With videos like these, who needs text?

Is text dead? Should I just stop typing this introduction right now and let you skip straight to the podcast? Determining the right medium for your sales and marketing content is vital part of a robust communications strategy. It's like a balanced breakfast of content! Text and video can and should work together at different stages of your sales funnel to achieve different goals. When deciding what to use where, one thing is for sure: People like watching videos. And, last time I checked, your customers were people.

Listen to the audio, watch the video, or go old school and read the transcript below to find out:

• What content marketing surveys for 2020 tell us about how marketers and consumers are using text, images, and video
• How a former English major turned video marketer finds herself using text and video as a consumer
• How video should be used differently in different parts of your sales funnel and customer journey,
• Which marketing videos need to be high budget and which can be made in-house

Convinced that video is the best medium? Check out the video version of the podcast on Umault's YouTube channel.

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Key quotes

"In a survey for 2020, they found that 84% of people they surveyed have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand's video. And 95% of people who are using video say that people understand their product better now that they have a video on their site." - Hope Morley

"Everybody is stressed out at work and has no time to do anything. And video can like no other medium consolidate thoughts and feelings." - Guy Bauer

"There's a stat by Glassdoor talking about job postings. And they actually found that job postings that had video ended up with 34% more applications to them than the ones without a video." - Tory Merritt

Resources and stats

Social media video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined. This is simply because video can quickly make your audience feel an emotion.

59% of executives agree that if both text and video are available, they are more likely to choose video.

Video appeals to visual learners and there's more of them than any other type of people.

From Wyzowl:

• 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.
• When asked how they’d most like to learn about a product or service, 66% of people said they’d prefer to watch a short video. 18% would rather read text.
• 95% of respondents say video has led to people understanding their product/service better.

You can listen to the episode using the player embedded above, or you can read a full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Guy Bauer:
So I think just looping back — text is dumb.

Hope Morley:
Hello and welcome to So You Need a Video, the only podcast...

Guy Bauer:
that we're aware of...

Hope Morley:
about how not to make a corporate video. I'm Hope Morley.

Tory Merritt:
I'm Tory Merritt.

Guy Bauer:
And I'm Guy Bauer.

Hope Morley:
Yeah, I just shook up the tagline there.

Tory Merritt:
Yeah.

Guy Bauer:
Why'd you do that?

Hope Morley:
Because I feel like it's more representative of what we talk about.

Tory Merritt:
Trailblazing.

Hope Morley:
Yes. So speaking of what we're talking about. Today, we are talking about why you should use video over other forms of media, specifically text, but we might get into a little bit of other areas as well. So obviously we are big promoters of video, but we actually have some reasons behind that. Recently HubSpot released some statistics for content marketing in 2020 and they found that video is now the number one form of media that people are using in their content strategy.

Tory Merritt:
Nice.

Hope Morley:
It has officially overtaken blogs and-

Tory Merritt:
We did it.

Hope Morley:
Infographics.

Guy Bauer:
No way. Oh, really.

Hope Morley:
Yes.

Guy Bauer:
Wow!

Hope Morley:
Video is obviously grabbing people's attention. People are finding it useful. The content landscape is very noisy. So video is a way that we can stand out a little bit. Some other statistics that I found here that Wyzowl, who did another survey for 2020, found that 84% of people they surveyed have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand's video. And 95% of people who are using video say that people understand their product better now that they have a video on their site.

Tory Merritt:
Sweet.

Guy Bauer:
That's crazy.

Tory Merritt:
So it sounds like video is the way to stand out if you're trying to make headway in business.

Guy Bauer:
It does.

Hope Morley:
Let's get into it. So why, so when someone is watching a video, why is it a better way to understand what you're learning about.

Guy Bauer:
Did HubSpot say why or anything like that? Like what did they, so like their whole— HubSpot is now saying that video has overtaken blogs, infographics, just everything in terms of what marketers attribute to..

Hope Morley:
What people are using for their content marketing. So in terms of like...

Guy Bauer:
No way.

Hope Morley:
Yeah.

Guy Bauer:
Wow.

Hope Morley:
Out of all the media that people are using, more video than anything else.

Tory Merritt:
So both the content creators and people that are reading the content?

Hope Morley:
Right.

Tory Merritt:
Okay.

Guy Bauer:
Yeah, that's awesome. I mean we've talked about this before and video is just the easiest for our brains to process. It does all the work for you. It gives you visuals to look at, gives you audio to hear, gives you sound effects. And it kind of fills all the senses that can be filled other than smell-o-vision.

Tory Merritt:
Coming soon.

Guy Bauer:
Yeah. But why I think it's just easy for people to do.

Tory Merritt:
Well, I saw your stats specifically about like the rational brain versus the emotional brain. It was limbic and what's the other one called? You had it written down, but basically video hops in the commuter lane and takes you straight to emotional town, if that makes sense. So instead of where copy may leave you sitting in the rational brain and like, does this make sense? Is this true? Video allows you to hop straight to emotions and start asking, am I driving an emotional response with this video? And then people do things and are triggered by emotion faster than the rational brain.

Guy Bauer:
Mm-hmm yeah. To me it's just like, let's just be real, I'm just taking off my whole we're in a podcast thought leadership content marketing thing is it's cool. It's just easier and cooler. Honestly, just for real, right? I mean reading is hard to do. If every night I try to read a bit of this book I'm reading right now and I can only make it two pages before I fall asleep. It's a long, it's a lot of investment to read.

Hope Morley:
Well even just, and I'm a big reader. I majored in English in college, big on reading, but I was recently shopping for a new software product for our company and I was looking at all their reading about their features and benefits on the site, but they had a couple of videos interspersed in the site and I found that I was kind of skimming the text and then watching the video and then skimming the text and then watching the video and hopping back and forth. But I spent the most time watching the video and it did give me a better understanding of what this product was because especially when you're talking about something like a software product, seeing how it works gives you a better idea of, is this going to work for me?

Tory Merritt:
And you probably remembered the stuff from the video. Your retention was higher with the video than the text. I think of, I was trying to read last night too. I'm like, okay Tory, you're going to do it, this is the best way to relax. And then I ended up watching videos on social media instead because I felt like it didn't require as much of a mental anguish for me to focus on it before I went to bed. I did see there was a study, it's from 2018 cause the 2019 one hasn't wrapped up from BLS though, that leisure reading is the lowest it's been ever.

Hope Morley:
That just makes me sad though.

Tory Merritt:
It does. But think of all these book clubs that are popping up, so I'm confused. But it's not that people aren't, they're not reading for fun. So then my question is how much are they reading for not fun. You know what I mean? If you're not even doing it just for your own enjoyment, who's going to do it at work for something that they really aren't in love with necessarily. We love work, but if we are not doing it for fun, how much less are you doing it to buy software or to figure out a new solution for something?

Guy Bauer:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Everybody is stressed out at work and has no time to do anything. And video can like no other medium consolidate thoughts and feelings and if you think about it, Hollywood movies do this. They take a thousand page book and then adapt it for a two hour movie and you get the gist. Everyone always complains that it's not as good as the book, but Hey, if you can get 90% of the way there, it's way more efficient of a communication tool than any other medium. And what's interesting is this, the reason why we're doing this podcast is because this was supposed to be a blog by me and then as I'm writing it and I'm like, wait a second,

Tory Merritt:
Why would I make copy for something I'm saying don't use copy for.

Guy Bauer:
Right, exactly. Most likely if you're listening to this podcast or watching this video, you're driving, well not if you're watching the video.

Hope Morley:
I hope not.

Tory Merritt:
Uber.

Guy Bauer:
Maybe you're Ubering or it's 20 years from now and there's self-driving cars and you're watching this.

Tory Merritt:
Right.

Guy Bauer:
In that case, this information is way outdated.

Hope Morley:
To get back a little bit. We found in doing some research that more people do describe themselves as visual learners than any other kinds of learner. So we were talking about people reading less for pleasure, people who don't want to read at work. So a video can appeal to those types of people.

Tory Merritt:
That's actually a stat I believe by Glassdoor talking about job postings, which we've all seen those job postings where like the job description is this gigantic paragraph and then it's all these bullets of things of like a unicorn candidate, what I want. And they actually found that the applications, job postings that had video ended up with 34% more applications to them than the ones without a video. So that's a very obvious — the variables there, they're pretty controlled, does it have a video, does it not. Job description is the same.

Tory Merritt:
And people would rather watch a video about your company to understand it than read this gigantic blog that probably has typos all over it.

Hope Morley:
And then that's the thing, if I'm applying to a job, right? I read the job description and I might think, "Hmm, I think I'm qualified for this," but then the next step is okay, do I want to work for this company? Right? So then you go and you read their Glassdoor reviews and you look at, you might skim through their social and you're like trying to determine like what their culture is like and if you want to work there. So if they do that work for you and are like put the video right there of like here's our position, here's the position that's open and here's some information about our company. You're making qualified candidates, assuming I'm qualified, but you're reducing friction, right?

Hope Morley:
Like you are making it easy for them to know that this is a good fit and so it makes sense that you're going to get a lot more applicants that way.

Tory Merritt:
I think of product reviews too. I think people used to rely on like Consumer Reports and like get this magazine, you're flipping through charts and you're reading all this stuff. Now I just type into YouTube like some mascara or something and there's an influencer and then I'm checking do I trust them? Okay, I'll watch their video. They can tell me, they can show me how it works, what they like about it, what they don't like about it. And within three minutes I can save myself from going to the store or ordering it online, buying it, getting it, hating it, and then having to take it back. Almost saved from being able to see how it worked in a two minute video versus reading, it looked really nice on my eyes and I can see that it worked. Did it not?

Hope Morley:
Yeah. I actually have data to back that up from this Wyzowl survey I mentioned earlier that they asked people how they would most like to learn about a product or service and two thirds of people, the biggest chunk, said they would prefer to watch a video than anything else and only 18% said they'd like to read like an article, just pure text to learn about a product or service.

Guy Bauer:
So I'm going to play a listener who is at this point going, I've heard this before. Yes I agree. Video is awesome, love it, but it's expensive. Takes a long time to make and we need content now. We can't wait for months for a video and we need a lot of approvals and so text is easier to get approvals on and we don't have an internal video team. So what do you say about that?

Tory Merritt:
But if it doesn't work then it being faster doesn't really do much for you if nobody reads it anyway. It being out there didn't accomplish the goal. I'd rather — putting on my client hat — I would rather wait a little bit longer for something that actually does its job and does it well, I mean you don't have an internal video team, but maybe you do maybe hire a couple of freelancers to be able to respond to quick things in the news, that relevant stuff. It doesn't have to be a three minute video. You can make a quick like snippet. I think we saw the Bill Murray Superbowl ad that didn't, what was it like two weeks or something that they turned that baby around and I'm not saying that's always possible, but there's ways of doing things. You just have to have a creative idea that lends itself to what you need to accomplish. Which goes back to my spiel of knowing your goals and objectives to help you decide what kind of video or what kind of content. Everything doesn't have to be a three minute explainer.

Guy Bauer:
Yeah. And obviously we're doing content marketing with this whole thing and we want you to buy a video from us.

Tory Merritt:
And the strategy.

Guy Bauer:
But I think it's not everything needs a big brand level video like that we would make. Video can be part of the whole thing of varying quality levels. If you look at our thing right now, this is relatively terrible quality video right now. I would never — but it doesn't matter.

Hope Morley:
For this use.

Guy Bauer:
Right. The fact is is that you're just watching it. We put the transcript into the captions on YouTube, that's all indexable and you're potentially watching this and getting good ideas. The video quality itself is not, you're not judging us by that. And if you are, please don't. Take out the funnel. And it's just like how the funnel starts with high level awareness and then trickles down into decision.

Guy Bauer:
That's almost how you can think of the quality needed. Awareness you need the max quality and then by the time you get down to a decision, it can be like just someone doing a screen capture on their computer doing a software demo. Nobody by the time they get down to decision, no one is making a determination on your brand based on how good the software demo video is. In fact, what Blair Enns says, he's a sales guru guy. He says early in the sales process, you want to be inspired and higher polished.

Tory Merritt:
Aspirational.

Guy Bauer:
Correct. And by the time you get down to decision, you're actually not looking to be inspired anymore. You're looking to be reassured.

Tory Merritt:
Convinced.

Guy Bauer:
It's reassured that you're making the right choice. So in fact the medium is the message, by the time I get down to the decision level, I do want a nerdy guy or gal walking me through a software demo, where I know it's just their screen because it's very trustworthy. If you were at the decision level to make some polished video, there's something fishy about that. So I think what we're saying is, video needs to be part of the entire customer journey from awareness, decision, and then after the purchase too.

Tory Merritt:
It's like the loyalty.

Guy Bauer:
Correct.

Tory Merritt:
Yeah. That's also reassurance that you've purchased the right thing. I'm not going to have to run to the store and just take it back. And that's where I think the product reviews even like one person telling me, "okay, should I buy it or should I not?" like I'm not expecting that to be highly polished. Like is that if it is I'm actually concerned. I'm like well this is fake cause somebody fronted the money to be able to pay that person to sit there like, "I love this product."

Tory Merritt:
I actually saw Love Wellness, they just released some customer testimonials. They did a whole rebranding and I think they're using them as awareness, but they're super polished and they're like this person looking beautiful and "I love these probiotics." But I'm like, that Love Wellness is sitting here paying for this whole situation. I would much rather have that person film it themselves. It'd be like, this product has changed my life. I'd be like, okay, cool I believe them versus like you said, the highly polished somebody paid you for it. I don't believe it. Even though you know it's like that bottom part is the decision. We feel like that's the most important and that's what triggers the purchase.

Hope Morley:
You're losing the authenticity that you want from a testimonial because it's coming across as just a commercial where they put a real person in the spot.

Tory Merritt:
Right.

Guy Bauer:
I have a DJI Mavic 2 pro.

Hope Morley:
That's a drone.

Guy Bauer:
That's a drone, sorry.

Hope Morley:
Those people who are not in the know.

Tory Merritt:
I was like uh.

Guy Bauer:
It's a drone. DJI is really good at how they use videos. After you buy it, you take out the paper manual and the paper manual says just take out your QR code scanner thing and this will take you to a page where there's all the videos on how to use this thing.

Tory Merritt:
Who's read a manual, right? I bought some Ikea furniture and every time I'm just going to look up YouTube to try to find the video of the real person putting this together and including them, kicking the thing and, but I actually know where the problems are going to be when I'm watching that versus reading the manual. It's not like now be very careful, don't put the cam in the wrong way and ruin your life here. But in the video, I can see that right away.

Guy Bauer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative) yeah. And like DJI, when they have their video that's trying to get me to buy the Mavic 2 pro, super polished, they spent like a ton of money. The instruction videos aren't good looking at all, but I don't care because I'm already convinced you don't need to keep convincing me. Now I just need to know how to use it. I think just looping back is that text is dumb.

Tory Merritt:
Well, text should be used sparingly or objectively.

Hope Morley:
Text is not dumb! You have to think critically about what you're using for what point in the customer's journey and on your website, on your social. There's different uses for different forms of media, right? Knowing where and when to use video, where and when to use text is valuable. And you should be actually thinking critically about your content strategy.

Guy Bauer:
For sure. Yeah, I'm just kidding.

Hope Morley:
So to sum up, text is not dumb. Text has a place, but video also has a place and if you're having a robust content strategy for both your sales funnel and after the sale, within your customer journey to keep them happy, you need to think critically about where you use video, where you use text, where you use infographics and images. All kinds of media needs to be part of your robust strategy. Video doesn't always have to be expensive. It doesn't always have to be a long three-month process.

Tory Merritt:
Right.

Hope Morley:
We can bring, you can bring it together and have some high level video content, some less high level video content. Bring it all together. It's all part of a larger strategy.

Guy Bauer:
Yep.

Tory Merritt:
Love strategy.

Guy Bauer:
Text is dumb.

Hope Morley:
All right. Thank you for listening to this episode of So You Need A Video. For more information, please check out our website at umault.com, that's U-M-A-U-L-T.com and give us a review on your favorite podcast app and hit the thumbs up and subscribe below.

Tory Merritt:
My favorite part.

Guy Bauer:
And what should we ask this week?

Tory Merritt:
Last time was favorite color.

Guy Bauer:
What's your spirit animal?

Hope Morley:
Mine is an elephant.

Tory Merritt:
Orca whale.

Hope Morley:
Cause I'm a large herbivore with a good memory.

Tory Merritt:
I'm a killer.

Guy Bauer:
Killer whale.

Tory Merritt:
Yeah, Orca whale.

Guy Bauer:
I'm a newt.

Tory Merritt:
Slithering?

Guy Bauer:
Tiny and slimy.

Hope Morley:
So leave us a comment! Have a good day.

Tory Merritt:
See ya.