Captions in Your Marketing Videos and Their Importance

Captions in your marketing videos is pretty critical if you want your videos to actually perform well, find out how to craft awesome captions.

Captions in Your Marketing Videos

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Video is rapidly becoming the number one most preferred online content nowadays. People spend hours every day just watching various videos, and according to predictions, as much as 82% of consumer internet traffic will be through videos by next year.

Marketers naturally took notice of this and are producing their fair share of video content, but at this point, not just any video will do. There is a lot to take into account if you want your marketing video to perform to its maximum capacity. One of the things that can prove to be very effective at transferring your message is captions. Captions are more than just a convenient touch. Video captioning actually has a myriad of benefits for your business. Here are some of the reasons why captions in your marketing videos is so important.

1. Boosted accessibility

Causes such as accepting our differences and creating environments where everyone can feel comfortable have never been more important than today. In 2021, accessibility is an issue that should be at the forefront of every business’s mind. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), as much as 13 percent of people over 12 have hearing loss in the United States. This equals about 30 million individuals. It is clear, thus, that audio-visual content needs to take the hearing-impaired into account as well. Captioning videos is not only crucial for those with hearing loss; it’s also a great help to the hard of hearing. It does not take a lot of effort and resources to be an inclusive business and make your videos accessible to everyone.

2. Expanding your reach

Another reason why captioning your marketing videos is so important has to do with your reach. In a marketing campaign, your reach is going to be strongly related to your potential success. Doing everything in your power to expand your videos’ reach, thus, is desirable. Captioning to boost accessibility will do a lot for you in this regard. However, videos with captions are also loved by algorithms, and producing something that Google loves is what’s really going to put you in front of your audience. Search engines are able to read the text file that accompanies your video and thereby, acquire more information and rank you higher. In addition, if you already have a written version of your video, you can also utilize it in other ways. Posting transcripts, for example, can be useful for people who would rather consume the piece of content as a written text. It also makes it possible to recycle content with ease and cross-post it in different forms – for instance, with a little modification, as a blog post.

caption in your marketing videos

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay 

 

3. Reaching non-native audiences

The next reason why you should caption your marketing videos boils down to the same result: expanding your reach. Today, English is a language spoken throughout the world. However, dialects of English can still differ greatly. In addition, many people speak English as a second language or are self-taught and are not as proficient when it comes to listening, even though their written English is good. You can reach a much wider non-native audience with your videos if you provide captions that will make the communicated information easier to understand. If you want to go the extra mile, you can make this effort even more effective by providing subtitles in multiple languages.

4. Muted videos are king

Since smartphones have appeared, computers have taken the backseat in people’s day-to-day lives – at least in some aspects. One of those aspects is certainly browsing the internet and social media in particular. Now, people can scroll through their feeds wherever and whenever they want – so long as they don’t need to turn on the sound.

A video without sound, however, does not provide the same experience, and most people will simply scroll by if they see that they need to leave the room or take out their earphones to watch it. This becomes a non-issue if the video in question has captions. Considering that as much as 85 percent of people are said to watch videos on their phones muted while they are in public spaces, while commuting, or even while “on the throne,”, it becomes clear that captioning videos is essential for your marketing campaign. In addition, while producing your video content, remember that it is most likely going to be played without sound and adjust it so that it’s still engaging without that element.

5. Making it easier to follow along

We have already mentioned briefly that captions make a video easier to understand for foreign viewers. However, captions make videos easier to follow for everyone, not just non-native speakers. Considering that people are often multitasking while browsing the internet, listening to music, chatting with friends, reading social media posts, and so on, it is very difficult to get their undivided attention. Thankfully, since captions make the content of the video easier to keep track of with just a glance, even multitasking individuals can keep up and get the gist.  

6. Improved information retention

Finally, if you want the content of your video to stick, captions have got you covered. Video in itself is a powerful medium when it comes to this topic. Since it combines different forms of media, from picture to audio, it already caters to a wider audience. Adding captions creates yet another layer to this piece of multimedia content and makes it even more effective. Captions make the video more engaging and more stimulating, and ultimately, the viewer will retain more of the information and do so more easily with this additional help.

 

It is clear that introducing captions to your marketing videos has a multitude of benefits. If you want to make the most of your campaign, it’s not an option, but rather, a necessity. Don’t miss out on 85% of your audience just because they prefer to watch videos without sound, but add captions and make the video accessible to everyone.