by Erin Espy
July 14, 2021
The value of video is unmatched and has always been a key component of association marketing. But the demand from our audiences to be entertained and informed in quick, catchy videos forces a perspective shift.
The statistics are staggering –
- Online videos will account for 82% of all internet traffic by 2022 (Cisco Annual Internet Report)
- Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch a video and only 10% when they read it in text (Forbes)
- Videos on social generate 12x more shares than text and image posts combined (Wordstream)
That means you’re more likely to absorb this information and share it with your colleagues if I flashed these numbers while doing a TikTok dance, but I’ll spare you and continue here.
Instead of creating one or two high-budget video projects a year – maybe a conference promo and a membership testimonial series – how can you integrate smaller videos into every single campaign?
Here are three ways associations can incorporate more videos:
Invest in tools that make it easy.
While you may keep those expensive and highly produced video projects on the books, adding more video content does not need to mean adding more budget.
Biteable is an online tool that allows you to create compelling, animated videos with zero filming required. Consider the difference in email click-through rates when you announce the extension of your association’s awards nominations deadline with a fun video versus a paragraph of text and a graphic.
Other free and paid video creation and editing tools are becoming more popular as video content explodes.
Collect user-generated video.
Creating videos also becomes easier when you outsource the work to your members! Annually, the Association for Nursing Professional Development (ANPD) celebrates NPD Week with a video contest that challenges members to capture a typical day in the life of a nursing professional development (NPD) practitioner. This contest not only encourages member engagement and provides the marketing team with fun videos for the website, email, and social media throughout the week, it results in tons of b-roll footage that will be used in marketing videos all year long.
Members generally like seeing their own faces and the faces of their friends and colleagues so, engage them in campaigns and contests to capture video testimonials. Gather Voices is an association-focused software that enables you to create and distribute video requests that are easy for members to use to film their authentic, candid stories. Then, with some pre-sets, you can caption, edit, and publish an entire campaign of user-generated videos.
Get creative on social media.
Video posts perform better on social media not just because your followers find them more compelling, they’re also the content that is more likely to be delivered in the news feed or “Explore” page. Just last week, the head of Instagram announced that it’s no longer just a photo-sharing app. He didn’t get specific about how they’ll be leaning into the growth of video but it likely means skewing the algorithm to favor videos and Reels, their response to the rising popularity of TikTok.
Can the time that your marketing team currently spends writing posts and designing accompanying graphics be used to create videos instead? In addition to the animated videos and user-generated videos you’re now planning to use on all your channels, I encourage you to incorporate Facebook and Instagram Live, Instagram Reels, and even TikTok (it’s not just for Gen X, if Tiptoe the Turtle can do it, so can you!) into your social media strategy.
Video is the number one tool in your marketing arsenal for capturing attention and delivering your message on any digital platform. Gone are the days of reserving videos for special occasions. This year, challenge yourself to use video to enhance e-newsletters, your website and online store, social media, and digital advertising and watch the ROI deliver faster than Tiptoe going after his morning watermelon.
Erin Espy
(she/her)
Manager, Marketing
& Communications Services
Smithbucklin