Last updated on 27th February 2023
In this article we’re going to take a look at 4 ways to increase website traffic with video.
According to our Video Marketing Statistics 2023, an incredible 91% of marketers say video marketing has helped them increase traffic.
Eager to know how?
Let’s get straight into it…
Why video marketing is so important
Video has dominated marketing for some time now, with no signs of slowing down. One of the biggest reasons for this is that people like watching videos. In fact, people willingly watch an average of 17 hours of online video content every week!
Videos are engaging and make it easy for viewers to digest information quickly. This makes video a perfect format for explaining your product or service to new customers, getting people excited about your brand, and yes, increasing traffic to your website.
According to our Video Marketing Statistics 2023, people want to see even more video from brands in 2023. So video content could be the perfect win-win for you and your customers.
4 ways to increase website traffic with video
1. Optimise your video landing page
Just like any webpage, you’ll need to optimise your video landing pages to improve your search engine rankings.
Search engines typically use text to index and rank content on results pages, so this means you need to write excellent copy, peppered with keywords, to accompany your video if you want to benefit from search engine optimisation. Here’s an example from our animated video production landing page:
You can see that the videos are a huge part of the page and draw attention with video titles and enticing thumbnails (also important for search engine optimisation!). However, the accompanying copy is also there, using keywords like “animated video” and “video types” so that the page can be accurately indexed by search engines to ensure it’s shown to the right people (potential customers) and that you get the right kind of traffic coming to your landing page.
Another way to optimise your video landing page is to include a video transcript. A video transcript is essentially a written description of everything that’s said in the video so that search engine algorithms have a better understanding of the content. This little hack can do wonders for your video seo strategy! Here’s an example from Moz:
Video transcripts are not only great for SEO, they also help make your video content more accessible for some viewers.
2. Tailor your videos
Persuading people to visit your website is a lot easier if you speak directly to them and make a deep connection by creating personalised video content. It may sound complicated at first, but there are a couple different ways you can do this (with varying levels of personalization).
Firstly, if you have a small pool of target customers and/or you have the time and dedication, you can record individual personalised videos to send out to people on your mailing list. This doesn’t have to be as daunting as it sounds. The bulk of your video can remain the same, with a personalised intro or outro (or both) to really connect with the viewer and hopefully drive traffic to your website.
If you want to cast out a larger net, then you can rely on retargeting instead. Retargeting is a marketing tactic that targets consumers based on their previous actions online. You can create retargeting video content to share with people who have either visited your website already or shown an interest in similar brands online.
These are still personalised videos to an extent because the video content will be very relevant to the target audience, and this will increase the likelihood of the viewers clicking through to your landing page or website.
According to research by Planable.io, personalised videos have around a 16x higher click-to-open rate and a 4.5x increase in unique click-throughs. So if you want to drive traffic to your website, this is one of the video marketing strategies you should consider!
3. Have an enticing CTA
Creating an amazing video that people watch until the end is one thing, but it’s your call to action (CTA) that is going to drive traffic to your site.
Your CTA should be exciting, create a level of curiosity and urgency, and ultimately entice the people watching your video to become website visitors.
Here’s an example from Felix Gray that ticks all of the boxes:
The cheery voiceover invites potential customers to ‘try Felix Gray for 30 days’ and reassures viewers that ‘if it’s not love at first sight [you can] send them back for a full refund.’ This gives people watching more reasons to purchase by getting rid of doubts.
The accompanying text on screen also helps, with ‘risk-free’ appearing in big bold letters:
Followed by the brand’s web address, so viewers know where to go next!
4. Share. Share. Share!
One of the best ways to increase the chances of people seeing your video content and then coming to your landing page or website is….making sure your video is visible!
So, yes, post videos to social media, optimise your videos for search engines and create video content that has enticing CTAs, but also send your videos to your mailing list, post them to every video marketing site you can think of (YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion), and encourage other people to share them too.
It doesn’t hurt to directly ask people to share your video content with their friends, but also just making sharing options available on popular sites like Facebook and YouTube will increase your visibility.
According to our Video Marketing Statistics 2023, 51% of people are more likely to share video with their friends than any other type of content! This is great news if you want to increase traffic to your site.
5 Types of videos that increase traffic
1. Social media videos
At first it may sound counter-intuitive to say that posting video content on social media will increase traffic to your website. But it makes sense. After all, this is where people spend most of their time online!
Having a strong presence on social media will keep your brand front-of-mind and lead to increased traffic to your website.
A perfect example of this is a video campaign that e.l.f Cosmetics started on TikTok. After seeing that their brand already had 3 million tags on the platform, e.l.f Cosmetics decided to test out marketing on TikTok.
They created an original song called ‘Eyes, Lips, Face’ and ran a branded hashtag of the same name (#eyeslipsface) and encouraged influencers to make video content.
The video marketing strategy worked and the fun, short videos using the e.l.f Cosmetics hashtag garnered 1.6 billion views in just over a week. Even celebrities, like Jessica Alba, got involved:
But this isn’t about social media attention, this is about traffic. So, how did this campaign impact traffic for e.l.f Cosmetics? Well, after this campaign the company’s online sales soared.
e.l.f Cosmetics ended 2020 with triple-digit online growth and a 13% YOY increase in sales. This growth continued and in May 2021, net sales increased by 24% to $92.7 million that quarter. The power of video!
2. Explainer videos
An explainer video is the ultimate tool for audience education. This type of video content allows you to get across everything viewers need to know about your brand, product, or service in a short amount of time.
The perfect example of an explainer video that increased website traffic is probably one you’ve already seen before:
This hilarious video put the brand PooPourri on the map and made them a kind of ‘video marketing success story’ online. After the initial release of the video, web traffic for the company soared by 13,000%!
3. Video ads
Video ads are a great way to get more eyes on your brand and send people flocking to your website. One of the most popular places to post video ads is YouTube, which has over 2 billion active monthly users.
If the sheer volume of people isn’t enough to convince you to create YouTube video ads, maybe this will: An incredible 70% of people have bought a product after seeing it in a Youtube ad!
One brand that’s recently smashing it with video ads on YouTube is Hotels.com. Their ‘Find Your Perfect Somewhere’ campaign features three different 30 second video ads, each aimed at different potential customers. Here’s the video ad aimed at people who prefer boutique hotels:
Each video ad has clocked up hundreds of thousands of views and has been shown to countless potential customers through YouTube’s targeted video marketing ad platform.
4. How-to videos
According to Google, how-to videos are some of the most watched videos on YouTube. The top four content categories are comedy, music, pop culture, and how-to. On top of that, the same study found that 68% of people have watched a YouTube video to help them make a purchase decision.
How-to video content should definitely have a place in your video marketing strategy. This video content can show viewers how to get the most out of your product or service and help them understand it better so that they can feel confident in converting to a customer. Here’s an example from Dyson, demonstrating how to use their airwrap styling tool:
This video went viral after gaining a lot of attention due to the sassy delivery and witty remarks of the presenter.
Of course, 1.5 million views on your video is great but only if it leads to something. And in this case, it did. TikTok users flocked to the Dyson site and the airwrap actually sold out for the holiday season in 2022, despite already being on the market for 3 years at that point.
5. Testimonials/Reviews
Testimonial videos are another pillar of the best video marketing strategies. This type of video content builds trust with consumers and can help direct them to a specific landing page on your site.
Most people are trawling through search engines for testimonial and review video content anyway, so you might as well create your own testimonial video and help them come to the conclusion more quickly that your brand is the one for them.
Here’s a video testimonial from one of our customers:
As you can see, this is a very simple video that allows the customer to give an honest account of their experience, in their own words. This video is on the longer side but even short videos like this, that allow your customers to speak candidly, should help to increase traffic to your website.
According to our Video Marketing Statistics 2023, 46% of marketers created testimonial video content in 2022. So, maybe it’s time you joined them!
Final thoughts
According to the Sandvine 2023 Global Internet Phenomena Report, video now accounts for 65% of ALL internet traffic.
If you haven’t invested in video marketing yet, it’s time to get started. Our Video Marketing Statistics 2023 revealed that 70% of ‘non-video-marketers’ plan to start in 2023. If you’re one of them, reach out to our team to see how we can help you increase traffic with video.
