Music To Our Ears: How SMBs Can Use Audio And Video To Instantly Captivate Audiences

Today, consumers are absorbing content at a rapid rate, scrolling platforms until their attention wears thin and then jumping to the next one. Whether it’s to fill up spare time, stay up to date with news and trends, or find content and inspiration for things to do and buy, video plays a huge role in grabbing people’s attention. For marketers, maximizing video capabilities is essential to breaking through the noise.

Most marketing professionals consider video as one of the most effective and powerful resources to capture customers’ attention, as well as convey complex emotions. In fact, when analyzing average time per month spent on social media platforms, YouTube had the highest with 23.7 hours a month and TikTok and Facebook tied for second with 19.6 hours a month, proving video is top of mind for consumers. Additionally, sound and music play an important role in how content creators are telling their stories. 96% of YouTube content continues to be watched with sound on, and TikTok trends rely on specific sounds or audio.

However, many small businesses and creatives don’t have the budgets, teams, and time to create high-quality, compelling content. As such, audio assets are often overlooked and undervalued when building visual content, despite the fact that adding music and sound to video marketing strategies can attract new customers and improve ROIs. Marketers need to tune in — music and sound can be instrumental to upleveling content and campaign success. Here’s how:

Music helps you set the mood

When people interact with social media, the last thing they want is their scrolling to be interrupted by annoying ads. To create impactful visual content, brands and businesses must design campaigns that are fun, creative, and compelling. Adding background music is a great way to match your audiences’ mood, have your brand’s content blend with what’s trending, and deliver ads that are less invasive for your viewers’ eyes and ears.

When thinking about our favorite ads, the background audio makes all the difference — viewers will instantly know if they are listening to an inspirational scene, lighthearted commercial or even a spooky reel. These sounds clue viewers into what to expect and create an immersive storytelling experience.

Historically, integrating music has conjured fears around cost and licensing. However, there are tools available that can help resource-strapped creators and marketers make it easy to create professional quality videos complete with powerful audio.

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Scroll-stopping sounds capture your attention

Video marketing is very effective at catching the eye, especially when 90% of all information transmitted to the brain is visual. Yet, a great way to improve the performance of your videos is to expand how you engage with your audience through all senses, not just sight. Music and sound will allow you to connect with people that respond better to auditory stimuli. This will imprint your videos with cohesiveness, dynamism, and might even trigger someone to bounce their foot to the music you select.

Since smell, touch, and taste are off-limits when it comes to digital, sound is the clearest avenue to customers. When scrolling or tapping through content, people can become numb to visuals. However, certain sounds can stop them in their tracks and entice them to continue watching. There is a difference between seeing and actively listening to an ad, which sound helps bring forward. Knowing that sound plays an important role in drawing viewers means that marketers should take the time to consider what their first audio impression will be and make sure they have the audio resources on hand to bring their content to life.

Background music triggers emotions

Viral videos of babies weeping when listening to their mother’s lullabies exemplify

the emotion music can trigger. To leverage the power of music to translate emotion and give that extra punch to your visual content, add background music to connect on a deeper level with your audience. You can do that by finding and selecting music through genres or moods that help you translate the exact emotion you are looking to provoke.

When adding background music, think beyond the melody. Sound effects are the perfect tool to give your videos an extra layer of engagement. Set the scene by adding surrounding noise, such as footsteps, a certain ambience, or user interface. This will provide your video content with a clear-cut approach making it easier for your audience to picture themselves in the scenario you want to transmit.

While there’s interest and benefit in captioning videos for viewers watching in public places, the reality is that sound is integral to telling more complex stories and enhancing customers’ content experiences. Ultimately, audio serves as a way to entice and engage people, while amplifying content. Though marketers may be unsure where to start, there’s a surplus of resources online, from royalty-free music libraries to paid subscriptions full of audio and visual assets, all of which will provide your video marketing strategies with the right elements to boost engagement.

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