Music triggers emotions! From presenting the vibe of a scene in your video to affecting the way your audience perceives the information shared in such visual media content, music does it all.
Studies have revealed that the type of music an audience hears influences their mood at the end of that tune. So if your content is well planned, you can even dictate your audience’s next steps in the funnel as well. Yes, that’s the power of music. The music you choose can make or break your audience’s interests and buyer intent. Ergo, the necessity to incorporate the right music in your films, explainer videos, apps, and games.
However, good music comes at a price!
Professional music companies charge anything between $60-$100 for producing just an eight to ten-second audio clip which may not even fit your video or other media project.
Thankfully, here’s a list of 21 hand-picked websites providing royalty free music clips for all niches and situations.
For creators constantly looking for new royalty free music to accompany their content, this is paradise.
The website has a collection of more than 100,000 tracks categorized on the basis of different genres. So, whether you need music for your brand video or for your daily YouTube vlogs, this website has it all.
Also, the website has no download caps, which means that you can download and use their music as much as you want.
The listings on the website are continually updated assuring its users a fresh set of tunes whenever they need.
All of this starting at prices as low as $8 a month.
This is one of the most economic royalty free music resources on this page.
With a collection of over 840,000 tracks crafted by their dedicated community of musicians and sound engineers, AudioJungle stands tall as one of the largest ‘royalty free audio’ banks available online.
From pop to heavy metal. Soft rock to hip hop. Clean vocals to instrumental tracks, the website provides all of it with a starting price of just $1. Plus, AudioJungle offers monthly freebies for all premium users, including royalty free music, video effects, stock footage, 3D assets, stock photography, etc.
Also, you can sell your own tracks via Envato Market. It’s rich with over 35,000 artists creating different types of content required for various projects.
One of the easiest to access websites providing royalty free music is BeatPick.
Its classic layout makes it super easy to navigate through thousands of music tracks that you can license individually after listening.
The main page of the website has a mini player that lets users filter their search results based on genre, mood, vocals, etc.
Also, you can create, save and share your beatlists including your hand-picked beats for listening/licensing later.
Bottom line, this website provides royalty free music for websites, films, radio, TV, documentaries, slide shows, presentations, games, DVDs, mobile devices, public space diffusions, video art, art installations, and web episodes.
That’s what its header says.
Super easy to navigate, PremiumBeat lets you find the music that you are looking for; easily.
Their ‘curated by music experts’ royalty-free music library provides the premium feels that are generally experienced while working with big production houses. Guess, they make sure they justify their name.
And to add to the greatness, this website is free from clutter. Its signposting is super clear. All buttons as evident as they could be providing you right what you need in the least number of clicks.
The website is backed by Shutterstock and so it’s trustworthy and highly qualified.
The cost of tracks for a web-based license (that is standard and non-commercial) is $49. To use these audio clips for your revenue generating content, you’d need to pay $199.
Marketing itself as the “world’s largest collection of royalty-free stock video and creative assets”, Pond5 is one big player owning the arena of royalty-free creatives.
With over 500,000 tracks covering everything from adventure to orchestral. Meditation to war. Hard rock to soft pop. And classical to hip hop, this is the place for satisfying all your royalty free music requirements.
The website offers you individual tracks starting from around £16 each. Depending on your requirements you can also buy pre-purchased credit bundles or their monthly ($200) or annual ($1,000) memberships.
Another easy to use website providing a large variety of royalty free music clip options to choose from is MachinimaSound.
With a number of music tracks for all moods coming from different genres, MachinimaSound has beats to accompany most types of visual content. So, whether you are developing a game or creating an explainer video, here you can find a great deal of copyright free music.
The icing on the cake: It won’t burn a hole in your pocket as most of the tracks are available for as low as $8.
Easy to use. Rich with royalty free music from an array of genres. Great navigation. Brilliant site layout presenting all the important information right in front of the eye.
What else can one ask for?
Also, the website has a small widget in the right sidebar ranking various albums present on the site based on their popularity for the ongoing week. Plus, the advanced search feature lets users sort music by license, genre, tags, artists, and labels.
While a vast range of royalty free music tracks is something that most websites have, a Soundstripe membership provides users access to unlimited licenses to their hand-picked music collection.
With a user interface as smooth as that of Spotify, Soundstripe makes life easy for creators looking for quick music production solutions. However, this certainly isn’t your cheapest bet. A standard unlimited Soundstripe membership costs $135, which may not be too expensive, but isn’t the cheapest either.
“An oasis to the beautifully produced music for film and video…”
That’s what the head of their website says. Following the same, the website is rich with some beautifully composed music that you can use for your videos and movies. The only problem that one may have to face is the shortage of tracks.
Music Vine was founded in 2015 due to which its repository is limited to a total of 2062 tracks from 146 recording artists. Thankfully, this doesn’t mean their music isn’t good. Their artists produce tracks featuring “real performances, real instruments, and real emotion.”
Speaking of pricing, $40 is what it costs to license music for a single web project with an audience of less than 1 million (fit for corporate and YouTube videos). The price goes up to $334 when your audience is supposed to be more than 10 million.
Offering an aesthetic touch of art incorporated with an extensive list of cool indie tracks, Artlist is your perfect go-to for licensing music for video, film and YouTube.
Also, going with the name, the website has a really artsy collection of royalty free music which is super easy to navigate with the smooth user interface. Plus, the site allows you to pick songs based on your video’s duration and the tempo of your choice.
This just eradicates another obstacle that you might generally have had to face while finding free music.
The unlimited license plan giving access to complete catalogue with YouTube monetization checked music is priced at $16.6/month ($199/year).
An instructional video on the products page. Price packaging menus dividing customers into personal, freelancers and companies. Affordable price range starting from $9.99/month for personal and freelance users. Filmstro provides it all.
This site features a good range of tracks from a variety of artists and genres fit for a variety of situations in videos, films, games and apps.
Productiontrax is a community of creatives producing brilliant royalty free music, sound effects and stock audio that can be used again and again without any copyright issues.
One major problem that most users my face is its browsing experience that may not come off as very aesthetic in the first go. However, the overall functionality of website is spot on with a simple search bar and categories divided in the basis of genres, artists, labels, etc.
The prices of these tracks range from $15 to $60.
With clips for a number of themes categorized into twenty genres and various instruments, Jamendo is full of royalty free music.
The website is easy to use with a simple homepage directing users to ‘START’ with the paid or free plans.
The website has a total of 222,101 tracks to gel with all types of multimedia projects including videos, games, films and documentaries.
Per track prices start from $9.99.
Who doesn’t know about Amazon being the e-commerce giant that it is?
With all the fame and credibility that Amazon has grown up to, quality comes as given.
Songs are listed simply as singles and albums that you can pick from. While the range of tracks may not be all fancy with the current repository consisting of only 1019 royalty free tracks, the low prices can make your day.
On Amazon music, you can find beautiful tracks for as low as $0.99, which is certainly the cheapest on this list.
Like their name, the website is also purple, resembling a planetarium.
As you may want to pick music depending on the feelings that it poses, the tracks and genres are divided into what the music sounds like or how it makes the listener feel.
The website also has a free section featuring music perfectly suited for accompanying YouTube videos and small commercial projects.
Moving further, the paid content on the site isn’t expensive either. You can buy a standard license for as little as $5. However, an unlimited license will cost you $40, which also won’t break the bank considering its usefulness.
For every creator looking for royalty-free clips, AKM music is a super easy to navigate and super fun to explore website offering music from various genres.
The website provides a search box. However, if you want to explore the site at your own pace, you can browse it by moods and genres.
The prices range from $20 for royalty-free tracks to $47 for album downloads. Definitely economic for getting album downloads provided the quality music that this site provides.
From the most common free music tracks to the latest and rarest licks and riffs, the website offers all music production solutions.
The bummer for personal and freelance users here can be the subscription price.
Prices starting at $119.95 per month for 5 tracks and going up to a whopping $399.95 per month for 40 tracks, make Amazing Music Tracks fit for large enterprises looking forward to generating great ROIs against their multimedia content.
If you’re a freelancer or individual, other options on this page can help you better.
With over 100,000 creators using their royalty free music for one purpose or the other, Hooksounds enjoys a decent fanbase.
The best thing about Hooksounds is that their artists are hand-picked by their team ensuring the utmost quality. Plus, the music availed from here is free of all copyright boundaries and hence can be used in ‘n’ number of ways and ‘n’ number of times.
You can explore the site based on genres like ‘Guitar’ and ‘Ukulele’ or artists of your choice.
A standard license can cost around $24 which is why it is apt for freelancers and vloggers. The price for a Premier Broadcast license for TV and radio projects goes up to $580.
This is one of the oldest, most reliable and easiest to use websites offering a myriad of royalty free music clips to choose from.
The website has been functional since the year 1996 and unlike most royalty free music companies it doesn’t ask users to submit cue sheets or report to any of the performing rights organizations. Which is great.
Also, the homepage mentions the procedure of finding and licensing music on the website into easy steps.
Prices for music albums start from $99 and go up to $129.
Freeplay music is another vast royalty free music library offering a wide range of select loops, beats, riffs and licks.
With over 50,000 songs free for YouTube videos and other multimedia purposes, this website can satisfy most of your music needs.
The user interface is spot on with the most popular tracks listed right on the front page. Users looking for more options can browse through genres, playlists and artists on the website.
The most basic plan costs $50. For other high-end plans providing more features like a TV license, the prices go up to $500.
Available to every YouTube creator, YouTube Audio Library is a collection of royalty free music clips for various situations from different genres.
The search functionality allows users to sort music by genre, instrument, duration, attribution, and even mood. Also, one can consider exploring the popular music section (it’s the best with all the latest tracks).
To access, just log-in to your YouTube account and go to Creator Studio > Create > Audio Library.
While getting awesome music for your multimedia projects is crucial, buying premium music every time can drain you off of funds. No wonder why most companies dig royalty free music like anything.
In this post, we have shared a list of 21 websites providing royalty free music fit for all kinds of video or app media projects of any business niche. If this has helped you, share it with your friends and colleagues who may find it useful too.
Infographics are powerful instruments in content marketing. They look catchy, make the info easy to digest, and are share-worthy. But these visuals can hardly help you in the long run if they drive no organic traffic monthly.
Sure thing, when a new infographic goes live on your blog, your loyal readers will see it. But what’s next? It’ll become just another useless page taking space on your site and bringing little to no value in return. According to the analysis of around a billion pages, 91% of them don’t get any organic traffic. The question is how to keep your infographics among the remaining 9% and welcome new visitors month by month.
Turning an infographic into a steady traffic source requires a strategy. While the visual side matters, you must analyze its potential from a marketing point. Here are the main strategic points to keep in mind when working on a new infographic.
You may have a brilliant topic idea for your infographic but here’s the thing. It has nothing to do with its actual traffic potential. If there’s hardly anyone who googles it, you can’t expect a lot of visitors from Google search. Your visual content must match real users’ queries, or Google will have nothing to rank them for.
Let’s say you want to post an infographic about marketing trends. Go check if this topic matches any queries and how many searches each of them gets, aka their Search Volume.
As shown below, there are over 1K infographic queries that include “marketing” and can reach up to 600 searches per month. That said, it’s definitely a sought-after topic.
To give you a better idea of topics in demand, I analyzed 2K+ real users’ queries that include “infographics.” The most sought-after queries relate to business and finance (19.81%), followed by social problems (14.08%) and health issues (13.65%). Check out a full breakdown of infographic queries by categories.
Note that you don’t necessarily have to stick to queries including “infographics.” Feel free to choose any other topics that’s in demand among searchers.
The only fact that your topic gets searches isn’t a 100% traffic guarantee. Searches don’t turn into page visits for each and every query.
Let’s say you want to create an infographic about a bitcoin value. At first sight, such a topic looks promising. The query “value of 1 bitcoin” gets 1,3K searches per month. But dig deeper, and you’ll see that only 23% of them result in clicks.
It happens because Google displays a currency converter for the query at the top. And it must be enough for 77% of searchers, as they never click through organic results. So, make sure there’s no Knowledge Card for your target query. Otherwise, most users will see an instant answer and finish their search, without visiting your infographic page.
Not all topics get an equal amount of searches and clicks (!) throughout the year. When Halloween is around the corner, people google queries related to this holiday actively. So, you can have a lot of new visitors land on your blog with a Halloween infographic.
But when the holiday is over, the interest in the topic goes down, staying low for the rest of the year. Here’s how the annual search interest in Halloween infographics looks.
Don’t get it wrong. It doesn’t mean you should stop visualizing seasonal topics. Just don’t consider them to be your traffic source all year round. To understand the seasonality of your infographic topics, use Google Trends. Also, watch a video below to understand how you can use this free tool to its full potential.
Using infographics for content marketing is as old as time. You’re not the only one to try to get your visuals ranking for juicy queries. A lot of your competitors are doing the same. To choose easy-to-rank queries, estimate their Keyword Difficulty score (KD). For some queries, it’s easy to promote infographics to the top. Others require so much work that the whole thing may not be worth it.
Different tools rely on their own methods to calculate KD. Since backlinks are among the critical ranking factors, this KD algorithm is based on them. For example, a “net neutrality infographic” query has a KD of 5, which means you can promote it to the top 10 with backlinks from 6 websites. Learn more about this way of calculating KD.
Note that 10 backlinks from 10 different sites bring more power than 10 backlinks from the same site. The bottom line is to earn backlinks from different domains to boost your infographic ranking chances.
As mentioned above, your infographics need some link juice to rank high. So, let’s figure out how you can keep them link-worthy.
There’s only one reason why authors link back to someone else’s content of their own free will. It lets them improve their own write-ups without doing a ton of work. It can be anything from adding proof to their statements to sharing more relevant info on the topic. Here’s the data to include as link bait in your infographics:
Broken links are constantly showing up on websites for various reasons. Some startup goes broke, so its domain usually goes to trash. Sites that link to expired domains and 404 pages end up with broken links. This is an SEO issue that needs fixing.
Notify site admins about the issue and offer them a quick, relevant fix with your infographic. As they’ll benefit from it too, this outreach excuse is quite reasonable, with higher response rates expected.
As you can see above, one site can have thousands of pages with broken links. And each page can have more than one broken link. So, the playing field is broad, and these tips can improve your outcomes.
Competitors aren’t there only to put up roadblocks on your way. Their content can become your source of fruitful infographic topics. Especially since there are many tools giving insights into third-party domains. Competitor research is one of the key SEO strategies for 2019 that you can implement in three steps only.
No matter how catchy your infographic looks, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you want your visuals to pay off in the long run, approach them as a marketer. First, identify easy pickings among users’ search queries. Then, back up your content with a bunch of backlinks, and you’ll come up with infographics with huge traffic potential. Do any other infographic strategies work for you? Let’s discuss them in the comments!
You have a great marketing plan. You are sure about its popularity and acceptance among prospects. The magic will work if you decided to publish it through a video rather than state it in simple words.
After uploading and publishing the video on your site, you are flooded with viewer reviews. Gladdened by the impact your video has been able to make within hours of publishing, you start running your gaze through them.
Instead, you are welcomed by negative responses. You have been criticized for posting a video which
takes a lot of time to load on mobile devices
Stops running after being viewable for initial few seconds
Flickers and freezes intermittently making the watching experience a disastrous one
Never starts playing in the first place and viewers get to see only a stoic black placeholder
Has been crippled by its dragging length
Would you allow your time, efforts, and money invested in preparing the video to go down the drain?
Further, you stand to lose opportunities to
Engage customers in more informative way
Ramp up your brand identity and credibility
Build a vibrant user community
Provide better analysis of how your product/ service transform lives
Earn recurring revenues without any further delay
Promote yourself as niche authority and thought leader
However, don’t let your spirits droop! The solution lies in ‘EMBEDDING’ the video on your page rather than uploading it.
Why embed your videos?
Before digging deep into the reasons, let’s talk about video hosting service providers.
YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Wistia, etc. are popular video destinations wherein you can create your channel and safely upload your videos. This is irrespective of the size of your visual content. You would be provided with an embed code statement at the bottom of the video. Copy and paste it into your webpage. Your video would appear on the exact location and play seamlessly without any hiccups. What pulled this trick off?
Streaming of the video is being done from hosting service provider’s server rather than your site host’s. Here lies the defining difference.
Advantages of availing the services of a video hosting site
An array of fantabulous benefits would render your decision to opt for a video hosting medium a rewarding one.
Bring down your hosting expenses.
The platform that hosts your site offers you limited download allowance. If you exceed this limit, you have to shell out additional charges. This gets reflected in the form of thinning bottom line. With third-party host, you can significantly reduce hosting cost.
Video size depends on
Quality which is a most for sending your message in an immersive manner
Length which allows you to put forward all your views in one comprehensive package
With a host coming to your rescue, you need not compromise on any of the fronts above. Your videos are being hosted on host’s server, so your allotted download limit never gets exhausted even after multiple views.
Ramp up the quality of your videos
Your videos would succeed in their mission if they can persuade leads to subscribe to your services. This depends mostly on how inspiringly you have portrayed service benefits through motion pictures. Video hosts allow you to publish HD (High Definition) videos and broadcast them in high fidelity.
This means you can
Post videos (720p/1080p) whose size may run in few GBs
Post longer videos to encapsulate relevant ideas in a single shot
Benefit from capacious servers of host designed for serving 1000s of videos/minute
Remain immune from video lags that can occur due to non-strategic geographical location of your site host’s servers (achieve 5000-8000 Kbps streaming rate with video host)
Add edge to your SEO prospects.
Once you have created your channel on popular hosting site, you also stand to benefit from the native viewership of that host. Your search engine result page (SERP) ranking would leap significantly because of
Rating, liking, and searching of your video by non-niche audiences
Better brand awareness
Higher traffic experienced by your site due to link-backs posted on host’s channel
Correct indexing of your video by search engine crawlers
Get over the top of bandwidth restrictions
Your site host provides pre-determined bandwidth based on the plan you have subscribed for. This means, the server
Can’t handle multiple, simultaneous requests for video streaming
Would run out of resource limits sooner
May have imposed size restrictions for videos which you cannot violate
Would create lags initially and then would crash your site
Would make it a tedious job to back up all your crucial videos
Would create additional challenges for those viewers who have slow internet connections
Such nightmares would be things of the past with a third-party video hosting service provider.
Steer clear of the file format confusion.
HTML5 web pages have no uniform code for video formats which all major browsers have to adhere to. Resultantly,
You have to develop multiple copies of your video with various file extensions (.mp4 for IE, webm/.ogg for Firefox, etc.).
You have to work out a way to upload large video sizes after the tiring conversion experience.
You would also need concise, low-resolution videos for mobile audiences
You would require relevant third-party plug-ins to ensure videos run on different platforms
You have to constantly battle with the issue of remedying different playback qualities on various browsers
Luckily, you can get rid of all these with a video host.
Address the issue of video piracy decisively.
If you want to keep your video content safe from illegal distribution, you need to prevent its download. The embed codes offered by video hosts carry the source code link in an obscured manner which cannot be deciphered easily. This makes it impossible to download your copyrighted content.
By now, you must be appreciating the wonderful benefits that would come your way through video hosting providers.
If you want to see your brand reputation grow and its outreach strengthens through compelling videos, you need to ally with third-party video hosts.
Before concluding, I am stating few staggering facts would help you justify your trust on video hosts.
About 1/3rd of internet users are subscribed to YouTube
About 45% internet users spend more than an hour per week watching relevant videos
YouTube registers >500 million video watching hours every day
Video uploaded on third-party hosts per month exceeds television content developed for US TV networks in past thirty years
Video marketing has brought unalloyed success for >87% online sellers
Top video hosts experience uploading of 72 video hours per minute
85% of online marketers’ experience revival of their business fortunes within one month of intensive video marketing through third-party hosts
Demographic section (25-34 years) splurge the most after being inspired by marketing videos
Among all the different forms of content, videos encourage the most number of users to engage. That’s why video marketing has grown to become such a massive trend amongst brands. One of the most effective methods is using an explainer video to provide an overview of the services and products you offer, and how they work, in a crisp yet comprehensible form.
While explainer videos do come with their own perks, one can easily miss the mark and not attain the desired results for a long time. The problem could be with your way of execution, or with the video itself. The following are the reasons why you aren’t reaping the fruits of your efforts:
The video is not time efficient
There may be an overflow of information which you want to pour into the video. You might even want to cram a story or two into it. It seems reasonable to determine the length of the video according to the data going into it, but one must also keep their audience in mind when deciding the video length.
Millennials tend to prefer shorter videos, whereas the older crowd is more comfortable with 30-second videos. In today’s digital world, as the attention span of our brains keeps getting shorter and shorter, keeping it short and sweet has become essential.
According to the YouTube Audience retention tool, a visible difference can be seen in every frame after the 2-minute mark. If it’s kept under that mark, the length of the explainer video wouldn’t matter, be it 30 seconds or even 90 seconds.
Takeaway: One doesn’t need a long video to create an impact – in fact, the shorter, the better. So, put a lot of thought into the writing and storyboarding process of the video, and construct a concise, effective script and make sure it stays under 2 minutes!
The script is of poor quality
Your explainer video can be as short as you want to make it, but it won’t work if your script doesn’t work. This problem isn’t the easiest to detect but can affect the quality of your video greatly. The below mentioned are the reasons why a certain script might be considered subpar:
It is all about the brand/company – Your main aim is to cater to a need. Focusing more on your products and not on solving your customer’s problems, could have a negative impact on your engagement.
It is not structured correctly – In order to make sure the message that you are trying to communicate is delivered clearly to the viewers, you need to lay out what you want to say and how you want to say it, beforehand.
It is not interesting – Repetitive storytelling or fluctuating pacing might make the video a bit dull. For the optimal level of engagement, your video should stand out and be able to hold the viewers’ attention.
Takeaway: Read and re-read your script and make sure it is comprehensible. Don’t focus on your own story and instead, talk about their needs. And above all, ensure that it is enjoyable to watch.
The video itself is not well-made
There are some videos that are so bad, that they start seeming good. Your video is probably not one of them. That is, unfortunately, the harsh truth, and most likely the reason why people press the ‘pause’ button seconds into the video. Not only can lack of quality make people not take you seriously, but you could end up losing some potential customers.
A lot can be said about your brand from the video content you put out. If the quality of your explainer video is not great, the same quality can be expected from the products as well.
To check if your video is really suffering from this, once again we turn to the Audience retention report of YouTube. You can compare the average view duration of your video, with the performances of other videos in the same category. If the retention data of different timeframes shows that people stop watching after a few seconds, it would be enough to tell that the quality of your video is bad.
Takeaway: To have an explainer video with a great appearance, two things should be perfected – the animation techniques and the overall design. If the animation of the video runs smoothly, and the design is detailed and well-executed, it’s bound to show better results.
There is a lack of visibility
For customers to engage with it, the video must be visible and accessible to them. If one needs to hunt your video down, it would not perform very well, regardless of how well-made it is. Sharing it once or twice in your chosen social media platform would not do the trick. You have to go bigger.
The second someone enters the website of your company, they should be able to see the video – the landing page or above the fold on your website. A research shows that a website’s visit time gets increased from 8 seconds to 2 minutes, with the addition of an animated video on its landing page.
You should also put the explainer video out there in the world of social media – use smaller segments of it in your blog posts and all of your social media platforms, create ads, plug it in wherever it seems relevant.
Takeaway: It is important for your video to be visible and easy to find. Having your video up where it’s easiest to spot, like social media platforms and websites, can help with the overall reach of the video.
Conclusion
The building blocks of the most effective explainer video are:
A duration that holds the attention of the customers throughout the video
A well-structured, crisp and relatable script, which speaks to and about your customers, while simultaneously enabling them to understand your brand and products better.
Well-crafted animations and design to give the video an immaculate appearance
Once you have the explainer video that fits all the above criteria, it’s time to make it visible to the whole world. So put it up on your landing page and spread it across all social media platforms.
Follow the above-mentioned steps and you would attain the desired results in no time. Good luck!
Visuals have the ability to take your marketing strategy a notch higher, thanks to their high engagement value and retention rate. But when every marketing strategy out there is relying on visual content, what ideas can you implement to distinguish your brand? Let’s find out:
Easy to read infographics
Infographics are shared 3x more as compared to other forms of content on social media. So it is safe to say that infographics use the potential of visual content effectively.
Infographics build their influence on a very important characteristic of visuals: processing time. Our brains process images much faster than text. While it takes just 1/10th of a second to understand a visual, it takes around 60 seconds to read 200-250 words.
Infographics take a large chunk of text and translate them into an informative visual. They not only save the viewer’s time but also give him the information he was looking for (without making him read multiple lines of text).
Custom Pinterest images
Creating a Pinterest specific image can be a wonderful marketing strategy.
Take this example. Dustin W Stout was able to increase the amount of traffic coming from Pinterest by 1937% just by creating a Pinterest specific image for every blog post he created.
Here is a look at his interview where he discusses the technique of creating pinnable images.
Explainer videos on home pages
When we talk about visual content, it is important to highlight the effectiveness of video marketing. Video, which is occupying the majority chunk of internet traffic, has been a very successful marketing tool.
93% of businesses that use video believe that it has helped in increasing user understanding of their product/service.
An explainer video that simplifies your business for your visitor can drastically improve your conversions, as it did for Dropbox and other companies, causing a big bang of sales.
Custom blog post pictures
Buying stock images and placing them on your website, anyone can do that right?
So how do you stand out?
With the availability of a plethora of tools that allow you to create custom blog post pictures, you can go a step ahead in attracting clients and customers.
Custom created images have a more intrinsic value as they portray your brand personality more clearly. Plus, you have the advantage of being unique.
When Harrington Movers, a moving and storage company based in New Jersey, replaced a stock photo with the crew image, they experienced a confidence level of 98%.
Social media cover photos to increase visibility
Some good things do come for free! Social media cover photos are one good example.
Without paying extra, you can advertise your product/service simply by using an attention-grabbing image. In fact, you can also use explainer videos in this space to help your customers understand your business.
Video ads to create brand awareness
It won’t be wrong to say that Youtube pre-roll and Facebook ads utilise the power of visuals very effectively. With visual content that is short and crisp, video ads have been successful in creating brand awareness.
Video ads work on the retention and recall factor.
In fact, a study has shown that people are 85% more likely your product when they watch a video about it.
Using native videos
Placing videos on native platforms is proven to be more effective than sharing third party links.
Consider the statistics for Facebook. A video uploaded directly on Facebook gets almost 2x the audience the same video link receives when the Youtube link is shared.
Before You Go
The above visual content ideas are tried and tested methods that help your marketing strategy. But do not forget to optimise your visual strategies, no matter where you implement visual content – be it your site, social profiles or other online channels.
Everybody loves a good story.
And these stories help brands connect to their audience effectively. While stories can be told with text alone, they become much more appealing when paired with a visual, thanks to our brain’s response to colors, imagery, body language and other visual cues.
So to reap a good ROI using your visuals, it is crucial that you focus on the various aspects of storytelling. Let’s explore them here:
The “Before & After” Bait
Remember those weight loss ads, with before and after images? Those work brilliantly to ignite the hope in the target audience and persuade them to buy or heed to your call to action. These before/after image doesn’t have to be limited to weightloss sector. You can craft clever marketing messages showing the “before side” (call that the “problem world”) and the “after” phase (the world where the consumer problem is solved thanks to your product).
Instead of before/after, you can try other variations too like today/tomorrow, old way/new way, and so on. You get the idea.
Also this before vs after doesn’t necessarily have to be in image format always.
You can try GIFs too:
Or videos.
Most explainer videos, which communicate a brand’s product story and vision, start by exploring the consumer problem and then introduce the product as the hero that saves the day. It goes more a like a problem world vs new world where target customers see how the product/solution brings about the “happy ever after” end to their problems.
Even investor pitches and presentations use this formula. You highlight the market problem or current state and present your solution.
The “Hero’s Journey” Storytelling Style
The Hero’s Journey storytelling formula helps you identify the key consumer questions that need to be answered before they decide to buy from you. Integrate this technique with the buyer’s journey funnel to craft visual content stories that your audience will resonate with.
Explore charts and pointers from Nancy Duarte’s book “Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences”
Under this, you craft a buyer persona. Draw up the character traits of your target audience, their interests, goals, and desires. Then plan your marketing campaign (language, tone, and narrative) to appeal to that persona.
Remember your customers are scattered in three different phases- awareness, evaluation and purchase mode. Create a buyer persona for each segment. Give a name to that audience segment. And run a market ad to push consumer from brand awareness phase to the purchasing mood.
You Don’t Remember Numbers But You Remember Stories:
Case Study: The London School of Business discovered that people have different levels of information retention based on how information is delivered to them. When they hear statistics alone, they retain only 5% to 10% of what they hear. When stories are used to convey that same information, retention jumps to a remarkable 65% to 70%. So when you are making a presentation or a video or a research poster, present it with a story that will resonate with your audience.
The Neuromarketing Tactic
Our brain notices things that don’t fit the pattern.
Neuromarketing hacks play on people’s unconscious desires in trying to influence them to take the intended action.
Craft visual content that strikes an emotion- delight, surprise, amaze, anger, awe – choose the right psychology factor in your visual content to influence decisions.
Robert Plutchik’s “wheel of emotions” reveals some of the underlying emotions that influence your customers, which – when leveraged – can boost your conversions.
This also works in Price Psychology, like how to get buyers to choose a certain package by offering discounts and coupons.
The Direction Cues Technique
What’s the first thing you see on an ad poster? The headline or that icon? Every visual element carries a “weight” and our eyes scan the image according to this weight hierarchy. For example, if a person’s wearing a flashy shirt, our eye focus on that first, and then maybe the face. Or if he is wearing some fancy shoes? We notice that next. So “flashy” here is the element’s weightage, and depending on how we see things, it influences your perception of that person.
Explore directional cues tactics like contrast, grids, and arrows, or size of the element, and show examples of how we scan graphic ads.
The 5 Question Technique
Great content answers 5 question- Who, where, what, why and how
Who are you making the graphic for, where’s the advertisement going (site or social media, be specific of the platform to make the right graphic ad), what’s the problem, why should they buy your product/service or give you the attention, how do you solve that problem
The online landscape is swamped with video content. And despite the overflow of videos, it is still the most favorite format of online consumption. On Youtube, around 5 billion videos are watched daily. Move onto Facebook and about 100 million hours of video content is consumed in a day.
All those numbers and data make video marketing a favorite amongst the marketers too. Let’s dive deep into the various reasons why there is no better strategy than video:
1) Video offers a good ROI
When companies allocate their budget and resources to any particular strategy, they aim a good return on their investment – it makes sense, after all, to invest in something that helps them achieve their business goals. Video is one such format that offers a good ROI.
And especially when it comes to videos, video ads and explainer videos stand out. Explainer videos help reduce bounce rates and improve conversions. On the other hand, video ads help generate awareness for your brand. Here is how you can generate massive ROI with video ads.
2) Better SEO
Having a video on your site can boost your rankings in the SERP. Additionally, with search engines prioritizing video content, it makes sense to place videos on your site pages.
According to a Forrester study, sites with video content on their pages are 53x more likely to rank on the first page of Google, the same page that receives almost 93% of the clicks.
3) Explainer videos work well on landing pages
Explainer videos on landing pages work well in increasing conversion rates. In fact, they can improve the conversion rate by an average of 20%.
To ensure that your explainer video helps you bring the right results, create a compelling story that causes people to take the desired action on your site. Like Dropbox did with this video.
4) Social videos help you gain exposure to a wide audience
Social videos offer a cost-effective way of creating video content and expanding your user base through a variety of platforms. In fact, social videos go a step ahead in adding that extra layer of engagement by providing multiple formats – think Facebook Live, IGTV, video stories, pre-roll ads etc.
5) Videos help you build trust and better customer connection
Customer loyalty is the essence of successful marketing. Without having people vouch for you and your brand, you cannot distinguish your brand. Through impactful storytelling in videos – customer testimonials that act as personal recommendations, explainer videos that simplify your business, video interviews that educate your consumer – these can build the foundations of customer loyalty for your business.
Your explainer video helps you in simplifying your brand message so you can effectively reach out to your potential audience. However, if the video is not marketed strategically, your proficiency would remain invisible to prospects that matter to your business.
If you are curious to learn about ways that would help you get the right exposure for your explainer videos, here is what you should do:
1) Leverage YouTube’s Pre-Roll Ads
YouTube is the paradise for video lovers. Deploying your videos over here would subliminally motivate the viewers to gravitate towards your brand. The best way to accomplish this is through YouTube Pre-roll ads. To market your explainer video, use these pre-roll ads as teasers. Bring down your content creation efforts by using a part of your explainer video as the pre-roll ad. Develop the video uniquely and interestingly departing from the way commercials are usually perceived. Also, with a CTA button, you can take the user to the point where he can watch the entire video and understand your business/product in a better way.
Since these ads also help you in targeting audiences based on geography, demography and language preferences, they work well in bringing potential customers to the desired landing page.
2) Reach Out Through Email Distributed Newsletters
Monthly newsletter of your brand which gets distributed through emails is an ideal place to embed and market explainer videos. Animoto conducted a research which shows that addition of the word ‘video’ to the email’s subject dramatically improves open and click-through rates by 19% and 65% respectively while reducing unsubscribe rates by 26%. You need to capitalise on this trend. For your explainer videos to command attention, they should be funny, personalised, and must demonstrate the strengths of product in an easily understandable manner.
You can use MailChimp for creating newsletters with integrated explainer videos. Remember, if videos are not compatible with email clients, they would be removed, and an unintelligible code would be shown which may distract users. However, MailChimp overcomes this by providing a thumbnail for embedded video which carries concealed link which would be redirecting user clicks to your video’s URL even if email client disables the video. Images in the email can also be linked to a video hosted on YouTube or other platforms.
3) Get the right exposure through influencers
Influencer marketing helps you get an already engaged audience. To make the most of this opportunity, you can use influencers to market your explainer videos. Locate the right industry influencers through tools like BuzzStream or NinjaOutreach and let them promote your video in their blog content or social profiles.
Conclusion
With the above three proven methods, you can make your explainer videos drive in optimum traffic for your brand’s site. Sit back and enjoy the surge in convertible leads.