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Resilient marketing is the strategy; technology is the means; video conferencing is the way. Brands are finally evolving ways to emotionally resonate with audiences during these difficult times.
If you have not done so yet, there is the need to restrategize and make it clear that your brand is strong, understands the pain points of your customers especially during the pandemic, and is prepared to resolve their problems. One way brands have been interacting with their customers before the outbreak of coronavirus is through audio conferencing, but they are dropping that now for video conferencing.
This is to enable them to consolidate overlapping features and seek integrated communications.
The resilient nature of marketing teams was what kept a lot of brands going during the pandemic.
They are increasingly building a marketing around collaboration tools, such as meeting applications that integrate voice; video conferencing, a platform for meeting, and screen sharing. This shouldn’t be a surprise since according to Nemertes’ recent “Visual Communications and Collaboration 2020-21 Research Study” of 528 organizations, more than 91% of organizations are using such apps now, and more than 61% adopted a new meeting app specifically to support working from home,
Though the first picturephone for video chatting may have been a colossal failure, there has been a great turn around since then. More people are beginning to realize the value of using video conferencing to improve meeting experiences, and this may mean that the long-awaited age of video is here at last.
It may be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and measures put in place by organizations to take care of employees who have to resort to home working, a report says that 45% of teams now use video conferencing tools daily or weekly, while 80% of employees use video calling for 1:1 meetings. Also, 78% of employees say they use web conferencing tools for team meetings and 75% of CEOs say that video conference calls will entirely replace audio-only conference calls.
Meeting services are now turning more to team collaboration apps, this is greatly enhancing users to develop a group chat or one-on-one conversation to a video meeting with a simple click. There is no longer any need to place a call in another app.
Since it has become easy to add a meeting uniform resource locator (URL) to a scheduled meeting due to the calendar integrations now available from most meeting vendors, you can now use scheduling apps, to set up calls with an embedded meeting link. This will ensure that users don’t have to move back and forth in an attempt to find a meeting time that will be suitable for everybody.
A radical decrease in human and financial resources
Deploying AI to conduct sentiment analysis of customers’ pain points, the marketing team can micro-segment customers according to their feelings, likes, emotions, and dislikes. Video conferencing can then be employed to reach customers with personalized messages, particularly targeted to groups.
This will not be wholly productive with only audio messages. Human and financial resources will also be minimized this way. By moving from direct phone calling or voice-only audio conferencing to a meeting platform, you can save millions of dollars annually for your brand.
A lot of organizations are dropping audio conferencing because they have realized that video conferencing is proving detrimental in their efforts to save both human and financial resources.
Physical meetings can be costly and highly challenging because you require several individuals from different locations to attend, and it’s not an easy task to coordinate their travels.
According to Lifesize in its 2019 Impact of Video Conferencing report, 33% of workers said video conferencing technology reduces their business travel since it allows them to take part in meetings without making expensive, time-consuming trips. This means that it’s going to be more profitable to use video conferencing to reach your customers.
Research shows that the video conferencing market size across the globe was valued at USD 3.85 billion in 2019, and is expected to register a CAGR of 9.9% from 2020 to 2027. There is a dire need to enable remote communications in 2021 and meeting services are doing this.
It’s easy for you to employ and adopt meetings, and the truth is that more than half of the minutes of enterprise interaction on voice today end up on a meeting platform anyway.
The need for centralized UCC strategy platforms
While it’s obvious that the unified communications and collaboration strategies (UCC) are experiencing unprecedented demands for the provision of multiple modes of communication, which include voice, video, and messaging, the pandemic has created a renewed sense of urgency. What your marketing team must focus on in 2021, is using UCC to create a holistic and dynamic approach to your brand’s communication strategy that will cut across people, processes, and technology.
A UCC platform prides itself on the ability to deliver voice and video calls as part of one integrated package. Your team can switch among communication modes seamlessly and when the need arises.
This will ensure that you save time as well as improve productivity. While plain telephony and audio conferencing have worked for organizations before now, radical changes that occurred due to the pandemic have made it necessary that integrated communications experiences centered on collaboration and meeting platforms will be the new norm.
Traffic will shift away from telephony and audio conferencing-only services. Since marketers will have the opportunity of using newer and simplified tools, from the perspective of customers, they will be availed of richer communications experiences. This means little downside for customers.
The effort of marketing to reduce costs will go a long way to improve productivity and enhance ROI. The downside of your brand will be either non-existent or negligible.
