As technology continues to advance (and high-speed Internet connections become more affordable all the time), one recent marketing trend has picked up an incredible amount of steam in the last few years: live video.
We’ve reached the point where even the social networks are getting in on the game – Facebook Live is incredibly popular, and over the last year Twitter has even released new features that allow people to watch everything from breaking news to sporting events right from their computer screens.
There’s just something appealing about a live broadcast – both from the perspective of “anything can happen” and the immediacy that it brings with it. When something is live, you get the impression that it is only going to happen once – even if that isn’t necessarily true. People think to themselves “I’d better tune into this now and make time in my schedule because I’m not going to get a chance to see it if I miss it.”
This sentiment is absolutely one that you can leverage to your advantage if you know what you’re doing.
Live video marketing has a number of interesting implications for marketers in particular that are more than worth exploring.
Live Video Marketing: By the Numbers
According to one recent study, a massive 81% of both general Internet and mobile audiences consumed more live video content in 2016 than they did in 2015. Though current statistics are not available just yet, it seems that trend is one that is poised to continue in 2017 and beyond.
One of the most important things to understand is that live video is simply more appealing to brand audiences than most other types of content. 80% of people who responded to a survey said that they would rather watch a live video from a brand than read a blog, for example, even if those two pieces of collateral were essentially conveying the same information. 82% said that they even preferred live video from a brand over standard social posts.
In terms of live video on social networks, Facebook Live appears to be the current king of the pack. Searches for Facebook Live streams have risen in popularity by over 330% since the service’s rollout. Between January and May of 2016 alone, Facebook saw a massive 300% increase in live videos from media companies (and marketers like you) that continues to grow as time goes on.
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Live Video Marketing Best Practices
Maybe the most important thing to understand about live video marketing is that just because something is “live” doesn’t mean you can sacrifice on quality. A full 67% of people who responded to a survey said that quality is actually the most important factor that they look for when watching a live stream. So if you think you can get away with poor lighting or low production values just because the novelty of a “live” recording will carry you through to the finish line, you are sadly mistaken.
But the real way to unlock success in terms of live video marketing has to do with what happens when the live recording itself is over.
The usefulness of the event as a piece of marketing collateral doesn’t end just because the stream does – there are actually a wide range of different techniques that you can use to help stretch your return on investment even further.
If your live recording was a long one that covered a huge number of topics, for example, consider breaking it up into smaller chunks and placing that collateral online. You can break the video into bite-sized morsels and get it ready for social sharing.
You can even use a service like Uscreen to sell those videos online. Uscreen is a simple and easy-to-use video monetization tool that can allow you to re-purpose that live content and sell it as subscriptions, for a fixed price or even as rentals depending on what would appeal the most to your audience.
You can even take some of the content covered in the live video and use it as the basis for additional collateral creation. You could use a tool like Visme (which I founded) to create an Infographic that will essentially allow you to “visualize” that live recording in another medium.
Your message is important, regardless of how it is conveyed. Maybe someone doesn’t have time to watch an hour video but if you take all of the important points that you covered and convert them into an Infographic you can still reach these people and give them more options at the same time.
You could even create a presentation to go alongside that video – think of it as supplementary material or a bit like the “special features” on a DVD or Blu-ray.
Maybe your host didn’t cover certain topics in as much detail as you would have liked due to time constraints. Create a presentation with all of that supplementary information and allow people to follow along with the live recording for an additional layer of interactivity and engagement.
In the End
Live video marketing is absolutely not going anywhere anytime soon – if anything, recent studies have pointed to the fact that it is only going to get more important as time goes on. Make no mistake: if you and your brand are not already at least experimenting with what live video can do for you, now is an excellent time to start.
By focusing on these and other best practices for video marketing, you put yourself in the best possible position to not only succeed in terms of the live broadcast itself but to also increase that return on investment as far as it will go long after the broadcast is over as well.
6 comments. Leave new
Video marketing is indeed becoming huge everyday, and I’m sure it’ll continue to be like that for years to come. The statistics already said it all.
Live video marketing is one area I’ve not really paid attention to, and I think I should really look into it as I already know there’s a lot to benefit from it.
Thanks for sharing.
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Visme is an awesome tool in the market. I use it quite frequently along with Canva. These tools makes the info graphic creation easy as never before. High graphics which could also be use to make multiple things… Sky is the limit!
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