Engagement is a marketing term used to describe an audience’s relationship/activity in relation to a brand or company. While it may sound like an industry buzzword, having healthy audience engagement is really important for companies, especially those with a strong digital presence or online marketplace.
Defining Engagement… A Few Ways
In the context of digital marketing, engagement usually refers to social media likes, email clicks, shares, and other measurables. These are often a concrete way to quantify how your audience is responding to your marketing, and predict how likely they are to become a customer. But engagement can mean much more than that. Think about the word engage. Engaging someone means to occupy, attract, or involve. More than just getting clicks and shares, you want your company to have a genuine relationship with the people in your audience. You want to build trust by speaking to them in a way that’s interesting, useful, fun, and, well… engaging. This can be harder to measure, but being thoughtful in your content will lead to stronger, longer-lasting relationships with your customers over time.
So How Does Video Fit Into Engagement?
The truth of the matter is that people are more likely to watch a video about your organization than read a webpage or brochure. So to get people in the door, video gives you an advantage over other types of communication.
But beyond that, video opens up so many opportunities to really connect with your audience. First of all, if you choose to include a narration and voiceover, your video can literally speak to your audience. Having a human voice tell your story will help to create a human to human connection. If you’d prefer to go no-voiceover, including subtitles can function the same way and catch people’s attention (and reduce the need for them to go grab their headphones to listen).
Visuals, and especially moving visuals, attract and keep attention. The style of your visuals will set the tone of your video, and depending what direction you go, will set the tone of your relationship. Do you want to be the trusted experts? The noble advocacy leaders? The quirky small business? The style of your video can help create the identity you want, and connect with your viewers the way you want.
Finally, video allows you to clearly lay out your story – whatever it may be – and conclude with a strong call to action. They can be extremely persuasive and create meaningful engagement for your organization – whether that’s smashing the like button or picking up the phone to connect with a real human.
Whatever engagement you are looking for, you can create a video to support your goals, boost your engagement metrics, and form connections with potential customers. What does meaningful engagement look like to your organization?
