Consumers prefer videos to get help with their buying decisions, making video marketing an essential tool for every business. In fact, 78% of people admitted to being convinced to buy a product after watching a video. Using video in your marketing strategy can boost conversions by 86% compared to text-based content or images.
Still, there’s room to level up your video marketing efforts.
Making your marketing videos interactive is a great way to stand out. Did you know that interactive videos generate 18% more leads and 14% more sales than linear videos?
Most brands now use video in their marketing strategy, making this space highly competitive. Interactive video marketing is still a newer concept with few brands using it, so it’s perfect for differentiating your brand.
Interactive video offers the audience a unique experience while tracking metrics that can help companies make smart investment decisions.
Annie Hinners, a Video Marketing Expert, explains, “[Interactive content] allows brands to take a good look at which viewers are engaging with what content, so they can invest more into the products that people are liking.”
This post will explore how you can effectively use interactive video content in your marketing strategy.
Table Of Contents
The Importance of Interactivity in Video Marketing
Types of Interactive Video Commerce for Marketing
How to Use Video Commerce in Your Marketing Strategy
Interactive Video Marketing Ideas
How to Distribute Your Videos Across Different Channels
Tracking Your Goals and Video Performance
The Importance of Interactivity in Video Marketing
Video marketing is an old ally of marketing and creative departments. That being said, interactive video is one of the best ways to elevate a campaign in the current competitive landscape. Aside from its uniqueness, here are a few reasons you should consider making more interactive videos:
Higher Conversion Rates
Research shows that interactive videos significantly boost conversion rates compared to regular videos. One study showed that interactive videos could increase conversion rates by 25%. Ted Baker hit the jackpot and reported 5-figure sales from a single interactive video.
One reason for this trend is that interactive videos simplify the marketing funnel. Suppose you’re advertising a product or service or want your viewers to convert in any way. Interactive videos have a link (or several links) right in the video that takes the viewer exactly where you need them to go, be it a product page, blog post, or any landing page.
Increase in Customer Loyalty
It is much cheaper to keep an existing customer than to find a new one. Studies show that improving customer retention by a mere 5% can increase profit by up to 95%. Building customer loyalty is a worthy investment for any business and interactive video is one way to achieve that.
Interactive videos give viewers a more fun and immersive experience than regular videos. Depending on your audience, your videos can be as simple or creative as you like. The better the video experience, the more likely viewers will remember it, which keeps your brand top of mind. Give customers a good experience, and they are bound to come back.
Better User Insights
With interactive videos, you can track clicks on product cards and call-to-actions (CTAs). Tracking these clicks can let you know what part of your videos is getting more interactions.
Interactive video platforms like COTU also track many other metrics. You can use this data to improve future videos, recommend better products to viewers, and decide which products to invest in. The best part of interactive video insights is that all this data is entirely organic, showing you an accurate picture of your customers’ experiences with your content.
COTU interviewed prospective clients who expressed interest in using shoppable videos to glean helpful insights: “It’s extremely valuable to be able to see which products were clicked on more. I can determine which ones are ‘bestsellers’ or ‘bottlenecks’ and pivot my strategy quickly.”
Types of Interactive Video Commerce for Marketing
Interactive video is an effective marketing tool for promoting your products and services. They are great at boosting engagement, driving sales, enriching customer experiences, and more. Here are a few different types of interactive videos you can use to market your business:
1. Clickable Videos
These videos have clickable cards and CTAs in them. Viewers can click on the cards to immediately get more information about a topic or product without leaving the video. For example, viewers can click on the expandable cards to get more details about a recipe, product, location, etc., in the video. These may also have CTAs to direct viewers to related blogs, opt-in pages, and other landing pages.
2. Shoppable Videos
A shoppable video shows your products in action and allows users to click through to the product page directly from the video. This type of video reduces the number of steps it takes a viewer to get from liking a product (discovery) to buying it (conversion)—it simplifies the buyer’s journey.
3. Product Videos
These videos often show product features in detail and/or how products work. They can be an excellent tool for building viewers’ interest in your products and giving them a virtual “feel” for the product. You can direct viewers to the product page or product pages of related products from this kind of video. You can also share coupon codes, deals, and discounts in the expandable cards.
4. Brand Videos
Brand videos give your audience a deeper look into your company’s values and way of doing business. They usually make customers feel more connected to your brand, boosting customer loyalty. You can use cards to provide viewers with more information about the brand and add links to chosen products or signup pages for demos, events, or webinars.
5. Lifestyle Videos
Lifestyle videos showcase your products in real-world settings with real people. These videos tend to be very inspirational, giving prospects ideas of how things could be for them if they purchased your product.
How to Use Video Commerce in Your Marketing Strategy
Using video commerce in your marketing strategy requires planning. It’s a good idea to think through your video marketing strategy before recording anything to avoid wasting valuable time and resources. Here are the steps to build your video marketing strategy:
Step 1: Start With Your Video Marketing Goals
What are you hoping to achieve with your videos? Keep the marketing funnel in mind when setting goals and determine the stage you want to target with your video.
- Awareness: In this stage, you’re looking to attract new customers to your business. Videos in this stage should focus on educating the customer. For example, you could include short explainer videos with clickable links to product pages, include video in in-depth blog posts, or introduce a product in a brand film.
- Consideration: Here, shoppers know their problems intimately and will seek the best solution. Strike while the iron is hot and present your audience with videos that showcase your product’s features. Let them see how well your products can solve their problems. Detailed product demos are excellent for this stage.
- Decision: At this point, prospects know the solution but aren’t entirely sold yet. They want to make sure that their choice is correct. Testimonials, unboxing videos, or influencer reviews are perfect for convincing shoppers to choose your product.
The great thing about video commerce tools, like COTU, is that they help you condense the funnel, allowing buyers to purchase at any stage. Rather than putting the burden of finding information on the viewer, interactive videos present the information upfront, making it super easy for them to buy.
Step 2: Get to Know Your Target Audience
Now that you know what you want to achieve with your videos, it’s time to specify your target audience.
Who do you want to reach with your video?
Take this time to think of your ideal customer’s pain points. What questions do they really want solved? What are they struggling with? Where do they spend their time on the internet to get these answers?
Answering these questions will guide your choices in creating the right video experience and providing the exact information your target audience needs. You’ll also have a good idea of where to distribute your videos.
Step 3: Choose the Video Type
Before you can proceed, you need to determine the type of video you should create, which, in turn, depends on your video marketing goals. Examples of video types include product demos, brand videos, lifestyle videos, explainer videos, and more.
Want to show off your product features in great detail? Then a product demo video with strategic close-up shots might be ideal.
Are you looking to spark interest in potential customers? Create a lifestyle video including your product and spin an inspiring and relevant storyline around it.
Step 4: Set a Timeline and Budget for Your Video
Keep your budget realistic. Video production costs can run anywhere from three to five figures, depending on what you’re looking for and the platforms you choose. Plan for the resources and decide whether you’d like to produce videos in-house or outsource them to a production house.
Step 5: Make It Interactive
Once you’re done shooting and editing your video to perfection, it’s time to separate yourself from the competition and make your video interactive. You can do this in a few quick steps with an interactive video platform like COTU.
Here’s how it works:
- Upload your video to the platform.
- Create your clickable links and product overlays.
- Add them to your video timeline.
- Save and publish your newly created interactive video.
In COTU, product cards appear at the top right corner because they “actually did a lot of testing on this, and most of the people preferred the product to appear in the top right or top left corner, rather than being on the product itself,” explained Richard Baugh, CEO at COTU.
Read More: How to Create Shoppable Video Using COTU’s 4 Simple Steps
Want to Make Your Video Interactive?
Step 5: Choose the Best Platforms to Distribute Your Video
Your video is finally ready, and it’s time to share it. Give preference to the distribution platform where your target audience hangs out the most.
Distribution channels include websites, landing pages, product pages, blogs, social media, emails, and anywhere you can embed a video, share via URL, or QR code. Keep in mind that all distribution channels have their rules. You’ll likely need to adapt your content to meet those conditions.
Step 6: Decide the Metrics to Measure Your Video’s Success
All metrics hold a wealth of information about your video’s performance. However, which metrics should be more important depends on your marketing goals. Most video platforms track metrics like viewing time, completion rate, and drop-offs. However, with COTU, you can also measure and compare video performances based on click-through rates, conversion rates, engagement rates, and more.
If your goal, for example, is to attract new visitors to your business, then viewing time, engagement rates, and completion rates are good metrics to track. While view count might tell you how many people saw your video, you could gauge their interest level through viewing time, engagement rate, and completion rate.
Interactive Video Marketing Ideas
A little inspiration can go a long way in helping you kickstart your interactive video marketing plan. Let’s explore video marketing ideas that you can build into your business strategy.
Shoppable Video
Shoppable videos showcase a brand’s products while making it super simple for the viewer to purchase them. One of the significant benefits of shoppable videos is that they simplify the customer journey. Reducing the buyer’s journey often results in higher conversions.
According to Hinners, “Shoppable video allows customers to linger longer and really retain more information from the videos. So, the watchers are going to remember that product so much more because they’re interacting with that product.”
Here are a few ideas you can try for your shoppable video:
Inspirational Product Placement
This type of video aims to showcase your product in an inspiring setting. With such videos, your viewers can see your products in action, which can encourage them to make a purchase.
Example: A home goods store selling kitchen products could create a cooking video showcasing its best-selling cookware. You could use a chef or cook matching your target audience persona to make it even more relatable.
To make the video shoppable, you can use expandable cards to give curious viewers answers to their most crucial questions about the products. Clickable links translate this interest to sales by allowing them to conclude the purchase quickly while the visitor is still interested in the product.
Tip: Ensure that the process shown in the video doesn’t distract the viewers too much from the products.
Buying Guides
Buying guides are used to educate customers about a product. They provide details on the features and benefits of a product and then teach the shopper how to make the best buying decision. Knowing how to select a product gives shoppers more confidence, especially when purchasing something new and unfamiliar.
Example: An eyewear store could make a video teaching shoppers how to pick the perfect pair of spectacles for their face shape. Throughout the video, you can add product cards to highlight differentiating features of the products shown in the video with CTAs to respective product pages. You can also direct viewers to other resources for more in-depth information.
Tip: Provide precise information for viewers to select the product most suitable for them by the time they complete the video.
Product Videos
A product video’s express purpose is to show a product in great detail. These videos give you an excellent opportunity to compare your products with those of the competitors and highlight where your product shines. These can take the form of demos or how-to videos.
Product Demo
A product demo video zooms in on the features of a product that usually need a bit more explanation for the shopper to understand it fully, for example, in the case of SaaS (Software as a Service) products. These videos explain in detail how different features work and how to make the most of them.
Example: An electronics store selling smartphones could use a product demo video to show how a particular feature works and how it’s different from any competitor. Throughout the video, expandable cards could be used to give additional information about related product features while linking to the product page.
Tip: For small products, make sure to get close-up shots with a plain background in a contrasting color to really show the features clearly.
How-to Video
How-to videos teach customers how to properly use a product or care for it. These are great at answering your audience’s most common questions before they even occur to them.
Example: A company selling exercise equipment could make a video showing viewers how to install pull-up bars or clean a yoga mat properly. Product group cards could list additional tools or products required to complete the task and may link to pages where viewers can buy them.
Tip: Focus on answering one question in each how-to video, and keep the video as concise as possible without missing essential details.
Lifestyle Videos
Lifestyle videos inspire customers to choose a particular product by showcasing its merits. These videos can take the form of in-depth reviews or the product used in real-life situations to convince the shopper of a product’s value.
Product-in-Action
Product-in-Action videos showcase your products in real-life settings to spark your audience’s imagination. These videos can be very effective, giving shoppers an idea of what they can expect after buying the product.
Example: A company selling running shoes could show a runner wearing them in different weather conditions and on various terrains to demonstrate their quality. Product cards can offer more details and add links to the product pages.
Tip: For best results, try to make the scenes as realistic as possible so shoppers can connect with the product in situ.
Influencer Reviews
Influencer review videos show famous or influential persons using your product. The benefit of this video is that shoppers can see people they respect and trust sharing their own experiences with your product.
Example: A makeup or beauty store could have an influencer make an unboxing video, using and sharing their thoughts with their followers on-screen. You can use product cards throughout the video to facilitate the purchase.
Tip: Choose an influencer that’s popular and trusted among your target audience.
How to Distribute Your Videos Across Different Channels
Once your videos are ready, the next step is to share them with the world. For a video marketing campaign to be successful, videos need to be seen by the right people—your target audience. COTU allows you to share your interactive videos via URL, embed code, and QR code.
Let’s take a look at some of the main distribution channels available.
Owned Marketing Channels
Owned marketing channels include all channels that belong to you. You’re free to share content as often as you like on these channels without any charges or restrictions. Here are some owned platforms you can use to share your videos:
Website
The website is where your business lives online. You can easily embed your videos on any page you see fit, for example, your homepage, product pages, and more. Embedding videos on your website can increase the time visitors spend on each page.
Blog
Since your blog already focuses on providing informative content, it’s also a great place to include your videos. Videos on blog pages are great for giving thorough information in an easy-to-digest format, and they are very effective at reducing bounce rates and increasing interest.
Email and video are two of the most profitable marketing strategies, and combining them could bring great results. Adding videos to emails can lead to a 200-300% increase in click-through rates. You can embed your video link in the email or share your interactive video URL or QR code.
Paid Marketing Channels
Another way to distribute your video is through paid channels, i.e. wherever you’re spending money to advertise your content. Here are some paid channels you can use to distribute your videos:
Search Ads
While you cannot add interactive videos directly to search ads, you can target relevant keywords related to your product and then link to a landing page with your interactive video. Search ads are affordable, and targeting high-traffic keywords is a great way to get attention to your videos.
Display Ads
Display ads allow you to use images, videos, and text to get attention to your business. Similar to search ads, they target high-traffic keywords, and you can include a URL linking to a landing page with your video.
Sponsored Content
Sponsored content is where you pay an influencer or another business to host your content on their website. It’s not an advertisement. Instead, it takes the form of high-quality information about your product posted on someone else’s website, according to their editorial style.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is where you reach out to well-known and influential people in your industry to promote your content. It’s a great way to get your video content in front of a large, often dedicated, audience. Influencer marketing can be paid or free, depending on who you work with.
Tracking Your Goals and Video Performance
It’s a known fact that video marketing is successful, but measuring that success is a completely different story. According to a 2021 report, 86% of companies are using video marketing; however, many people struggle to quantify the impact of video on their reach, sales, or conversions.
By tracking your video performance against your goals, you can give tangible credit to a video and say with proof that this video was impactful and this wasn’t. With COTU, you can track metrics that can tell you exactly how many people clicked on a specific product in the video, visited the product page, and bought it. With this level of detail, you can not only justify the success of your video but also use this knowledge to inform future investments.
So what, exactly, are the metrics you can measure with COTU?
While view count can be a fun metric to watch, it might not be the best metric to tell if your strategy is working. Here are a few of the top metrics you can track with COTU:
1. Product Engagement
COTU uses expandable product cards that give more details on a product. You can monitor the number of times people click to expand these cards to learn more about the product. Monitoring this metric can help you determine which products are more popular among viewers, and where in the video they are inspired to learn more about them.
2. Product Click-Through
Click-through rate is the percentage of video viewers who click your CTA. This shows how effectively your video content convinces viewers to take the desired action. A low click-through rate could result from poor CTA design and not necessarily poor content, so it’s best to test some variations before determining the cause of unsatisfactory results.
3. Product Conversions
Product conversions refer to the number of viewers who purchased a product after watching a video. Ultimately, the aim of any video marketing campaign is to drive conversions. This is the metric that will let you know the specific monetary return on your investment.
4. View Count
Also known as reach, it’s simply the number of people who have seen your video, even if they did not watch it till the end. This indicator can measure your success if your goal is to get your brand in front of a new audience.
With COTU, you can set campaign goals and project benchmarks to gauge the performance of your video marketing strategy. You can test different parameters to fine-tune your campaign until you’re happy with the results and justify your video marketing success in front of the stakeholders with tangible knowledge.
Video marketing is one of the best strategies to take your business to new heights, and interactive video can act like a North Star in bringing your target to you. With COTU, you can start immediately and create your first interactive video in just a few steps. If you want to learn more, sign up for a demo to see how COTU can convert your regular video into an enticing piece of content that your audience cannot help but notice!