My choice for most epic 2020 marketing prediction is Gartner’s “80% of Marketers Will Abandon Personalization Efforts by 2025.” None of my predictions are on that scale, but each trend will influence the video technology solution providers will need to make.
More chatbots, more explanatory videos
According to Botcore, 80% of businesses want to have chatbots in 2020. Considering the source, that may be optimistic, but we can all see that chatbots are becoming more numerous and useful. Since video is often the best way to explain technology, expect to see more short videos
More square video
Buzzfeed reports that the square video format gets 30-50% more views and 80-100% more engagement in social media. Worth noting for LinkedIn updates.
More captions and transcription
There’s no more cost-effective way to increase the value of any video than adding transcriptions and captions. A transcription under a YouTube video embedded on your website boosts the page’s search ranking. Captions increase accessibility. Adding screen grabs or illustrations to an edited transcription can turn it into an article or blog post.
Personalized videos for sales
Personalizing videos for more than a few people seems like a gimmick to me, but I’m glad it’s increasingly easy to create personalized sales communications with a smartphone or webcam. You can include graphics, illustrations, screengrabs, even video clips.
Interactive content
If you need to educate customers, you might be interested in this Evidence of Improving Knowledge Retention with Interactive Video. Quizzes, polls, and navigational controls can all enhance user experience and understanding.
5G
5G technology is expected to increase the number of connected devices out there by 100X. Yikes. Think about how much video gets viewed on mobile devices already.
Prioritizing informational needs over sales/promotional messages
According to The 2019 Content Marketing Institute B2B report, 90% of the world’s most successful marketers prioritize the audience’s informational needs over their sales/promotional message. For a preview of how effectively your video will meet an audience’s informational needs, count the takeaways you see when you turn off the sound or stop watching halfway through. (Research tells us that a lot of people do both.)
