In 2017, the average person worldwide, spent 135 minutes every day on social media. We live in an age where we are all glued to our phones, tablets and laptops, hungrily digesting as much information as we can get our eyes around. There are over 2billion people using social media, with Facebook being the front runner for a long time. But are our social habits changing with regards to what we consume and on which platform?
Our friends at Hubspot have just released the data from their 2017 consumer trends survey and it seems users would prefer to receive content via video over any other medium.
But how does this apply to brands? Well, the good news is that if you want to get your brand resonating with your target audience, video is key. Over half of the consumers surveyed indicated that they would like to see video content over anything else from the brands that they support. Cue every brand dashing to dust off their old camcorders…
However, it is not as clean-cut as that. Hubspot found that the type of branded video content distributed and where the target audience are located plays an extremely important part in how well it is received…and remembered! For example, users in Latin America had a far greater proclivity for video and social content from brands than those surveyed in Germany, who would much rather see branded content in the form of email. Crucially, they also remembered the content more if it was delivered in their preferred format.
However, when it came to advertising there was a far greater divide in the locations surveyed. Latin America continued its love of video, whereas audiences in Germany and USA labelled video ads ‘annoying’ and preferred those that were imaged based. Despite this, video ads ranked highest against both text and image based ads. Brands must therefore start to consider the style of their adverts as a large proportion of all surveyed wanted to see entertaining, funny and informative video content, so marrying the two would suggest an increase in engagement across demographics.
So, now to upload your hilarious, informative and highly entertaining ad to YouTube…right? Well, yes, YouTube is still the front-runner when it comes to video channels with 83% surveyed using the channel to watch video content, but Facebook is hot on its heels! 67% indicated they watch videos on Facebook, so this would seem like an obvious place for a brand to situate themselves. However, the stumbling block will be the infamous Facebook algorithm which de-emphasises branded content over that of friends and family. This further amplifies the need for brands to make entertaining, educational and engaging content which users will be inclined to share and comment on. Get this right and Facebook is a great platform for branded video.
Right, we’ve discussed the vehicle for your content (if you weren’t listening – it is all about video and it proves we should have vlogged this instead!), but where do users go when searching for content? Well the majority go to Google (52%) and Facebook (48%) to get their news, business and lifestyle stories. Therefore, brands need a presence on at least one of these; however, they need to make sure that their content is suitably optimised as the active search nature of Google is very different to the passive feed of Facebook.
Brands must also not forget to invest time in their own company websites as they still play an integral role in the consumer purchase journey. Overall, 50% of users visited a company’s website prior to making a purchase. However, there is a definite demographic ‘swing’ across the purchase behaviour trends within the report…Search engines proved the most popular method of content discovery in Germany (and overall), Amazon rated highest in the USA; and in Latin America, social, company websites and educational videos dominated the responses. Audience demographics therefore must be strongly considered when planning content distribution.
The final aspect of the Consumer Trends survey focused on the type of device consumers use to get their content, as this often influences their platform preference. Only 9% of the overall audience used a tablet as their preferred online device, with 43% using a computer and 48% preferring to use their mobile phones. This increases to 57% when just looking at Latin America and certainly goes hand in hand with the previously mentioned preference for social and video based content. It is also an important statistic for companies who are interested in using messaging services to chat with consumers. With the Latin American audience identifying themselves as open to using chat as a form of communication, an opportunity arises to trial this method of communication on this engaged demographic. This may sound very specific, but brands should be looking for and learning from best practices which present themselves out of this sort of targeting.
So, what can we take from this?
The demographic and behavioural profile of your audience are integral in dictating how and where content is distributed and optimised. In a nut shell, your content strategy needs to be more dynamic and customer centric than ever before.
Get in touch to discuss your content needs and how we can adapt your content to meet the needs of your audience.
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