How to Leverage the Power of Facebook Videos based on your Industry

In 2020, video has become a must for companies that want to skyrocket their online image by showcasing their unique products and services in style. For Facebook, videos have become extremely important, as they enable brands to offer select pieces of information that are easy to digest.

According to the latest Facebook video stats, 94% of people who watch a video, share it on the platform. This means that people are actually interacting with videos like never before. Great videos can dramatically boost brand recall among new users and drive up conversion rates for your brand.

In 2020, video has become extremely important, with the growth of platforms like TikTok and YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. They all have contributed their fair share in the growth of video, with hundreds of billions of videos that people are actively sharing, commenting on, and interacting with.

You should use videos in your Facebook organic campaigns because they are easily digestible and remain relevant over time. What better way to convey your brand's personality to your customers than through video? Video marketing enables you to create better interaction opportunities, strengthen your brand, and reach all of those mobile devices with ease.

What industry studies tell us

Stats show that Facebook gets over 8 billion average daily video views, and the time people spend watching Facebook Live has quadrupled in the past year.

Digging further into how these views are dispersed, another study on Facebook video performance based on analytics data showed that engagement on this platform is dependent on certain factors, such as description, video format, and length. However, it also pointed to certain traits that make different audiences in unique industries respond better to videos. The study aimed to uncover the best Facebook video formula for each one of the 14 industries, more specifically for clothing, shopping and retail, entrepreneurs, health and beauty, arts and entertainment, politics, personal blog/blogger, education/university, food and beverage, public figure, media/news, nonprofits, government organisation, and community organisation.

Nonprofits earn the title for longest videos

In the nonprofit industry, companies create the longest videos on Facebook. Nonprofits create videos that average 1,208 seconds in length, which is over 20 minutes long. However, the most engaging video length of videos is between 2 to 5 minutes. The shortest average video length is in the food & beverage industry, with an average of 105 seconds. The industries that manage to hit the sweet spot between 2 to 5 minutes are health and beauty, blogging, and community organisations.

Regardless of your industry, focus on creating videos no longer than 5 minutes. Of course, if you want to showcase your efforts as a company or you're uploading a webinar, you can go well beyond 10 minutes. Still, videos over 20 minutes in length are hard to follow, with most people dropping off after just a few minutes.

Best engagement is on political content

There is no doubt that political content is performing incredibly well on Facebook, especially as election seasons come around in countries across the globe. The average engagement rate for videos in politics is 0.53%, followed by videos in arts and entertainment that have an engagement rate of 0.44%.

If we'd let statistics talk for themselves, we can notice that politics, entrepreneurs, and entertainment are three key niches that stir emotion and engagement right now.     

Highest volume of posts in news and media

Sure you’ve guessed this right – media and news companies post the most. There's no surprise in that! However, if we were to look at the statistics, in terms of video engagement based on industry, we would see that news and media companies also have the lowest engagement rate.

We can draw a simple conclusion from this – the more videos you post, the less engagement you'll have. As a rule of thumb, companies that post longer videos do it less often, while companies who post shorter videos do it more frequently. Is there a magic formula here? We think one can strive to post around 1-2 videos a week.

Landscape and vertical video perform differently per industry

A very interesting insight reflects the difference between landscape and vertical videos. When recording and uploading videos, most brands will go for the landscape format. More specifically, 10 out of 14 industries choose to go with landscape videos. However, four industries predominantly choose the square format. These are blogging, clothing, food and beverage, and health and beauty. Since the most engaged videos come from these industries and are in vertical format, it's logical to assume that vertical format is a reliable choice.

Usually, a vertical format is viewed better on mobile phones, while landscape formats work better with laptops and tablets. As a growing number of people are spending time on Facebook through their mobile phones, it becomes obvious to choose vertical over landscape. Depending on your industry, you can increase your engagement by up to 0.82% by using a vertical format. For example, clothing, politics, and education work really well with vertical videos. On the other hand, arts and entertainment, entrepreneur, and public figures seem to be working better with landscape formats.

Live Streams offer more engagement overall

Most businesses would shy away from using live videos, and would rather prefer uploading their own videos, even though the engagement for live videos is much better than the overall engagement for uploaded videos. Industries such as politics, arts and entertainment, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits create the most live videos.

They also benefit from the highest engagement rate overall. The only exception is government organisations, which have a better engagement rate when posting pre-recorded videos.

Regardless of your industry, you should attempt to create more live videos, since they offer you the highest engagement rate.

Clothing is privileged

Brands that operate in the clothing industry are quite privileged over others since they almost always hit all tops. The average engagement rate is the fourth, but it comes in the first place when brands create vertical formats or live videos. Brands in clothing post every 3 weeks, and around 90% are pre-recorded videos. Want a better engagement rate? Post more lives and choose vertical format instead of landscape, since most of your customers will come from mobile.

Shopping & Retail have room to grow

Insights reflect that this is not a very engaging industry in terms of video content, coming as second to last in terms of engagement. However, companies that use live videos and vertical formats can get an edge over the competition.

Arts & Entertainment videos thrive

This is an industry that is doing extremely well. Entertainment has always been perceived as a means to make lives happier and more exciting, and people are seeking that more than ever during the pandemic.

The average video lasts around 6 minutes, with an engagement rate of over 0.44%. Because of the artistic nature of videos, people prefer to watch them in landscape mode. Also, live videos can bring your engagement up by 1.28%. Be creative when posting live videos and ensure your viewers (potential) customers have plenty of fun watching them.

Entrepreneurs are staying connected

There is no doubt that entrepreneurs and other companies in the business industry want to leverage the true power of Facebook in order to stay connected to their audiences. Entrepreneur pages are publishing around one video every 10 days, and have around 18.83% live videos. Of course, if you want to perform better, you should post more often, and also leverage more on the power of live videos where you explain your business. Keep in mind that in the business industry, landscape videos usually perform better than vertical videos.

Public Figures are engaging

In this industry, live streaming can offer a decent engagement rate of around 0.35%, versus the standard engagement rate for pre-recorded videos which sits at 0.26%. It seems that in this industry, landscape videos tend to perform better than vertical videos.

The Bottom Line

Regardless of your industry, it becomes crucial to focus on posting at least once a week, while increasing your average of live posts compared to pre-recorded posts. With the exception of four industries, go for vertical videos instead of landscape videos. Leverage this powerful marketing channel and get ahead of your competitors using the true power of video marketing on Facebook.