developed every day, livestreaming is likely to continue to be an effective way for companies to incorporate video into their marketing efforts in the future.

Apps like Zoom and Crowdcast, as well as social media features like Facebook Live and going live on Instagram, make it easy to record and stream video in real time, helping your customers and audience feel more connected to you. As more and more consumers take advantage of livestreaming, they’ll want to see the brands they support doing the same.

Livestreaming is a great way to interact with your audience. Be sure to define a clear goal before going live so that you’re aware of your livestreaming objective. Maybe you want to answer customer questions about a new product, or inform your network of a new project or venture. Whatever the purpose, livestreaming can help get the word out.

The Importance of Interaction in Video Marketing

People are no longer satisfied with simply reading text on a page. They want to engage on the internet. Luckily for marketers and businesses, new technology is making it possible to engage creatively and dynamically in new ways every day. This technology can help you come up with creative ways to interact with and personalize your content. The more you do this, the more audiences will respond.

Chatbots that pop up when you visit a webpage provide a personal customer service option, for example, while the use of artificial intelligence and virtual reality create compelling ways to engage with a website, from virtual online stores to personalized shopping experiences.

Companies are even using virtual reality to study their audiences and conduct research.

“It has been found that shoppers make approximately 70% of their brand decisions when they are already inside the store,” says Rutgers University. “Some wait until the last minute to decide … A lot of factors influence their choices. Accurate simulation is required to conduct reliable research. VR technologies can provide this accuracy.”

It’s clear that the appeal and application of video marketing is beginning to go beyond customer interaction. Companies are likely to take advantage of this trend in the future and utilize video paired with new technology to carry out market research that will better their companies.

Closed Captioning/Subtitles

The only thing worse than not having a video marketing strategy is creating great video content and not optimizing it for SEO. What good is a great video if no one sees it? Spoiler alert: No good at all. There are many things you can to do increase the visibility of your content, from keyword research to link building.

Using subtitles or closed captioning is one trend in video marketing that’s predicted to continue and that can help your content get more engagement. When text appears on a video screen, users are getting information from the video regardless of whether they have the sound on or off.

Prioritizing Video

It’s no secret that marketing directors have the difficult job of always staying up to date on the latest and greatest practices and collaborating with other departments to achieve success for a brand or service. And marketers can’t be savvy unless they place video media at the forefront of their content marketing strategy.

By prioritizing your efforts to address the predicted importance of authenticity, immersive interaction, livestreaming, subtitles, and personalization in video marketing, your company or brand will surely feel a positive impact.

Avery-Taylor Phillips

Avery T. Phillips is a freelance human being with too much to say. She loves nature and examining human interactions with the world. Comment or tweet her @a_taylorian with any questions or suggestions.

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