A Quick Guide for Nailing Your Video Marketing Strategy
Video consumption is rising rapidly with a staggering 92.1% of internet users accessing roughly eight hours of videos each week. What’s more, consumers are twice as likely to share video content than any other form of media.
So what does this mean for your brand? It means if you want to stay relevant and showcase yourself as an industry leader, you need to focus on a video marketing strategy that addresses your internal goals and the needs of your audience.
But here’s the hard truth: video marketing consistently, effectively, and affordably is challenging. However, this hard work does pay off. In fact, nearly 90% of video marketers report a positive return on investment. To help you cruise through the learning curve, Menajerie Studio, a premiere video production agency, created this at-a-glance guide to video marketing.
Let’s Start with the Basics: What is Video Marketing?
Video marketing is a promotional strategy that uses video content to promote businesses, organizations, brands, thought leadership, products, services, and/or missions. Video marketing comes with an array of benefits including, but not limited to, improved:
Audience engagement
Brand credibility
Brand trust
Conversion-rates
Reach
Search engine optimization
However, video marketing isn’t a one-and-done endeavor. It’s vital to consistently create and promote new, high-quality material for long-term success. Furthermore, ensure you optimize your videos for each platform on which you post. Not only does each social media site have its own criteria, but they all attract a slightly different audience as well.
Know Your Purpose
Before you get started with creating a video marketing plan, consider what purpose your videos will serve. For example, you might be trying to:
Amplify Brand Awareness
If you want to get the word out about your products and services, you need to be on social media. Additionally, whether you’re focusing on Facebook and Instagram or LinkedIn and Tiktok (or all of the above), video content should be a main ingredient. Reason being, it’s highly digestible, engaging, and visually stimulating.
Moreover, social media provides a way for brands to easily connect with their audiences by offering additional information, answering their followers’ questions, and responding to customer feedback.
When it comes to spreading brand awareness, the most prized metric is your number of shares. Aim to create content that people will want their friends and family to see as well.
Position Yourself as a Thought Leader
Video is the ideal mode of sharing information-dense content. Viewers can pause, rewind, skip, speed up, or slow down videos to best meet their needs. Closed captioning also makes videos more accessible than other forms of media, blending visual, written, and auditory capabilities to reach a wider audience.
Informative content can build your brand’s credibility by showing your consumers how knowledgeable you are about your industry. A deep dive into topics that pique your audience’s interest demonstrates a willingness to listen to and act on the needs and curiosities of your patrons.
Promote Products and Services
High-quality product videos have the dual impact of making your goods appear enticing while showing how they can make life easier, better, or more enjoyable. Commercials and other video advertisements should highlight your product in a way that makes it seem essential—something your audience not just needs, but desires. Doing so will transform your audience from passive observers to active buyers.
Understanding your goals and the needs of your audience will ultimately determine what kind of video you should produce.
Create an Emotional Spin
Now that you’ve identified your video’s purpose, it’s time to craft your message.
Successful video marketing content appeals to your audience’s emotions. Whether your message invokes a laugh or produces a tear, you want people to feel something when they think of your brand. Furthermore, marketing videos with a sentimental appeal are twice as likely to be shared as those with less emotional impact.
Your initial appeal should set the tone for the rest of your message. A consistent sentiment gives your audience the chance to adapt their reality to the reality playing on screen. To keep your audience engaged, they have to feel connected.
Once they’re connected, give them a clear next step. Be sure your video has a call to action, that is, leave no doubt about what your audience should do once the screen cuts to black.
Do you want viewers to share a branding message with their followers? Say that. Are you hoping to drive up sales for a particular product? Include a link straight to the product page in the video description. Being clear and upfront about your video’s intent makes it more likely that you’ll get your desired result.
Invest in High-Quality Video Production
Virtually every online platform that consumers use is capable of (and dominated by) videos. As such, brands that want to stand out in the digital sphere need to invest in high-quality video production.
Don’t get us wrong, candid smartphone footage does have a time and place. For instance, a few clips from the latest iPhone or Android can make for an authentic Instagram story.
However, smartphone videos aren’t ideal for semi-permanent content on your website or social profiles. More specifically, if you’re using video to market your team, products, services, or mission, invest in some production. A high-quality multimedia experience with your brand shows your customers that you care about the message you’re sending. As a bonus, high-quality video content leads to more sharing and engagement across media platforms.
Optimize Your Content
Optimizing your video marketing content is one of the most straightforward ways to ensure that the right people see your work.
Ideally, content planning lends itself to some amount of natural optimization strategy. Creating a message for a target audience, filming for a particular platform, and including a call to action will all help optimize your content.
If you want to be sure your content stands out, you might also consider:
Attaching a video transcript file
Posting with specific SEO goals in mind
Choosing a catchy and informative title
Using keywords specific to your content and industry
Being intentional with your video’s description
Including applicable hashtags
Using a relevant and engaging thumbnail.
Share, Assess, and Share Again
Video marketing comes with a lot to consider. From creating the perfect message to choosing the right platform, the possibilities are truly endless. Therefore, it’s crucial that every video project is shared and assessed, possibly to be shared again.
Though it probably doesn’t make sense to share the same video to your Instagram page over and over again, it’s often beneficial to repurpose an existing video into a new kind of content. Pulling key points and turning them into infographics, blog posts, or how-to guides is a fast and affordable way to produce new content from existing material. Moreover, it directs attention back to the original video, helping you get the most out of your published content. Be sure to consult a few basic data points such as views, view duration, and click-through rates to ensure your video marketing strategy is on track.
Get Help When You Need It
Are you ready to dive into a video marketing strategy? As industry experts in filmmaking, Menajerie Studio can help you craft and produce quality content that fits your goals, budget, and brand. Contact our studio today to learn more about how we can bring your ideas to life.