5 Reasons Why Video Is More Effective than Text

Video marketing isn’t easy, but when done well there’s no better way to convert viewers into customers. Over 70% of marketers claim that video produces more conversions than any other content. That is because video is more engaging, more memorable, drives more traffic, and holds almost every other advantage over text.

With its high conversion rate and ever-growing popularity, video content is overtaking written text as the preferred medium of marketing. The average consumer watches roughly 206 videos a month, and 59% of senior executives said that if both text and video are available on the same topic, they are more likely to choose video. The video marketing takeover is inevitable, so let’s take a look at the numbers behind what’s making it so successful.

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1. Videos Grab Peoples Attention

When you running digital ads, half the battle is getting people to look at them. Think about what grabs your attention when you’re scrolling through a website. Is it a bland, generic text ad or a magnet-like video? Your eyes are attracted to movement, so the movement that videos produce naturally draws peoples attention.

Video ads also pique interest more than a standard static ad. People are over 27 times more likely to click on an online video ad than a static banner ad.

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2. Videos Engage Viewers

Not only do videos grab people’s attention, they keep it. Videos are one of the most engaging mediums you can use. They strike a deep connection and illicit strong emotional responses that make people want to share, comment, and like. Videos get 1,200% more shares than text and images combined. People love sharing content on social media and more importantly: people love sharing videos.

If made right, videos can take information and make it easy to interpret in a short amount of time. It’s been said (wryly we think) that one-minute video is worth to 1.8 million words.

Your brain can also process visuals much quicker than it can text. About 90% of the total information transmitted to your brain is visual. On top of that, your brain can process these visuals 60,000 times faster than text. The human brain is not only more used to seeing visuals but is also better at interpreting them.

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3. Videos Drive More Traffic to Your Website

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: videos are great for SEO. A video can bring as much benefit to your site regarding SEO as multiple web pages. Companies that use videos on their websites have 41% more web traffic from searches then sites that don’t use video at all. Video also drives organic traffic up by 157%. You can also take advantage of this increased traffic by placing videos on the landing pages of your website. Embedding videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 80%.

Search engines are taking videos more into account and ranking them higher than ever before. When people share your video or link back to your web page, it creates an inbound link. Inbound links are an important factor in your SEO ranking. The more inbound links your site has, the more authoritative your site looks to Google.

Also, videos are more likely to be shared and in turn, generate more inbound links. Because of this, videos are 45 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google than text results.

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4. Videos are Memorable and Improve Brand Recall

Have you ever found yourself reading an entire page of a book and all of a sudden realizing that you have no idea what you just read? You then have to waste time going back to re-read something that you’ve already seen before. This phenomenon is called regression. Regression can be frustrating when reading written text, but videos almost eliminate it entirely.

Studies show that viewers retain 95% of a video’s message compared to 10% when reading text. Also, according to Hubspot, 80% of customers remember a video they viewed in the past month. Videos allow you to package the information you’re trying to get across into a short narrative that will engage viewers in a way that text can’t. This makes them more memorable because people are far more likely to remember a story than a list of facts.

Using video also plays into the strengths of the majority of the population. Most people need visual aids to learn, and 65% of people consider themselves to be visual learners. Videos accommodate this learning style and help people retain information better than they would a large wall of text.

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5. Videos Help Increase Buying Intent

The success of any marketing campaign is based on conversions, or in other words: how many people bought or expressed interest in your product or service. Videos do a great job of pushing customers closer and closer to purchase. A positive experience from a customer with a video ad can increase purchase intent by 97%. Also, 64% of customers are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video about it.

While you can increase your conversion rate by using video marketing, you can’t just make any video and stick it out there hoping for favorable results. Your video needs to plug into your buyer’s pain points, presenting your product as the compelling solution to the pain. But if done well, video is more effective than text in communicating marketing messages.