On average, businesses publish 18 videos each month. Is yours one of them? If not, you could get left behind by your competitors.

Marketers are increasingly using videos in a variety of ways to promote products and services. They use videos for Youtube, landing pages, recorded webinars, emails and more. Videos also help introduce brands to potential customers and build lasting relationships with existing customers.

On average, businesses publish 18 videos each month, according to research by HubSpot. That one data point underscores the ever-increasing demand for video and its great value to marketing. So, what to make of this? The obvious conclusion is that the time is now to include video in your own digital marketing strategy. Or else, you could risk getting left behind by your competition.

Below are five ways video marketing can grow your business and boost sales and conversions.

1. Video can improve SEO

HubSpot’s research showed that 65 percent of business executives polled said they visit a marketer’s website after viewing a branded video. This shows that high-quality video content that boosts viewer engagement and piques consumer interest can drive traffic to your website. This is crucial because traffic and click-through rates are major Google ranking factors. Therefore, the more traffic and clicks your site’s videos get, the higher your site will rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

With Google getting better and better at machine learning, the search engine can now recognize thousands of image elements within a video. Google’s Video Intelligence API can catalog relevant keywords within a video, which could give you a huge SEO advantage.

Video also helps SEO because it is responsive across multiple devices. As various video platforms like Youtube and Vimeo adjust to multiple screen sizes and are optimized for mobile devices, you can reach a wider audience.

With Google’s algorithms increasingly prioritizing pages with video content in search results, it’s especially important that businesses adopt videos as part of their digital marketing strategy.

For your own video SEO efforts, be sure to:

• Keep videos short. Videos under two minutes long get the most engagement. So it’s important to get your point across in the shortest amount of time. A four-minute video can still work well. But anything longer could lose you significant viewership.
• Transcribe your video script. When you transcribe text from sound in your video, Google bots can crawl your content with more accuracy. This makes it more likely your site will be featured in a wide variety of internet searches.
• Optimize videos. Adding relevant titles, subtext, descriptions and meta tags can also help search engine bots crawl your video efficiently.
• Create high-quality thumbnails. Creating eye-catching thumbnails can grab the attention of searchers, and thus increase your click-through rates.

2. Video keeps users on pages longer

The average user spends 88 percent more time on a website with video than they do with any other type of content, according to data published in a Forbes article by TJ McCue. If correct, this means that by adding videos to your website’s pages, you can increase the amount of time visitors spend on your site.

One reason may be that most people find watching videos more entertaining than reading text. Another reason might be that people tend to retain information better when it’s explained in a video. Creating product videos, how-tos, and demos can not only increase your chances of reaching your target audience, but also provides value and higher retention rates to your potential customers.

3. Video is captivating

Video keeps viewers’ attention more than text. Why? Because video combines auditory and visual sense. In other words, video brings together two things that catch our attention: noise and movement.

Humans are highly visual creatures. In fact, people process visuals 60,000 times faster than they process text, according to a Management Information Systems Research Center study at the University of Minnesota.. Also, most of the information that comes from the brain is visual, meaning that viewers will better retain a message through video than they will through text. And because of this, the average viewer remembers 95 percent of a message when it is watched, compared to only 10 of content that was read.

4. Video leads to more conversions

Adding video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80 percent or more, according to the Top 16 Video Marketing Statistics for 2016 report. Replacing an image with a video on a landing page will likely increase conversions. Why? Videos offer a more detailed description of your product or service. As viewers become more engaged, they’re more likely to retain the message. They also tend to trust brands more after watching a video. And trust can eventually lead to conversions.

5. Video is more shareable

Social video gets 1200 percent more shares than text and image content combined, according to Wordstream data. On platforms like LinkedIn, video is shared 20 times more often than other types of content formats in the LinkedIn feed, according to Sales and Marketing Solutions. What makes videos so shareable? Because they’re not only entertaining, but also bring practical value by providing tips, tricks and hacks.

When deciding to add video to your marketing strategy, be sure to sit down with your marketing team to discuss your budget and desired ROI. And be sure to consider what types of videos will work for your brand to maximize your marketing budget.

Article written by: Torrey Tayenaka