What is a Shoppable Video and How it Works
Content marketing is imperative to any successful digital marketing strategy or sales funnel. A key subset of content marketing is, of course, video…
Video has been around for ages, employed traditionally in outlets like television commercials to promote products and encourage indirect sales. Today, however, video is much more than that, seen all around us in social media content, landing page promotions, and paid digital advertisements.
While video has been an integral part of marketing and consumerism at large for years previous, it has become an increasingly important function of marketing thanks to the rise of popularity in platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and others.
Not only has it proved its worth in consumption and versatility but it’s shown to be highly convertible for businesses and brands looking to increase brand awareness and ultimately sales.
Even more recently, marketers, advertisers, and salespersons alike have been employing what’s known as shoppable videos… Sound interesting?!
In what follows, we’ll be discussing what a shoppable video is, how it works, and why you as a business or brand should consider its implementation to further grow your e-commerce success.
What is a Shoppable Video?
Just as it sounds, a shoppable video is a video whereby businesses and brands alike can sell products directly to their consumers, allowing consumers to purchase directly from the video itself.
As a lead-generating, interactive piece of content marketing, shoppable video has become extremely popular, especially in recent years due to the rise of popularity in video content itself as mentioned in the preface.
Whether you’re a business or brand that sells tangible products or digital services, shoppable video has the capabilities to employ such a function. Withstanding its primary function, however, shoppable video boasts several other incredible benefits.
Some of those benefits include generating leads, building consumer trust, increasing consumer engagement, decreasing bounce rates, boosting conversion rates, and providing a means for creating a seamless, easy-to-navigate buying process, thus boosting overall customer satisfaction; more on its many benefits shortly…
So, how does it work, you ask? Let’s get right into it…
How Shoppable Video Works
If you’ve ever heard of an embedded link, you’ll find the process of shoppable videos quite easy to understand. If not, an embedded link is simply a link that directs consumers to another webpage with one click.
In the context of shoppable videos, consumers who are viewing can simply click the corresponding interactive element that happens to host an embedded link. With just one click of the mouse, consumers will be immediately directed to the page of purchase.
No further steps, no additional landing pages, no abandoned web pages… it’s that simple!
How to Create a Shoppable Video
For those who are eager to learn the specifics of how to actually create a shoppable video, it likely deserves an article of its own to cover everything. However, there are some basic steps to review no matter your strategy…
First, It’s important to devise a plan, outlining, in large part, how and where your product offering links will pop up and with what interactive element? Next, it’s about creating the video itself; this includes shooting and editing the actual video.
Once the video has been created, it’s now time to upload it to your video editing software of choice. It’s here where you’ll add the necessary embedded links, overlays, and interactive elements.
Finally, it’s time to publish and promote for the world to see! Aside from sharing it to the obvious platforms including your website, social media pages, and landing pages, you might also want to look into other platforms that will further increase video visibility.
The Benefits of Shoppable Video
Apart from the many benefits already discussed, shoppable videos boast many other advantages both for businesses and brands building out content strategies and consumers eager and willing to shop.
As a quintessential part of any successful content marketing strategy, videos, in general, are incredibly effective and how they perform; Shoppable videos are no different, and if anything, are more effective due to their innovative and interactive nature.
With that said, below is a summarized detail of the many benefits and advantages of implementing shoppable video into your digital marketing content strategy and sales funnel at large:
- Consumer Engagement
- Decreased Web Page Bounce Rates
- Increased Conversion Rates
- Easy to Navigate Buying Process
- Improved Customer Satisfaction
- Entertainment Value
- Ability to Personalize and Customize
Simply put, video content alone is expected to increase total web traffic by nearly 82% by the end of 2022. Pair that statistic with the innovation that is shoppable video and you as a business or brand are looking at a winning strategy!
In Summary
Luckily, most major content platforms today offer shoppable video features, including but certainly not limited to Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and even platforms like Pinterest and Shoploop. The only thing is that, none the previous mentioned platforms are dedicated to reach the full potential of your shoppable videos or even your live shopping events. To unleash the full engagement and sales possibilities of your videos you should check Onlive’s groundbreaking software. It really can make a big difference in terms of results.
While there are many best practices to consider when creating and implementing a shoppable video strategy, that deserves an entire article of its own. The important takeaway here, however, is to include shoppable videos into your content strategy moving forward.
Failing to do so will simply result in a loss of potential leads, conversions, and happy customers!
