Video content is everywhere, and its importance for marketing constantly grows. According to statistics, 50% of Americans who use the internet watch online videos on a daily basis. Cisco expects video content to account for 82% of the overall web traffic by 2021. The popularity of video content is due to its convenience. Videos allow you to convey a lot of information within a limited time, they are easy to consume and more engaging than other types of marketing content.
Videos are emotional. Therefore, they are not only interesting for viewers but they also enable companies to establish strong relationships with their audience. Marketers understand how many benefits video content offers for businesses, however, this sort of content is also associated with certain challenges. For example, it gets harder to organically include calls to action. The role of a call to action in video marketing is as important as in other types of digital marketing. It should connect your viewers’ experience and action, guiding them to the next step of the customer journey.
People get marketing messages every day, from everywhere. As a result, they stop paying attention to advertisements and often experience decision fatigue. Calls to action provide your prospects with clear instructions on what they have to do next, eliminating confusion and making the user journey clear. While your video content creates excitement and intrigue, a CTA allows viewers to get closer to your brand, becoming customers.
If you want to keep your audience engaged, you have to produce fresh content all the time. However, even high-quality content will be useless if it doesn’t have a particular purpose. A call to action in video marketing is aimed at making every piece of content meaningful, making it a part of your marketing plan.
Another important purpose of CTAs is increasing your audience. “Click Like and subscribe to our channel,” “Follow us on Facebook,” and other CTAs of this kind are as important as more strong CTAs, such as “Submit payment.” However, you should also be able to use CTAs in a way that will not distract your viewers or be annoying. Fortunately, video platforms allow you to use different kinds of CTAs.
For example, a viral video by Coldplay and the cast of Game of Thrones includes a textual call to action at the very beginning, urging viewers to donate to Red Nose Day Charity. When the video ends, viewers also hear a CTA and see a clickable button that leads them to a donation page.
Using CTAs at the end of a video is also a great approach. If your viewers like the video, a CTA tells them what they can do next. The end screen is also a perfect place to ask your viewers to subscribe to your channel so that they can see more content like this. Here is an example of a good end screen with a creative call to action from Dollar Shave Club:
There are many tools that allow marketers to make their video ads interactive and more engaging. Such tools can help you tailor your videos to different marketing goals with no need to create a new video for every specific call to action. For example, YouTube offers Cards that can demonstrate a service or product within a video or promote other videos in order to increase engagement. On this platform, you can also create end screens.
TrueView ads allow you to link a Merchant Center account and show details about your products. TrueView also enables you to add a CTA overlay or a headline overlay to lead your viewers to your website. Another feature of such video ads is end-screens that are generated automatically, providing your audience with a necessary CTA.
A call to action in video marketing allows you to make your marketing strategy more effective, explaining what your viewers should do if they like your video and so eliminating confusion. Properly chosen CTAs allow for creating consistent marketing content that will guide your prospects through every step of the customer journey, increasing engagement and expanding your reach. We recommend that you use different kinds of CTAs, integrating them into your videos naturally and tailoring your messages to various purposes. Calls to action are crucial for every marketing campaign, so don’t be afraid to use various CTA-tools offered by video platforms, making your viewers’ experience more meaningful.
Author Bio: Ester Brierley is a QA Engineer and a seasoned content creator. She knows the secret for balancing freelancing as a virtual assistant for College-Writers and her full-time job in a software outsourcing company. Follow her on Twitter @esterbrierley.
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