UNB Marketing Blog
Tips and tricks from your university marketers

The power of video marketing

Author: Marketing

Posted on Apr 6, 2016

Category: Web and Social Media

When it comes to getting your audience’s attention, there’s nothing quite like the potential reach of a video. According to Cisco, online video traffic around the world will be 80 per cent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2019. YouTube has more than a billion unique users every month. That’s a huge potential reach. So for marketers in the digital age, videos are essential. For those of us in post-secondary marketing, videos are even more crucial. Our prospective student base is made up of millennials, who watch more videos than any other generation. Video production has become easier – and less expensive – over the last few years. Apps like Vine and Periscope make it easy to create and share videos, and there are free video editing programs that you can tinker with. Here at UNB, we’re lucky to have the Media Services team to help bring your video ideas to life. It’s important to consider your audience and whether they’re likely to watch a video in the first place. If they are, make sure it’s relevant to them – and as a general rule shorter is better. If you’re scrolling through social media and you stop to watch a video, you’re not likely to watch 15 minutes all the way through. Ask yourself, would I really watch all of this? If not, there’s more to cut. Video is taking content marketing by storm, but you'll have to do more than just create one to realise its full potential. It isn’t about just making the video – it’s about what you do with it. And this is where the power of video marketing comes in. Videos have endless possibilities in the online world. They can be shared on social media, used to build community spirit, in newsletter emails, to make websites more engaging and for ads on Facbeook, Instagram and Twitter. The more channels you share it on, and the easier it is for users to find and share, the more likely it is that people will see it. UNB has made several videos throughout our #OnlyHere campaign, so let’s use one of those videos as an example. Our 22-second long Marine Biology video was posted on YouTube, uploaded natively to Facebook (this performs better than sharing it as a YouTube link) and was promoted as an Instagram ad. On our YouTube channel, unbtube, the video has 629 views. For a lot of people, this is where the trail ends. But on Facebook, it reached over 65,000 people, was watched on average at least 50% of the way through (which may not seem like much, but is great for video views), and led 70 people to UNB’s website. That was an organic post without any paid promotion. As an Instagram ad, it went even further. The ad ran for only five days, and in that time it had a reach of 182,777, had almost 20,000 views, 365 likes and 16 comments. It also brought 55 people to our website. If we had just uploaded it to YouTube, that’s as far as it would have gone. So take it the next step further – who knows where it might go. If you need help getting started with videos, or want to learn more about the power of video marketing, write to us at brand@unb.ca