The Importance of Video Marketing For Business

_This post was written by Gary Vaynerchuk, founder and CEO of VaynerMedia, and one of the world’s leading marketing experts. Check out Animoto's complete guide to video marketing to learn more.

The single most important strategy in content marketing today is video. Whether it’s video on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat or Youtube, the content you need to be thinking about creating and marketing on social for your business is video. Period.

No matter what you’re selling, no matter what your company does, if you don’t have a video marketing strategy for the biggest video platforms, you are going to lose. And in case you haven’t noticed, the platforms of distribution for video content online have shifted drastically over the last 18 months. Facebook has 100M+ hours of content watched daily, Snapchat reports 10BN daily video views, and video on Twitter has taken one on one engagement to a whole new level.

The platform I am most excited about it in terms of video is Facebook, with the new announcement of Watch, Facebook is now a direct competitor to cable television, netflix, HBO and everything else. With all the actionable data and insights, it won’t be long before they completely disrupt the entire industry. It’s where I’m placing a lot of my current attention. My Q&A series #AskGaryVee is now exclusively on Facebook, and my audience there is 2-1 compared to my YouTube subscribers. I have the opportunity to do an original show and be early on something that matters. That’s where I play. That’s where I win because I am always testing, tasting and trying what’s new. If you aren’t experimenting, you are making a mistake.

The reason why Facebook works is it’s good at everything. It’s smart, shareable and personal.

Whether you are a small business, or a personal brand, Facebook video is still the best way to reach consumers at scale. Couple that with their new video ad products for sales and the fact that they’re the greatest data company of all time for marketers and you have some serious reasons to spend real money on Facebook video ads and video content directly for Facebook.

Whether you are making how-to’s, or speaking directly to your audience, Facebook video is the right move.

Facebook targeting. I mean, that’s it. You can literally put your business address, run a radius around it, and individuals in the 07081 zip code or the 08802 — Asbury, New Jersey will see it in their feed. It’s a piece of cake.

And Facebook knows it. They’ve added multiple features in the last few months that point to the fact that they are going all in on video. The announcement of Facebook Watch, view count, embedding options, video for website conversions, all of this clearly articulates that video is king and there is more to come.

But that’s not all.

Facebook is sitting on an enormous amount of targetable consumer data. It is the ultimate marketing machine. For example, let’s say you upload a video natively, regarding the best places to eat ice cream outdoors in your town. You could then spend money on a sponsored video to directly market your brand’s video to people who 1) love ice cream and 2) live in your area and 3) have kids. Automatically, you’re reaching the exact audience who is most interested and profitable for your business — Which is great, because you’re not wasting anyone’s time, and you’re truly reaching the consumers who will be interested in your company’s’ offering_._

Facebook gives you the ability to target consumers like we’ve never seen before in digital.

It is the single greatest ROI.

The last piece to remember is how easy it is to create. Now more than ever, with the advent of the smartphone and smart software, there is no reason not to be creating content around your product, business, service or brand. It used to cost tens of thousands of dollars or more to produce a commercial for TV. Now you can use products like Animoto and distribute video directly to Facebook for your audience in no time. It is the 2017 opportunity. Start creating.

-G