SEO News You Can Use: Video Marketing During COVID-19 or Not?

Before COVID-19, many companies and digital marketers were focusing on video content. How to use video content for their specific brands and audience, how to optimize it for search purposes and how to monetize it have been top concerns for marketers. Now, during this pandemic, every working professional is concerned with video from both a functional and marketing perspective.

It seems the only way to maintain a semblance of normalcy during this pandemic is to embrace video for your communication with colleagues and meetings with clients. All brands have embraced video in some capacity for different reasons.

Most marketers are promoting the use of video to keep their clients’ campaigns going. That makes sense if you consider video is the most personable way of communicating during this time of social distancing — customers are thought to be more engaged with content that can be seen and heard than read.

Brands are setting up events their clients can attend for free and consequently enjoying rich engagement with current and potential customers. The fitness industry is possibly the easiest example to use here, as trainers and gyms are inviting members and non-members to join their online fitness classes for free while their gyms are closed. In the corporate world, you can see companies hosting online gatherings such as free webinars to retain the human connection between their brands and their target audience.

When you think of video content, YouTube is an obvious platform to consider. With just about everyone consuming online content more so than ever, it’s natural to assume content producers and brands using the platform for marketing are enjoying success. However, YouTube hindered the hopes of many brands when it introduced a policy prohibiting the monetization of any content about coronavirus. This policy has since changed to only those videos that spread misinformation or violate any policies. 

But the policy change doesn’t matter, coronavirus-related content created for the platform is simply not pulling in the expected revenue. It’s evident advertisers are steering away from placing ads on channels discussing COVID-19. And yet, according to a study by Integral Ad Science (conducted last month), advertisers are unnecessarily paranoid. Only 16 percent of those who participated in the survey confirmed their perception of a brand advertising around coronavirus content would be negatively impacted. Some respondents said they’d appreciate medical brands or health-oriented companies appearing when they’re consuming content about the pandemic.

Currently, YouTube publishers are enjoying high traffic and increased engagement, but there’s a low demand for ad placement. So while traffic continues to rise along with follower engagement, ad revenue is flatlining.

YouTube maintains that video content will continue to be a prime avenue for content consumption. Advertising alongside this content is a smart move for brands continuing to promote during the pandemic. The platform is helping businesses with their content creation and recently launched the beta of YouTube Video Builder. Many production companies, suffering the cancellation of big production shoots, are more than happy to work together with companies creating content as best they can on Smartphones and home cameras. Creating video content in quarantine isn’t easy, but there are more than enough resources available to make it entirely possible.

Regardless of the advertising revenue taking a dip, video content remains the most popular way to engage with your consumers during lockdown. To win the video content game, research what your target audience is watching and consuming. Search Engine Journal’s Greg Jarboe published the article “Consumers Seeking Uplifting YouTube Content During the COVID-19 Pandemic” in which he explores the findings of two different surveys that specifically asked what the public wants from online content. It’s a great place to start if you’re only just venturing into video content during this quarantine.

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