With content marketing on the rise, brands are looking for different ways of getting their products in front of their customers. As a result, many marketers are now incorporating video marketing as a different strategy for promoting to their audience. Research shows that video marketing really engages customers and has a substantial impact on them; such as a higher percentage of retaining the message being presented. For those of you who are interested in using video marketing in your marketing strategy but don’t know where to start, here is a Basic Video Marketing Starter Pack that will get you hitting the pavement running in no time.
What is Video Marketing?
Video Marketing is just as simple as the word itself. It is marketing your products and/or services using video and is a modern way of engaging your audience using content in the form of video to entertain, inform, tell a story or inspire. It can be used on different platforms such as a company’s website, email and social media platforms.
Benefits of Video Marketing
There are many ways to incorporate video into your marketing initiatives and the benefits are endless. You can use video to support your website and blog, social media platforms, email marketing and content marketing strategies. For some marketers, video marketing works. According to Digitalinformationworld.com, “67% of marketers found video marketing somewhat successful.” Results include an increase in engagement, brand awareness, sales, click-through rates, and lead generation.
For consumers, statistics show that they often favor video content than reading text. Also, video can be more useful when they are in the decision-making process during shopping. According to Smallbiztrends.com, “Seventy-four percent of millennials find video helpful when comparison-shopping while 60 percent prefer to watch a video to reading a newsletter.” Below are a few ways of incorporating video on some of the most commonly used platforms for content that can be beneficial.
Website and Blog
There are many ways to use video marketing on your company’s website and blog. For most companies, video marketing is used to present a quick overview of their company. Incorporate a video on your homepage and make sure the video has great visual quality and content. It can entail what the company is all about; showcase its products and services, industry capabilities, company culture and much more. Research shows that a video can increase the average click-through rate on your company’s website. Animoto.com stated, “The average click through rate (CTR) for a website using video is 4.8%.”
Video marketing on a blog can be used to elaborate more on the content discussed in the article. It can give the article a visual representation and make it more engaging for the reader. As a result, readers would be more inclined to like, comment or share the blog article if they find the video to be compelling and share-worthy.
Email Marketing
Including video into your email marketing strategy can really spice up your email content. It takes the dull out of reading bodies of text and makes the email more appealing. Using video in your email marketing has shown to increase click-through rates in email significantly. It also shows that consumers are more willing to open an email if they see that it has a video. There are many ways to promote your brand through this platform. For example, a non-profit organization can promote their upcoming community service event by creating a short video that shows them doing community service at their last event. Also, remember to set up a landing page that your video can open in instead of embedding a video inside the email, this will avoid any difficulties users may experience with opening the video from different software.
Instagram is a great social platform for video marketing, especially for businesses. It is a great place to showcase your products and services and connect with new audiences that are interested in the same industry or field as your company. It’s also a great platform for startup companies and entrepreneurs. Use video marketing to create brand awareness by introducing audiences to what your company does. You can also create a quick how-to video as you see in many beauty brands. Also, take advantage of utilizing the Instagram Stories option. It’s a great section for promoting short video marketing content about your brand to increase product visibility.
This is one of the biggest platforms that use video marketing. Facebook video ads are one way of promoting your products or services on this platform. It’s affordable and is quite effective in getting your products in front of the right target audience. Another way to use video marketing on this platform is to add a featured video to your page under the video tab to give audiences an overview of your business.
Twitter is a platform used for conversations and to get people talking about a specific topic or new trend. Therefore, incorporating video marketing into Twitter is a great way to get people talking about your brand, products or services. When posting a video to Twitter, make sure you use hashtags that are related to the video to reach a wider audience. Also, Make sure the video is current since most people use Twitter to find out things that are happening at the moment.
YouTube
Since YouTube is the second largest search engine, it’s also one of the most common places that people use to search for videos and to post videos. It is also home to YouTube influencers, people who are known for their creative, fun, or entertaining organically homemade videos. It is the common platform for all types of video content such as How-to tutorials, music videos, motivational videos and so much more. Use video marketing on YouTube to showcase your new products and tutorials on how to use them. Also, make sure you use a good description so viewers can find it more accessible on the search engine. As a result, it will put your brand in front of new customers that can potentially lead to a sale.
Key Advice for using Video Marketing
- Know your audience: Knowing your audience is key to creating good content for your video marketing. You must know who is your target audience and is exactly what are their interest and what type of content would not only appeal to them but get them to perform a call of action or complete a purchase.
- Diversify video content on each platform: Do not treat all platforms the same when it comes to video marketing. For example, the length of each video varies on each platform. Facebook videos are recommended to be approximately 3 minutes long while Instagram videos should be under 1 minute. Instagram stories are 15 seconds unless you are using Post Longer. It’s important to keep the video short but to make the video long enough to get your message across to your audience.
- Storytelling: One of the best ways to grab your audience’s attention and to keep it is to tell a story. Customers love a good story. Something that inspires or connects with them. Create a video that tells a story and is good enough to resonate with your key audience. Make the content inspiring, educational and share-worthy. Make sure it’s relatable to your product and brand. A possibly good idea is to include your customer’s revelations in the video as content.
- Create a video marketing plan: It’s important to understand your purpose of creating a video and define specific goals. Do you want to increase conversions? Brand awareness? Or increase your followers? Be specific with your goals so you can create the content easier. Know your audience and find out which platforms they are on and what type of content in the video will appeal to them.
- Include a CTA: Make sure you include a call to action so that at the end of the video your audience has an option to perform an action; such as make a purchase, provide an email, sign up for a subscription, share or like the video, or register for an event.
- Make sure it is mobile-friendly: No matter which platform you use to share your video, customers generally watch most videos on their mobile devices. According to bluecorona.com, “More than 50% of videos are watched on mobile (Ooyala, 2016).” Therefore, making sure that the videos are compatible with mobile devices and presented with great quality when viewing is imperative.
Now that you have a better understanding of what is video marketing and its benefits on the different platforms, here is brief summary inspired by Hubspot’s “The Ultimate Video Marketing Starter Pack” to get you started on creating your first video:
I. Pre-Production:
- Pre-production goes back to my comment on making sure you create a video marketing plan. Understand what you want your video to do, such as, get people to sign up for an email list, buy a product or service or attend an event.
- Find out what available resources you have to create the video such as an editor, cameraman, talent and location space
- Understanding what resources you have will help you to narrow your focus for a more productive brainstorming session.
- Brainstorm the part of the buyer’s journey you want to target such as the awareness stage, consideration stage, or decision stage.
Write a Video Script
When writing a video script first put together a brief. Include specific questions in the brief that needs to be answered such as:
- What is the video about?
- Who is the target audience?
- What is the topic?
- Did you define your key takeaways? and what should viewers learn from watching it?
- After watching the video what should CTA should be performed by viewers?
When writing the script, make sure to keep sentences short and write in a conversational style. Write directly for the audience you are presenting it to. For example, if you are writing to a younger audience, make sure your tone resonates with that group. Also, keep it brief. Remember that videos should be short and concise but long enough to get your message across to the viewer.
II. Production:
Setting up your set
Once you have your equipment, make sure you place the camera in a steady position. You can use a Tripod to help with this. Know strategically where to place your lights and minimize any noise in your surrounding area. Make sure when you are recording the sound is of great quality. Also, on the day of the shoot, factor in extra time for any technical issues.
III. Post-Production:
Editing your video Content
There is video editing software you can download on your computers, such as Windows Movie Maker for Windows and iMovie for Mac computers and much more. However, whichever software you use, it should be efficient enough to allow you to correct mistakes and shorten scenes to your preference. After you edit your video, it’s time to figure out which platform you would like to share it too. Know where your audience is located and which platform would best fit the content you are sharing.
Measuring the success of your video
There are three metrics that determine how successful your video is:
- Who watches your video?
- How long they watch it?
- Call to Action (CTA)
Here are other metrics you can use to determine the success of your video such as:
- View count – the number of times your video has been viewed.
- Video completion – the number of times the video was played until the end
- Conversion rate – the number of times visitors completed your desired action divided by the number of clicks on your CTA
- Social Sharing and comments – signifies how relevant your content is with your target audience. People sharing and commenting on your video is a healthy sign that your content is engaging.
So there you have it! This video marketing starter pack to get you to create engaging video marketing content that will grow your business by engaging your audience and inspiring them with content that leads to conversions and an increase in sales.
Author: Felecia Anson
