For the last several years, video marketing has become a foundational strategic pillar for modern marketers, anchoring many content marketing strategies and working its way into other strategies like email marketing and social media. Video is highly engaging, professional looking, and relatively easy to make, making it a must-have for almost any content marketer.
But what does the future hold for video marketing? What kind of tools, technologies, and consumer trends are we going to have to keep in mind to make sure our video marketing strategies remain relevant and effective?
Predictions of Video Marketing Trends
Here are some of the video marketing trends that are likely to be adopted over the next two decades:
- Autoplaying videos in email. With Viewed, it's easy to embed videos in your email; all you have to do is upload a video, copy a HTML code, and paste that code into the temple of your email message. From there, the video will autoplay whenever the recipient opens the message. This is a unique technology in the market that has gained relevance over the last few years, as it allows to improve the results of any email marketing campaign. Every day more and more brands from different sectors are jumping on this new trend to take advantage of the persuasive power of video with the deliverability of email.
- More personalization. We can also predict a rise in video personalization.We can also predict an increase in video personalization. Marketers are already turning to tools like Viewed that allow them to easily and quickly personalize videos for viewers by adjusting as many aspects as possible, such as text, voiceover and even the image that appears in the videos. Because people respond much better to personalized content than generic content, supply and demand for personalized videos are both going to increase in the near future.
- Interactive content. There are some prominent examples of interactive content on YouTube, Netflix, and various other video channels. Some of these manifest as a kind of “choose your own adventure” story, enabling viewers to make choices and see different story outcomes. Some of these manifest in a much simpler way, giving viewers the power to read supplementary material or watch videos in a slightly different order. In any case, we will likely see an increase to the sophistication and popularity of interactive content in the next several years.
- Live streaming as the norm. Platforms like Twitch and OnlyFans have seen explosive growth in the last few years because of rising demand for live streaming. People love watching live content because it's more engaging and, in a sense, more authentic than prerecorded video. Trends in favor of live streaming are likely to continue until live streaming becomes the norm and prerecorded videos become rarer and less valued. Remember, thanks to Viewed, you can bring your customers into the moment via email. Easily create thousands of personalized videos from your live events, add data to your videos such as time, rating, names, etc. and add a Call-To-Action to bring your users directly to your live stream.
- More accessible professional tools. If you're nervous about how you're going to adapt your video marketing strategy in response to all these trends, don't worry. In the next decade, we're also going to see the rise of more varied and more accessible professional tools. For every new development in the video marketing industry, there will be dozens of new tools you can use to capitalize on that trend. If you're at least a little bit tech savvy and you're willing to adapt, you should have no trouble incorporating these tools into your strategy.
- Greater channel and cultural segmentation. Throughout most of our media history, we lived in a monoculture, where most of us consumed the same types of content and held the same core principles and beliefs. Today's society is much more fragmented, thanks to social media echo chambers, greater access to information, and greater polarization. It's debatable whether this is a good or bad thing for mankind, but one thing's for sure; we're probably going to see greater channel and cultural segmentation in the future as people gravitate toward more specific niches.
- AR and VR. Techno-optimists have been extolling the virtues of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) for many years. Today, VR is best known as a technology for video games. But it won't be long before VR and AR headsets become more popular, more accessible, and more frequently used for creating and watching immersive videos.
- Data, machine learning, and predictive content. In the future, better videos are going to come from better data. The more you understand your customers, and the more you can predict their behavior, the better content you'll be able to generate for them. Big data, machine learning, and predictably generated content are all major growth areas to come.
- The slow death of written content. Already, we're seeing consumers shift away from all types of written content and toward visual content. It's unlikely that written content will ever completely die, but it's likely that consumers will find written content decreasingly valuable in the coming years.
- Automated video production. Today, marketers have access to at least some automated video production tools that allow them to generate videos using nothing more than a script and a list of keywords for stock images. But automated video production tools are going to grow far more sophisticated and easier to use from here. In the near future, we may have tools that allow people to automatically generate entirely novel videos from scratch using nothing more than a handful of prompts. Human-designed videos may still remain superior in terms of absolute quality and creativity, but auto-generated videos will be cheaper, less time consuming, and therefore, more valuable.
The Future Isn’t Certain
Making predictions about the future of any marketing tactic is always challenging, as the future is anything but certain. As you navigate this course, there are a few tips that can help you accommodate even the least predictable developments:
- Stay agile. Don't lock yourself into one approach or one strategy. Instead, remain agile and be open to experimenting with new ideas.
- Watch your competition. One of the best things you can do is keep a close eye on your competition. What types of videos are your competitors making? Do their customers seem to appreciate them?
- Hedge your marketing bets. Never spend all your marketing dollars on a single channel or a single strategy. Always diversify your marketing portfolio to increase payoff consistency.
Video marketing isn't going anywhere. Despite major changes in the industry to come, video is going to remain the heart of most online content strategies – and consumer demand for online content is only going to increase.
If you're looking for a way to distinguish your brand and make your emails more enticing with personalized, autoplaying videos, Viewed can help you do it. Sign up for a free trial today!
