Video marketing is a strong mainstay in the digital marketing landscape, with over 90% of marketers adding videos to their marketing mix.

Corporate video trends are always in a state of flux as a result of several factors:

Changing consumer wants and needs

Economic changes

The completely unexpected — i.e. Covid 19

Being aware of how these factors and others affect corporate video trends can grant you better insight into the future and enable you to capitalize on new trends before your competitors do. Consider these corporate video trends that have emerged in 2022? How many are you using right now?

Live videos

New live streaming platforms as well as popular social media and video channels such as Twitter and YouTube have caused an emergence in the prevalence of live video, and marketers are discovering new creative opportunities to utilize the growing trend to their advantage.

One key element that eluded others in the onset of live video but is now a critical factor in it’s marketing success is enabling interaction with the audience. For example, allowing question and answer sessions with an audience or showcasing a product or service live while viewers comment improves the consumer experience and creates a moment among viewers that will have them talking with each other after the video feed has ended.

Consider these other eye-opening stats from Livestream and you’ll soon realize why live video is a growing corporate video trend,

80% of people prefer watching live videos than reading blog posts or social media posts.

Almost 90% of people will watch a live stream if it also includes behind-the-scenes content.

45% of consumers would pay to see a live video from a favorite team, speaker, or performer.

It is also important to note that quality in a live video is important — of audience members polled on Livestream, nearly 70% stated that quality is the most important factor when watching a live video.

Shoppable Videos

Both consumers and marketers are always seeking ways to improve the customer experience, and shoppable videos definitely fit the bill. Shoppable videos are an ideal opportunity to improve the conversion rate mid-funnel, and they also appeal to today’s consumer culture that want to make a purchase with as much ease as possible.

Although this kind of video is mostly seen with fashion brands, we predict it’ll only be a matter time before other industries such as kitchen manufacturers, home improvement companies and others take this to heart.

Vertical video

Who would have thought such a simple idea would gain so much traction as to be the next standard for marketing videos? Vertical videos are just that — videos shot in a vertical format so that viewers don’t need to tilt their phones. This allows for a more immersive experience and puts the focus clearly on the subject without wasting unnecessary space on backgrounds and distracting side-scenery. Expect to see more variations in video dimensions in the future as more video publishing platforms become available.

Training, education, and how-to videos are especially popular
These videos were already popular for many years, but changing economic and societal factors have increased demand for such content exponentially. From free how-to and DIY videos on YouTube to pay subscription video tutorials and classes on all manner of subjects, not to mention e-learning in the form of educational classroom videos, many brands are capitalizing on these videos and creating specific content both for their target audience as well as for employees within the organization.

In the 2020 work-from-home climate, organizations are producing training videos for their employees to view at home and continue to learn or improve upon valuable skills.

Additionally, video tutorials that showcase how to use a product or put together a piece of furniture, for example, are not only popular, but specifically sought after by consumers.

But it’s not only in the B2C world, but just as much in the B2B world that how-to and assembly animation videos are a hit.

Searchable videos

There’s a reason major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! now include videos at the top of their search results. It’s because they already know that consumers prefer videos to text. And because marketers know that videos increase conversions, they are ensuring that the videos they publish are indeed searchable via keywords in the title and metadata.

But why stop there? Why not be able to get organic search results matching your search criteria based on what actually appears in the video? It’s possible with Google’s new intuitive AI that actively identifies snippets of video that relate directly to search queries.

This presents marketers with a new era of optimization and it’s of vital importance in ensuring top-tier search results.

Personalized videos

Smart marketers already know that targeted, personalized advertising is important, but this has rarely transcended into videos, which have mainly been produced for the audience as a whole. However, while it may not seem especially cost-effective to create a video for each individual customer, what can be done in a cost-effective manner is producing videos for specific segments of your audience.

Personalized videos offer a multitude of benefits that encapsulate many of the goals of a complete marketing mix:

Improved user experience

Allows you to build a relationship with the viewer

Stand out from competitors

Delivers a tailored experience

Addresses consumer pain points

Improves conversions

Helping consumers along their journey to ultimately make a purchase decision

Improves brand recognition

Long-form videos

The standard protocol for many types of videos was to make them short and to the point, with the exception of videos such as webinars or expert interviews. But long-form video is a trend that is steadily gaining ground, just as long-form articles and blog posts have done over the last decade.

Short, concise videos still have their place, but long-form videos allow for deeper, enriching stories to be told, as well as informative documentaries that relate to an industry or brand ideal or culture. Long-form videos can be quite cinematic and entertaining, which can make them just as easy to consume as shorter videos. More importantly, they enable brands to develop a deeper relationship and even an emotional connection with the audience.

Only a few years ago, the majority of videos produced for marketing purposes were less than five minutes in length. However, studies performed revealed that videos that were longer than 15 minutes actually engaged audiences 50% more than their shorter counterparts.

More video integration within the sales funnel

A successful sales funnel works as a continuous journey for the consumer, with each point along the journey melding seamlessly with the next. Through video integration, marketers can significantly increase the power of their sales funnel and draw in a larger share of their target audience.

More brands each day are already seeking to integrate more video into their sales funnel in order to improve their video marketing strategy and achieve optimal benefits and a strong ROI. Cleverly placing certain types of videos along specific points in the sales funnel can directly influence consumer behavior to the desired effect, as well as improve the customer experience and present a more memorable buyer journey.

For example:

Videos in the beginning of the sales funnel increase brand awareness.

During the nurturing stage, they can address buyer pain points.

Following that, videos can showcase specific product features and increase click conversions.

Finally, they can convert leads to customers and provide additional support after the purchase.

OTT video marketing

The continuing movement towards over-the-top (OTT) media services such as Amazon Prime, Disney+, Netflix, and Hulu in lieu of traditional cable has forced marketers to rethink video ads and seek new avenues for video marketing on these popular platforms. Considering that these streaming services aren’t just watched on Smart TVs, but also tablets, mobile devices, and desktop computers, there is a wide avenue for delivering content (although it will need to be responsive for each device and platform).

Despite the current difficulty in producing responsive videos for so many platforms, it’s a worthwhile endeavor, since eMarketer predicts that OTT service users will climb to 197.7 million by 2022.

OTT video ads are highly targeted, as the services typically use algorithms to match viewers to relevant ads. This can be advantageous since you can be assured that your videos will be viewed by those who are likely to be most receptive to them.

Silent videos

People browse the Internet and view videos in all manner of environments and social situations, but not all of them are conducive to allowing videos with sound to play when it could disturb others. To that end, the allure of silent videos is on the rise. Facebook already allows an option to autoplay videos in silent mode, and a study by Verizon Media revealed that over 90% of people watch videos without sound when in public places (provided their are captions, of course).

In fact, consumers often expect captions to automatically appear when videos are played in silent mode, an expectation that has not gone unnoticed by marketers. Utilizing captions and producing videos that work just as well without sound as they do with sound has become an important consideration in video marketing, and it’s a trend that is likely to stick around for a good long while.

In conclusion

While many of the above trends may dissipate or fall out of favor as new trends emerge, one thing that is most certain is that video marketing is the new reigning queen with a discernible edge over other digital marketing methods. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you should eliminate some of those old faithful strategies — SEO, email marketing and others will always play a critical role. But video marketing speaks directly to the consumer like no other marketing strategy, giving the audience exactly what it wants and leaving them clamoring for an encore again and again.

The future of video marketing is bound to become more immersive, exciting, and innovative as technology continues to provide new opportunities to deliver enriching experiences. But for now, the current state of video marketing is no less exciting, as the above trends in all their diversity clearly show.