Finding cost effective strategies to increase revenue is a challenge for any business, especially for marketers who are required to reach customers and translate this through to sales. Consumers live in a digital world rampant with advertising overload. They are being constantly bombarded with branded content and have to make decisions about what they take in and ignore. This has resulted in marketers hitting a tipping point where those who are focusing on building brand affinity are the ones who are growing profits.

It’s no longer about how many impressions, views, likes and followers a business gets, but instead it’s about building positive customer opinions towards the business. This is done by increasing the amount of time a customer spends with your brand. Reaching customers is obviously a prerequisite for achieving this, but unfortunately snippets of social media content have little influence on a person's attitude towards the product or service. A superior information consumption experience is needed to deliver an engaging brand message to customers.

Digital advertising and social media no longer cuts through the noise to help grow sales

Digital advertising, social media and YouTube are the most popular tools in today's age for delivering your message to audiences. In fact, numerous companies have managed to incorporate these into highly successful marketing campaigns.

The problem is success stories are few and far between. The reality is most companies spend a ton of money, generate some added brand awareness, but then have nothing to show for it. They fail to generate the brand affinity needed to convert viewers into customers.

Brands are scuffling for attention

Brands across all industries are competing head to head for their audiences attention. Crazy amounts of resources are needed to execute a content marketing strategy that cuts through.

The web is saturated with ads

Ads of all shapes and sizes (text, image and video) are being inserted into and alongside your online content that distracts the viewer. In a lot of cases your content is mixed with the competitions.

Users are adept to ignoring content

Audiences are no longer fully engaged when viewing social media content and have developed viewing habits that devalue effective storytelling and erode your brand sentiment.

Snippets of content no longer compel action

Online impressions don’t result in impressed viewers. In other words, getting a user to develop a strong opinion towards your products requires more than a few snippets of engagement. Time is needed to build brand advocacy and turn viewers into customers.

Are branded video channels the next frontier of content marketing?

Deploying a branded video channel may very well be the next big evolution in content marketing. Even the leading marketing automation platform, Mailchimp, have launched their own branded video channel called Mailchimp Presents. Let’s also not forget about Red Bull who have built RedBull TV over the last decade. This evolution is no real surprise when considering the advantage video has in content marketing.

Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text¹

According to Forrester 1 minute of video is worth 1.8 billion words²

Over 75% of executives watch work-related videos every week³

Video is a superior data type to text, but their are two other key advantages that need to be understand. Firstly is its ability to be delivered in a 'binge worthy' manner that makes consuming content much easier for a longer duration of time. This is what makes a branded video channel a more valuable asset than a blog. It provides binge worthy viewing experiences to supercharge your content marketing strategy, and just like a blog or social media account it allows you to:

1. Deliver valuable information to viewers to help them progress along the buyers journey, but with an added emphasis on increasing the time viewers spend with your brand. In turn, they will develop a stronger opinion and hopefully a positive sentiment towards your products or services.
2. Present Call to Actions (CTAs) to potential buyers to help them take the next step towards making a purchase. By doing this is a controlled and branded viewing environment customers are more likely to interact.

‍

The second key advantage of video is it's ability to allow viewers to form a more personal connection with your brand. Video allows you to deliver you message from real people, which helps viewers connect with your brand on a level unattainable by text. Pair this deeper engagement with binge worthy viewing experiences and a branded video channel takes a businesses content marketing to a whole new level.

^{1 Insivia https://www.insivia.com/50-must-know-stats-about-video-animation-marketing-2013/}

^{2 Dr James McQuiveyForrester Researchhttps://www.forrester.com/report/use-rich-media-to-drive-more-b2b-conversions/RES158605?ref_search=0_16620841422373 Forbes Insight http://images.forbes.com/forbesinsights/StudyPDFs/Video_in_the_CSuite.pdf}