Brands that invest in customer experience initiatives generate almost six times more revenue than their competitors (Forbes). This figure alone is enough to understand why customer experience has quickly become a top priority for agencies. And if we look at the marketing and communications actions at the heart of a successful CX project, video content is certainly the protagonist.
Agencies in particular have long been committed to digitizing their entire journey in order to improve performance. In fact, the use of new media is an incredible boost capable of optimizing internal processes and positively impacting revenue and, at the same time, developing specific actions to allow client companies to reach their objectives. In this post, we’ll explain how this is possible and why video is a key asset for communication agencies.
Before addressing these topics, let’s take a quick look at how agencies have evolved over the past few decades, both in their structure and in the diversification of their business processes.
From full-service agencies to mass communicators
The 1960s saw the birth of “modern” advertising, that of TV commercials, billboards, and the press–essentially traditional media, to be clear. At the same time, those that Giuseppe Mayer in Dallo spot al post: la pubblicità dopo i social media (From commercial to post: advertising after social media) calls “full service” agencies also appeared. Such organizations included all the functions necessary to offer clients a complete communication campaign: design, execution, media buying, research and development, and post-sales analysis in a single structure.
This structural unity would end up fragmenting from the beginning of the following decade with the increase in media complexity (the growth of television, the spread of magazines, the multiplication of radio channels) and the constant growth of the market against the backdrop of a turbulent social and cultural context that was increasingly difficult to decipher.
Starting in the 1990s, and at increasing speed in the 1910s, digitization forced agencies to rethink their position within the marketing process and to explore new approaches and production methodologies in search of a difficult meeting point between technology and creativity, and finally to change some of the cardinal points of the reference imagery, starting with questioning the centrality of the product with respect to the consumer. Digital takes on – it is Mayer who writes – “a transversal function, both tactical and strategic, capable not only of successfully promoting the single offer of the moment, but also of orienting important choices of development and investment for the business in the long term.”
Three trends are shaping communication along new lines: the emergence of new channels, the spread of mobile, and the preeminence of video content, ferrying it from traditional forms of “old mass communication ecosystems” (pre-digital television, radio and print) to what Mayer calls “mass communicator egosystems,” that is, “platforms that place the individual, the person, the consumer at the center of their operation, allowing them, at the cost of a few clicks, to represent themselves and their world with a potential, in terms of visibility and effects generated, comparable to what was once possible only through traditional mass media.”
The evolution of agencies has accelerated over the last ten years, in conjunction with the emergence of the two main trends that characterize today’s purchasing and consumption processes: the importance assumed by the customer experience and personalization. Video demonstrates an extraordinary ability to transpose and translate both of these trends into an expressive form. Let’s take a closer look.
Video marketing for agency business: customer experience and personalization
It’s a fact by now: customers no longer base their loyalty on price or product, but choose to remain loyal by virtue of the experience – attentive, efficient, personalized – designed for them. A less-than-positive experience drives customers away, quickly and for an unspecified amount of time. Back in 2018, one in three consumers (32% of those surveyed by PwC) said that a single unsatisfactory or otherwise perceived negative experience would be enough to prompt them to switch products or services, even if the brand that provided the product or service was among their favorite brands.
On the other hand, customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than those that don’t put customers first (source: SuperOffice). Retaining customers is the real goal, but to create loyalty and establish meaningful and lasting relationships, agencies must redesign their creative formats to deliver content that is truly useful. This is where video comes in, with all its potential, as it would allow for a deeper connection with brands (this is what 85% of respondents said in a RenderForest survey). The inclusion of video in the content strategy therefore seems to be a compulsory choice, thanks to which an agency will be able to increase the rate of involvement, maintain a solid and vital relationship with the consumer over time, and increase profits.
Personalization: Creating value for clients, giving agencies a competitive advantage
Another factor to consider when it comes to video for business, at both the enterprise and agency level, is the strong consumer preference for personalized experiences. Consider the following evidence:
- according to a Statista survey, 90% of U.S. consumers find promotional messages that are not personally relevant extremely inappropriate;
- Another Statista survey found that 65% of respondents in the US and UK make purchases using product suggestions, even if only occasionally.
These two figures give an idea of the spread of a particular attitude: people increasingly perceive personalization as a trend that creates value. And if we look at companies and agencies? In this case, the adoption of personalizing modes of communication is also a real competitive advantage.
According to a 2020 study, also conducted by Statista, the benefits that marketers surveyed recognize to personalization are better customer experience, higher conversion rates, and greater user engagement.
In contemporary markets, purchasing decisions are clearly influenced by the relevance of content, so much so that in order to receive more valuable suggestions and a personalized online experience, many Internet users are willing to share email addresses or other personal data. The flow of this data, made possible by digitization, will increase even further, in the best of cases feeding a real narrative system where the analysis and interpretation of data makes it possible to know the target audience and segment it in an increasingly accurate way, according to homogeneous and consistent characteristics. In this way, the knowledge acquired about the consumer is used to build more authentic and engaging storytelling experiences that find particularly effective expression in personalized and interactive videos.
Video becomes even more important: let’s look at the data
In today’s digital world, video is already an integral part of marketing and communication plans and is set to become even more important in the future. The numbers bear this out.
- According to some forecasts, by the end of 2021, marketers will have spent $37.4 billion on video content, 12.5% more than the previous year. Between 2021 and 2025, the annual growth rate is expected to be 5.1%, for a total spending value of more than $45 billion by 2025 (Statista), with less funding for traditional channels and more resources invested in digital, specifically on social media and paid video (Biteable).
- By 2022, video marketing will account for about 82% of consumer internet traffic – that’s 15 times higher than in 2017 (Forbes).
Video helps evolve business processes. For example: thanks to its ability to speak clearly and directly to viewers, video helps them understand products and services, so much so that 43% of marketing experts say it positively affects customer service activities, reducing the number of calls to corporate call centers (source: HubSpot).
The increase not only affects indicators related to the areas of marketing and communication activities, but is reflected in the economic results of the entire organization. Also according to HubSpot:
- 87% of marketers working on video initiatives confirm that video offers a significantly positive ROI. 84%, (+1% vs. 2020) believe video is a great investment for lead generation and nearly eight in ten professionals believe video has a direct and positive impact on sales;
- 78% of professionals report that using video as a creative format and communication tool has improved their company’s bottom line.
Video also has a positive impact when other metrics are considered: when measuring the success of a video marketing project, most marketers (63%) consider engagement to be the primary metric, followed by the number of views (58%).
Doxee Solutions: Video marketing to improve business processes
Agencies find themselves having to extract value from huge, often chaotic amounts of data. But the real wealth of this information is not its size but rather the potential meaning in which it is articulated. Agencies must adopt the best tools to identify and select, in the sea of information available to each consumer, the insight that can make it emerge, in all its diversity. Agency creativity should not, therefore, be built to reach a generic mass audience, but should be based on an analysis of knowledge, on the consequent identification of the most exact profiles possible, and on the production of contents adapted to increasingly circumscribed contexts.
Doxee videos are designed to help agencies evolve their business processes in this direction. How? By enabling multi-channel communication that combines storytelling with the value of data and the power of interactivity.
Doxee Pvideo®: interactivity and high conversion rates
The time spent in front of a video is indicative of the degree of involvement that users have with what they are watching. Viewing the entire video means granting a more intense emotional investment: what we are seeing captures our attention because it concerns us, because it not only speaks to us but it talks about us.
Doxee videos have a very high percentage of viewers who not only view but stay connected for the duration of the video (78%). This means they have the potential to evolve the relationship between brand and customer in the sense of true and lasting engagement, resulting in a shorter funnel and lower conversion costs. How do they accomplish this? Through interactivity.
In addition to being personalized, Doxee videos are also interactive, that is, they allow the viewer to interact with the story itself through clickable call-to-actions that can lead to the customer area of a company website, to a payment system, or a landing page for booking a service. The presence of pop-ups also allows you to delve deeper into the main narrative and navigate through alternative paths.
Finally, interactivity is key for data collection. Analytics enabled by the Doxee Pvideo® platform improves conversion rates and business processes along the entire journey because it optimizes the management of the entire channel by monitoring classic KPIs related to email marketing.
Doxee’s video for business: the perfect solution for agencies
Thanks to their advanced features, Doxee’s solutions help agencies’ business processes evolve: once the consumer is in the video, his or her behaviors can be tracked, traced, and measured, and can be correlated to possible conversions and therefore monetized. The interactive storytelling of Doxee’s personalized videos is of strategic importance because it actually drives the customer experience: it’s not just tied to branding strategies but actually aims at conversion (e.g. downloading an app or gaining user consent to continue to other actions).
Doxee Pvideo® is perfect for the agency world, especially in its self-service version: services that agencies can use on their own to create storytelling projects that really work for their clients, at any stage of the funnel.
By integrating Doxee’s personalized videos into their business processes, agencies can ensure that their operations are based on data, and from there they can proceed to build a proposal for their clients that is rich in useful insights and truly valuable.
