Marketing, when you get down to the core of it, is all about communication: Getting the right message to the right people at the right time to create the desired effect. That’s part of why marketing has changed so much in the last few decades. It’s not that the fundamental concepts and strategies of marketing have changed much, it’s that the technologies available have changed—which has changed the most effective tactics. It’s easy to see how this has affected the powerful marketing tool we call video.
Video has become the best way to capture attention and deliver a message to millennials. The numbers tell the story: According to Syndacast, 74 percent of all Internet traffic in 2017 will be video. Studies show that using the word “video” in the subject line of an email can increase open rates by 19 percent and click-through rates by 65 percent. Including video on a landing page can increase conversion by 80 percent. Meanwhile, on YouTube, mobile video consumption has risen 100 percent every year. (More stats on video marketing here.)
The Benefits Of Video Marketing
There are plenty of reasons why video is an increasingly popular marketing tool, and many of them start with the fact that more people are watching more video all the time. Facebook announced last year that its video viewership doubled from 4 billion views per day to 8 billion views per day in just seven months. That’s continuing, and therefore it should be no surprise that Facebook is adding more video infrastructure. Google isn’t letting YouTube go idle, either, as YouTube’s growth and diversification into more forms of video continues.
That’s also the reason why video has a direct impact on search results—rich media like video is favored by search algorithms. It’s not a coincidence that you’re seeing more videos pop up in your Google search results. The obvious corollary is that you should be posting more video if you want to show up higher in search results.
Video isn’t just easier to find, it’s also great for sharing—users are more likely to share and re-share video than other forms of content. Video also helps convince people as well as attract them—96 percent of consumers find videos helpful when making purchase decisions online. That gets even better when you consider that 58 percent of consumers find the companies producing videos to be more trustworthy.
In short, video is about the best way to communicate with customers, and it’s a medium that marketers should be thinking about first when it’s time to craft a strategy. Sure, text is indispensable for many things, and images are powerful in a variety of ways—but these days, video is king.
Video Marketing For Games
The range of possibilities for video in-game marketing is enormous. The standard video offering for any game is, of course, the game trailer. That may sound simple, but the game trailer has been elevated to a fine art over the years. The very best game trailers are things of beauty in themselves, and garner millions of views. That’s only the beginning, because game trailers have spawned many other types of video based around games. There are gameplay videos showing sometimes lengthy examples, strategy videos showing visually-specific tactics that you can use in a game, and walk-throughs of different game areas to show you how to proceed.
The most impressive game videos are being produced by game companies like Blizzard and Riot Games to showcase characters in their games. These videos are brief but intense, usually with top-notch animation and an engaging look at part of the game. These videos function on several levels, increasing interest in a character (which may be a purchasable item) as well as adding to interest in the game.
There’s plenty of other ways to use video to increase interest and engagement in a game—there are “Making Of” documentaries, interviews with game designers, vlogs made during the development process, chats with artists or actors, unboxing videos (particularly for deluxe editions) and even straight-up product ads.
That’s not enough touching the enormously popular streaming videos that have built Twitch into a behemoth of 100 million-plus streams per month. Watching other people play games, especially if they do it with great skill or in an entertaining manner, is incredibly popular.
If you really want to get creative, break out of the common video types. Try a live-action game trailer instead of in-game footage. Create a stunt involving themes from your game, perhaps with cosplayers or some clever props in a public place. Do some man-on-the-street interviews in the zany style of late-night comedy to get some reactions to your game. Do you have a connection to a visually fascinating locale, or are you friends with a celebrity, or can you get some help from a comedian? Exploit the resources you have available, and pour into your video the same level of creativity and energy that your team has poured into their game.
Some things should always be kept in mind no matter how creative you get. First, no matter what you do, make sure that you’re doing it with high quality. Don’t have cheesy costumes and stiff acting unless that’s exactly the style you want. Set your budget and do your best to stick to it, but get the very best video you can with the resources you have. Second, don’t stoop to conquer—that is, don’t be insulting, or mean, or excessively nasty. Don’t attack the competition—instead, spend time showcasing what’s great about your game. And above all, don’t do something illegal in your video—gains in page views aren’t worth legal problems.
The possibilities for video are unlimited, which can make it hard to figure out where and how to start with creating a video. There’s plenty of inspiration to be found online, as the following examples show (with more to be found here). Be creative with your video production and there’s no limit to how far your video can travel.
