We’ve all seen stats like these - 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every single day, 1200% more shares are generated by social media videos than text and images combined, videos on landing pages increase conversions by 80% and 80% of users recall a video ad they have seen online in the past month.

So, we all agree that video is big news and if it’s big now guess what, it’s going to get bigger so....

Here are the 5 steps you need to make video part of your marketing strategy for 2020 -

1. Center Your Video Around the Story, Not The Sale. There's a load of sales clutter on the Internet that is actively enraging and repelling your customers. Don’t let your brand be that guy – instead, your video should be centered around the story and not the sale. Make the most of the emotive power of video by appealing to your consumers’ needs and hidden desires.

2. Make your Video Feature the Best 10 Seconds Ever. One fifth of your viewers will click away from a video within 10 seconds or less. Short and to the point – that’s what the video experts are recommending. Our advice? Get right to the grit of the tale and manage expectations from the outset (within the first 5 to 10 seconds).

3. Use Humour in Your Video. Often in the corporate world, people get nervous about comedy and say it doesn’t belong here. But if it might help you get a point across efficiently and economically, why wouldn’t you try it and see if you can make it work. So, what do your audience want instead? They want to laugh, they want to feel enlightened, they want to be pulled out of their boring 9 to 5's and forget about their realities.

4. Optimize Your Video for SEO. There are plenty of tactics you can use to ensure your videos get found easier in search engines. The first thing you should do to derive the maximum SEO value from your video (before you upload your video to any sharing sites) is to host it on your own domain. It’s also important to enable embedding on your video as this will help you increase the likelihood of receiving inbound marketing links. When it comes to video for SEO, descriptions are everything. Why? Well, descriptions allow Google’s search spiders to make sense of your video and understand what the content entails.

5. Educate your Customers with Video & Prove Yourself. Did you know that 65% of your audience are visual learners? One of the most powerful methods you can use for video marketing is to educate your audience. And the great thing is that education comes in many forms. For example, you can teach your customers how to use your product or service and provide useful tips on how to make the most of it. Or you can create a webinar to showcase your industry knowledge, position your brand as a thought leader, add value to your consumers’ lives and collect leads in the process.