4 Unconventional Tips for Creating Short Videos that Boost Customer Loyalty
Why deny it? Everybody loves videos! Even the most dedicated bookworms still spend hours on YouTube watching their favorite influencers and content from their favorite brands.
You could even say that people get increasingly hooked up to watching video content, and stats prove that. Just mobile video consumption alone grows by 100% every year.
But here’s the thing – consumers are also getting increasingly picky when it comes to video content. Particularly, the length of the video plays a key role in how many views it gets.
How Does the Length of the Videos Impact Viewership?
Let’s take a look at the statistics by Optinmonster:
● if your video is under 1 minute, 68% of people will watch it
● if the video is over 20 minutes, the viewership percentage drops to 25%
To provide you with a bit more context, Wistia studied several thousands of videos and concluded that a two-minute length is optimal for videos in terms of engagement. Plus, Wistia’s study confirmed that the longer the video is, the more people are prone to skip to the parts they are actually interested in.
It may be weird to think that people tend to disregard longer videos that are usually more informative and detailed. But it’s not just their engagement levels that suffer from the length of the video. The consequences of such a drop in engagement lead to lower customer loyalty.
How’s that?
Think about it. A consumer is used to watching videos from a brand regularly. But recently, a brand’s videos started to get longer and tiresome to watch. First, a consumer gradually stops watching these videos. And, eventually, they start losing interest in the brand they used to love.
Sure, you might find such a change in behavior strange, especially considering that a consumer should love your brand for your product, not your content.
However, the reality is that, for consumers, the brand’s content and product go hand-in-hand. Hence, if a brand doesn’t invest in making its content engaging, its authority drops. And, considering that the competition is high in any industry, customers will quickly find a replacement.
So, what should you do? Scrap your video marketing strategy and start all over?
Not necessarily. You don’t have to get rid of the video content you’ve invested money in just because it’s longer than a consumer would prefer.
But you can slowly ease into it and start producing more short videos as well. And, to help you make sure your video content doesn’t get overshadowed by your competitors, here are four unconventional tips for creating short videos that boost customer loyalty.
1. Create a Short Video Series on One Topic
The first goal of a good video is delivering value. Your viewers should watch your video and, after that, feel like they’ve learned something useful and applicable in their daily lives. That’s why your videos should not just entertain; they should educate.
Right now, you must be confused – how can a short video contain enough details to deliver educational value?
The best solution here is to create a series of short videos. Let’s say you have one topic you really want to cover, but it’s quite extensive. You can just divide this topic into several parts and dedicate a short video to each of them. Once you have short videos ready, you can put them into one playlist.
A good example of this strategy in action is MAC Cosmetics. On its YouTube channel, the brand has several playlists with complexion tutorials, eye-liner lessons, and lipstick how-tos:
Let’s take a closer look at the playlist with complexion tutorials. Most videos in this playlist are about two minutes, with some over seven or eight minutes:
If you look closer at the image above, you’ll see that the two-minute video has the most views among all the videos in this playlist, indicating that this is an ideal video length for MAC’s customers.
But the point is not in the length of the video. The main reason consumers have watched this video so much is that it’s highly informative for a two-minute video. Yes, it has product placement, but it covers the topic really well, and the consumers have found the information in it useful.
What’s the lesson here?
You can create a series of short videos instead of a lengthy one. But, if your goal is to boost customer loyalty, your primary focus should be on making it educational and straight to the point so that your viewers can actually apply this information in real life.
2. Invest in Interactive Videos
One more way you can turn one long video into a few shorter ones is by making them interactive.
Interactive content is like steroids for engagement rates. According to HubSpot, interactive content delivers two times more engagement than static content.
Why do people get so excited about interactive content?
It turns a regular viewer into an active participant. Such an experience is exceedingly rare since most consumers are only used to observing their favorite brands. Interactive content allows them to tap into the world of the brand and get the experience from within.
If you’re looking for ideas for short, interactive videos, look at Banqer. This online financial education school excelled at its video marketing strategy by creating short educational videos on YouTube.
For instance, this one teaches people about the types of insurance:
As you can see, at the end of the video, a viewer can jump to several different answer options. But you can also create interactive buttons with the links to the following videos.
How to turn your interactive videos into a customer loyalty booster?
You have two options here – creating interactive videos for entertainment and making them educational. Both options are great and absolutely deserve to have a place in your video marketing strategy.
However, if you want to boost customer loyalty, turn your interactive videos into exceptional marketing videos with a customer journey in mind.
For instance, Banqer creates hypothetical situations in which the viewer gets to choose how to act and gets the results according to their choices.
So, no matter whether you’re making interactive videos for education or entertainment, turn them into a positive experience that a viewer would associate with your brand later on.
3. Involve Influencers in Your Videos
Over the past few years, the popularity of influencer marketing has grown immensely. You can find influencers everywhere – YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and now – TikTok. So, no matter which platform you’re trying to conquer for business growth, you’ll find an influencer who’ll cast a light on your brand.
Companies collaborate with influencers to create various types of content. And when it comes to videos, Nike is probably the most prominent example.
Among the influencers that Nike involves in its videos are popular athletes. The brand often uses influencers to shoot storytelling videos aimed to inspire the younger generation.
For instance, one of the most popular videos (117 million views) features LeBron James and tells his story as a professional basketball player.
The video represents all the values that Nike is trying to push – resilience, focus, and ambition. And, you’ve guessed it, it’s less than two minutes long.
How to find the right influencers for your short videos?
Involving influencers in your short videos is a great idea for three reasons:
- you’ll get creative product placement
- influencers have the audience you need
- people trust the influencers they follow
If influencer marketing is something you could use to boost loyalty, you need to be careful when choosing the influencers to work with your videos.
Keep in mind that:
- An influencer should come from your niche. It should be someone who has the audience you’re looking for, and this audience is more likely to benefit from your product.
- An influencer’s audience should be organically earned. There should be no history of buying followers or acquiring them in any other non-organic way. Otherwise, this could harm your reputation.
- It’s desirable to choose an influencer who’s a fan of your brand. If the influencer is a long-time supporter of your brand, their audience already knows about it. Thus, their recommendations would seem more natural and not forced.
Lastly, consider what you expect from putting an influencer in your short video. If you want to create a viral video, you’ll need an influencer of a higher caliber who has several millions of followers. However, if you’re an indie brand, just getting introduced to the niche, micro- and macro-influencers with several thousands of followers will work great to earn customer loyalty.
4. Benefit from User-Generated Content (UGC)
Consumers love it when they get attention from brands. And brands love involving their creative customers in making content as well.
According to the stats round-up by Hubspot:
- 48% of brands say user-generated content helps humanize their marketing
- ads featuring content from consumers get 73% more positive reactions
- 75% of marketers say user-generated content helps them appear more authentic
Note that last stat – the overwhelming majority of businesses want to appear more realistic and human-like. And user-generated content helps them achieve that.
Besides, it’s obvious that user-generated content drives a lot of engagement. So, imagine what could happen if you brought the potential of this content with the ability of videos to attract and retain attention? Your engagement rates would climb through the roof!
But turning your video marketing strategy upside down and making it based entirely on user-generated videos wouldn’t be fair. Your viewers might think you’re feeding off your dedicated customers and using their creativity to get revenue.
Instead, try to incorporate user-generated content in a more organic way.
For instance, LEGO occasionally posts short tutorials involving the fans of the brand, who review LEGO’s most popular products:
In these videos, the fans of the brand also share their unique ideas on how to build unusual houses and even create entire worlds using LEGO’s products.
How to involve user-generated content to boost customer loyalty?
Of course, it’s a great idea to showcase the talents of your audience on your official channels. However, featuring them may not be enough to boost customer loyalty since your fans spend time creating content for you.
That’s why the best solution for using UGC in your videos is through contests and giveaways. This solution is extremely popular among both B2B and B2C brands.
Statistics prove the benefits of contests for the growth of brand recognition. For instance, Outgrow reports that brands can get 17,500 fans on average from running just one contest through social media. This point confirms that this method will also work perfectly for customer loyalty.
How can you incorporate all that in a video?
The answer is simple – ask your fans to contribute video content featuring your product for a reward. GoPro does that regularly and runs yearly GoPro awards. The brand’s fans contribute creative videos filmed with the GoPro camera, and the best video gets a reward.
Obviously, such contests can only be run occasionally and are usually dedicated to a particular purpose. But such short videos can be a fantastic addition to your video marketing strategy and will bring you more views, and engagement, and as a result, boost customer loyalty.
Wrapping Up
Video marketing is here to stay, and the reason is clear – using videos brings diversity and a breath of fresh air to your content strategy.
However, not all videos are created equal. Over and over again, shorter videos prove themselves to be more engaging, and multiple studies and statistics support this fact.
There’s a high chance that you’ll have to refocus your video marketing strategy on shorter videos. But don’t worry – a shorter length won’t impact the quality of your video if you use one of our recommendations.
For instance, you could create a series of short videos on one topic or make them interactive. But if it’s not an option for you, you can try involving influencers or featuring user-generated content. All these ideas can work perfectly to not just boost brand recognition but also significantly increase customer loyalty.
Author bio: Dorian Martin is a content writer and editor at GetGoodGrade. He also has his own blog about digital marketing and innovative business ideas.