There are proofs that the quality of branded content is on the rise. Just look at how the big company blog has continued to give way to to excellent freestanding experiences.
However, despite this sharp increase in overall quality, many marketers have been hesitant to move beyond text-based articles and unleash the web’s full potential as a multimedia storytelling platform. To some marketers, the specialised skills needed to produce visual content (such as video, infographics, or interactive media) make doing so seem like an excessively expensive proposition. And as a result, the same brands who have used written blog posts to dip their toes into the content waters consider the cost of multimedia an unfortunately high barrier to entry.
Nowadays, brands have much to gain by playing their cards right when it comes to multimedia. No place is the sentiment more applicable than on Facebook, where autoplay video ads allow brands to showcase great content in a place viewers are bound to see them. Meanwhile, a 2014 study of more than 72,000 Facebook pages found that video posts generated the most user engagement of any format, with about 2,200 interactions per update. Photo updates came in second with about 1,400 interactions per post.
Of course, Facebook isn’t the only place companies have reaped the rewards of visual content. Moz found that the video content it published on its website generated three times as many inbound links as content that was text only. On the other hand, the enterprise software company Attivio found that once it started publishing video on its site, the average visitor started spending 100 percent more time with its content.
Visual content isn’t only effective for producing engagement and clicks. It might also create more direct sales than other types of content. A report created last year by Vidyard and Demand Metric found that 71 percent of marketers claimed video drove higher conversion rates than other forms of content. What’s particularly impressive about this data point is that while some marketers think of video as a big-budget branding tool, more than half of the respondents to the survey worked for B2B companies.
For even greater returns, some brands have found success creating video content that is customised for the individual consumer who sees it. What this all goes to show is that when it comes to high-quality multimedia content, brands should trust their instinct and go all-in with their marketing budget. After all, as brands continue to invest in publishing, strong multimedia projects will merely be considered table stakes.