By: Varun Tikku – WAVIT Copywriter

Video has been exponentially ingrained into a part of everyone’s daily lives, on social media it has had hugely positive effects upon the opinions of consumers. From perception of products and businesses, or decisions on which products they want to buy, video reigns supreme as the best way to shape audience perception. According to Troy Olson, Digital Advertising Manager, and Jeff Loquist, Search Marketing Manager, for ShoppersChoice.com “If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million.” This is not just a good quote; it is backed up by mountains of data from a wide variety of surveys from thousands of consumers.  

Video’s influence doesn’t stop in the digital world, it has also permeated into the physical as an essential service as according to Google, over 55% of global shoppers claim to use online video in store to help with their purchasing decisions. 

Google’s 3 ways video influences shoppers: 

1. It is used as a replacement for a shopping list 

1. It creates more informed customers, which leads to more confident customers 

1. Video reviews heavily influence purchase decisions 

The most influential type of video 

Reviews are the most influential factor in guiding customers’ purchasing preferences, some of the most influential review or ‘how to’ video formats are technology and cooking based videos. According to one study; 62% of customers watch technology videos on YouTube and ‘how to’ content was 9 times more impactful than videos posted by celebrities or influencers. 

Most watched technology videos: 

1. How To – 52% 

1. Product reviews – 26% 

1. Unboxing – 25% 

1. Consumer electronic shows – 9% 

Another study on the effects of video on cooking found that watching videos improved the audience’s understanding of the cooking process, helped in developing new cooking skills and improved their enjoyment of the process. These findings suggest that video is an extremely effective tool in not only promoting motivation and confidence, but also enhancing cooking skills in low skilled people who wish to cook from scratch. 

Reviews seem to be a highly effective method when it comes to customer perception of products but authenticity is what the audience desires most out of its reviewers. 90% claimed that authenticity was the most important factor in their support of brands, which is juxtaposed by the fact that the vast majority of reviews are biased. The authenticity factor has a lot more to do with the perception of authenticity rather than the real deal. 

Users vs brands 

In 2019, 79% of consumers agreed that user generated content had an impact on their purchasing decisions, up from 60% in 2017. Whereas only 13% said that brand generated content impacted their purchasing decisions, with 8% being impacted by influencer generated content. This reinforces the pre-existing view that customers are becoming more informed, the average customer today is far more judicious than the average customer 5 years ago.  

It seems as if the audience has slowly been exhausted by obvious marketing tactics that brands deploy to suggest they buy a certain product in a transparent manner. Due to this, the only way forwards for brands is to focus upon their user engagement to facilitate user led content development. 

How to steer straight through the winds of change 

Nobody can argue against the effectiveness of posting video content on social media, for both brand awareness and increased interconnectivity with your audience. A BrightCove study reported that 74% agree that there is a connection between what they watch on social media and their purchasing preferences and 79% agreed that social media videos are the best way to connect with a brand. This study also shows that 46% said they made a purchase directly due to a branded video on social media and 32% considered purchasing. This shows that branded video content, while not as effective as user generated content, is still a highly effective method of influencing purchasing decisions. 

Unlike text or static images, video has a far more personal feeling to it for social media users. This may be due to the comparatively long amount of time they spend with video content, it could also be due to their appreciation of the additional time and effort the brand would have to invest to make video posts on social media. All that time and effort will almost certainly pay off for your brand, as long as you focus on developing high quality content. This kind of content has been in extremely high demand, since recent events have shifted most people’s attention further toward the digital world. Every brand should focus upon making high quality branded content if they hope to weather the recent content storm.