No matter what your brand is, marketing is essential to ensuring that you can build and cultivate an audience of engaged users. As the world becomes more connected online, marketing strategies have followed suit, meaning that digital advertising is now the number one form of marketing, surpassing traditional outlets such as print and television. This trend will only continue as mobile devices and electronics continue to become more widely available.

However, not all online marketing is the same. As a general rule, there are three ways to reach your customer with content. First, you have text, much like what you’re reading right now. This can be in the form of blog posts, social media blurbs, and white papers. Second, you have image marketing, which is usually tied into text or used on its own. The popularity of sites like Facebook and Instagram show how well images can build your brand. Finally, you have video. When comparing all three methods, video is by far the most useful way to market your brand? Why? Let’s break it down.

Visually Motivating
As a species, we humans are visual creatures. We react and interact with our world mostly through our eyes, which is why we respond to visual cues much better than anything else, such as smell or hearing. Video taps into this core process of our brain and engages us much better than anything else. Text requires you to focus your attention and read, and images can be scanned and ignored. When you think about it, how often do you stop to study a photo that you like online? Simply put, video attracts our attention because it is pictures in motion, which activates our brains much better than any other kind of stimulus.

The data backs this up as well. When looking at a video site like YouTube, you can see that viewership has only increased in recent years. Despite being just over ten years old, the site has over one billion users engaged every month. That’s a lot of potential customers. Even more importantly, younger people are watching videos online at a far greater rate, which again confirms that this trend will only continue. Among the 18-34 demographic, viewers are watching more online content than any television or pay-per-view channel.

Part of this increase also has to do with the fact that mobile devices are so ubiquitous these days. In fact, nearly 40% of all video content is watched on a phone or tablet. As we become more connected on the go, we can watch clips and videos much more easily than ever before.

Video Content and Your Brand
So what does that mean for your business? It means that you need to invest in video marketing ASAP. Last year, companies spent over eight billion on video marketing, and even back in 2013 there were nearly six billion hours of content watched on YouTube alone. Overall, video marketing is king. Sure, you can tie it in with your current SEO strategy and digital content, but if your brand is not utilizing video, then you are missing out. Here are some of the main benefits of video over text or images.

Build Trust: Testimonials are far more trustworthy than a random text review
Engage Curiosity: We are more likely to click a video if we think it’s something unique or exciting
Build Confidence: Video shows more engagement from your company, which can help strengthen relationships with your customers

As you can see, there is no reason that you shouldn’t be making video marketing the next step for your digital campaign. You can quickly increase traffic to your site and social media pages, and you can also build a better ROI on your marketing budget. The numbers and the science don’t lie; video content is king.