There is no doubt that video marketing is dominating the eCommerce world. I have been in the digital marketing industry for over 6 years and I have witnessed how a one compelling, viral video is enough to do wonders to our business. Its powerful combination of texts, animated images, and audio can drive massive traffic to our website and convert them into leads.
Because of this astounding benefits, more and more business organizations are starting to get serious about investing in video marketing. We are on the constant lookout of hiring traditional video production and editing companies to have a professional video created for our brand. For startup business who have a tight budget, we often sought freelance video professionals on video editor marketplace to professionally craft our videos on our preferred budget.
YouTube – The most powerful video marketing platform
I wouldn’t be surprised to find your marketing team has started venturing on YouTube as part of your video marketing campaign. After all, YouTube is known to be the most powerful online video platform with its billions of videos uploaded and subscribers signing up every day. And since the website was acquired by Google, it is easier to rank our videos on the Search Engine since Google favors their own above anyone else.
You may find your video marketing campaign on YouTube running steadily, but before you decide that your current campaign strategy is enough to drive traffic and conversion lead to your business, I’d suggest you think twice. I recommend you reevaluate your campaign strategy for this year 2016, especially that Facebook is now on the rise in dominating the video marketing world.
How Facebook is Stealing YouTube’s limelight
One of the most popular social media platform, Facebook, is now starting to get serious on venturing in video marketing, and it was proving to be worthy because of its remarkable results!
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on their Q3 2015 earning report that the platform is generating a staggering 8 million views on Facebook videos per day, doubling up the statistics last April 2015. This astonishing report certainly beat YouTube’s Statistics after 10 years!
Here are the other reasons why Facebook is now garnering a competitive advantage over YouTube in video marketing:
- Facebook’s autoplay feature – Facebook now provides a seamless video streaming and viewing using its autoplay feature. It enables our raw videos to start playing as we scroll our news feed without the need to click the play button.But the catch is that we only get to activate the autoplay feature if we upload our video directly on the website. This feature encourages us to upload our videos to Facebook rather than sharing video links from other sites such as YouTube.
- Built-in CTA – Facebook’s built in CTA “Watch Video” feature on Facebook pages is a great way to boost our video marketing campaign. This new feature of Facebook enables us to embed our video link on the CTA button automatically, increasing the chances of redirecting our followers to watch our video. Furthermore, Facebook also released a Featured Video Page tab and section on our timeline. making it easier for our followers to locate our videos and watch them.
- Live Streaming – Currently, Facebook live streaming is only available on Facebook verified pages, but over the time, we have no doubt that it will be available to the mass audience. Live streaming is a powerful video marketing strategy since it enables us to connect to our customers and conduct spontaneous interviews, Q, and A series, establishing a stronger connection and interactive engagement with our followers and customers.
- Slideshow – Facebook’s recent release of Slideshow feature enables us to create a video in between three to seven of our own images. This helps our startup business to promote our brand despite our scarcity in time and resources in creating a video yet. We can add a Slideshow tab on our business page and see our engagement rise. This feature is simple, quick, and more interactive to our followers rather than sharing just one image.
- Shorter Video Lengths are More Viral than Longer ones – The secret in dominating the Facebook video marketing is by its short length. According to the research ReelSEO conducted on Facebook’s video engagement, it is revealed that the average duration of videos is 44 seconds and Facebook users tend to watch the video until the end if it’s shorter (~21 seconds). Facebook users who are scanning their news feeds are more likely to watch a short, quick, but engaging and interactive video than a 15-minute video clip on YouTube.
- Facebook 360 video – As video professionals and digital marketers like us, it is our ultimate dream to establish an interactive engagement to our customers. And what a better way to do that by creating a virtual reality video? 360 videos deliver a complete and one of a kind experience to our customers as they are able to interact with our product on a personal level. Fortunately, Facebook is currently venturing on virtual reality!
- Powerful Social Media Network – As what it’s brand states, Facebook is widely known as a powerful social media platform. We cannot deny that Facebook promotes social interaction and engagement than YouTube. At YouTube, we can only upload videos, comments, share, and follow YouTube channels.The social interaction on YouTube is quite limited compared to what we can do on Facebook. At Facebook, we get to add a description and share our thoughts through the Timeline feature as we upload our video. Users are also able to share, like, and comment on your video with ease. And the more our video gets engagement from our followers, the more Facebook will promote it on top of their News Feed.
- Everyone Uses Facebook – Let’s face it. Facebook has over 1.3 billion users all over the world than YouTube has. And since everyone is using this powerful social media platform, chances are, everyone are also going to use Facebook video soon.
Check out this awesome Infographic detailing the differences between Facebook video and YouTube
Conclusion:
Facebook is indeed dominating the internet marketing world with its powerful features, so it’s important that we should cope up with latest trends in order to gain an advantage over our competitors. Start incorporating Facebook as one of your video marketing strategies this year 2016.
- How Facebook is Stealing YouTube’s Glory in Video Marketing - April 1, 2016
