How to use Video in your Marketing Strategy
Video marketing is the practice of using video content that will help you to reach your audience faster. Video marketing allows you to promote your brand, your services, and your products – but you must know that video marketing is about more than sales.
Video in digital marketing encourages more visitors to your website, joins your email list, and engages better on social media. On top of all of that, video marketing can help you to improve your customer service and make your brand stand out more.
Humans are visual creatures, and we love the way we feel when we watch videos. Facebook and YouTube have made videos popular, with over 110 million videos being watched on Facebook and over 1 billion hours on YouTube every day.
Those figures alone should tell you that it’s an essential marketing tool for your business. Currently, over 81% of companies use video marketing as part of their strategy. While people still ask whether it’s worth it as part of a business’s digital marketing strategy, and it is.
It’s not just because your competition is doing it, but because it’s known to be one of the most fluid marketing tools in the list – it’s basically an essential part of SEO.
How Video Marketing Is Used
From videos that educate your audience about what you do, to onboarding new users into your business, video marketing has a broad scope. Educational videos can really hit home and send a clear message on an important matter in a way that is interesting and entertaining. Onboarding videos allow newbies to your company to learn all they need to know in easy-to-digest clips. This makes learning far more manageable.
Why Branded Videos Are A Good Addition To Your Campaign Strategy
Video works perfectly as a way to engage your audience and help them to consume new content. When you choose to use branded video and execute it correctly, it can be an asset that you can repeatedly use across a range of channels. It’s not the same thing as advertising, as advertising isn’t as good at delivering your message to your audience.
Branded videos are highly recommended, as they can get to the heart of your audience without mentioning too much about the brand in the first place. It’s also a good idea to have your logo prominently displayed, but not so that it overshadows everything else.
Types of Videos
There is a range of videos that can be used for different reasons in video marketing, and some of these include:
- Demo videos
If you are looking to showcase a product to your current audience and potential customers, a demo video is the way to go. They walk a new person through how the product works and gives them all the information they need to make the best buying decision. Google brought a new feature to its Translate app called Tap-To-Translate, and the video demonstrated how it worked and connected well with their users at the same time. The video was popular for a good reason!
- Interviews
Businesses often choose testimonials when they want to showcase their customers’ appreciation, but interview videos are always a better option. Your customers can hear the happiness in the interviewee’s voice, and it offers assurance that the product is worth it. If influencers are testing your product and you video an interview with them – it’s a great way to reach your audience.
- Brand videos
Brand videos are an inspirational way to showcase your product or company vision. Coca-Cola created a fantastic brand video for its Share A Coke campaign, reaching audiences with nostalgia and emotional moments that transport the audience back to childhood. This built great awareness about what Coca-Cola could offer, and it really stood out.
- Explainer Videos
Many brands start their video marketing campaigns with explainer videos. Usually, this is about an individual product or service on offer. It helps your brand to establish authority in your field – if you know what you’re talking about, people will trust you!
- Animation
For an exciting touch, animated videos are the perfect way to showcase the creativity your brand has. Animations are fun, light, and the ideal way to get a message across in a musical, colourful way!
Why Kareo? from ENVOY on Vimeo.
- Educational videos
Everyone learns differently, with some learning through auditory aids and others through physical learning aids. Educational videos are a great visual aid to help people learn new concepts and teach them how to use your product. It makes learning fun, and you will find your audience more receptive to videos.
How to go about making a video for your business:
Videos can help your business explain your products better, offer reassuring reviews, and capture new customers’ attention. It’s easy to assume that crafting a professional video is going to take too much time and cost too much money, but it’s not as hard as you think! Here are some steps to explain it better.
- Planning a video
Videos can help your business explain your products better, offer reassuring reviews, and capture new customers’ attention. It’s easy to assume that crafting a professional video is going to take too much time and cost too much money, but it’s not as hard as you think! Here are some steps to explain it better.
- Script
Sometimes, videos are great unscripted and in the moment, but when it comes to a business video, you need a clear script. This will help you to cut down the editing process and save you from losing your audience. This article dictates how brands are using live videos successfully, but you can bet many of them are still scripted to remain professional.
- Video/Audio equipment
Whether you only have an iPhone or professional camera equipment, learning to shoot a video is essential. According to Blue Corona, 54% of all mobile brand experiences are image or video-based, and many of these are shot with smartphones to social media.
- Set-up
Are you looking to promote your product with a video shot in a professional studio, or are you hoping for a more flexible shoot on the move? How you set-up your video depends on how professional you want this to be. If you’re shooting in a studio, you need a tripod to keep the camera steady. It would help if you also had the right lighting, the right microphone for sound, and the right place to shoot without interruption.
- Prepare your talent
Hiring in actors may be the best choice that you make for your company videos. Having the right talent in front of the camera can make the difference between your message coming across or not. If you are hiring an actor or two to do your video, make sure that they are well prepared before the video shooting!
- Shoot
This video can tell you how to “shoot for the edit.” This means that you should remember that your footage can and will be edited later, but that you should try not to draw out the shooting.
- Edit
Once the video is done, it’s time for the editing period. This will help you cut back too much fluff and sharpen the music in the background (if any). Video editing should also give you the chance to look back over the video to see whether you got your message across.
- Record a voiceover (if necessary)
Whether you choose music or you need to record a voiceover, you should consider what will work best for your brand video. A voiceover is a powerful tool for your video, and it should match the mood and the tone of the video you’ve spent time on. It’ll be vital in keeping your audience’s attention.
Using videos in your email campaigns/social media:
Before you film your brand videos and implement them into your email marketing strategy, you need to decide where you will host your videos. There are plenty of excellent options out there, including:
MailChimp
MailChimp has a video merge tag that allows you to create video screenshots for your campaign. Usually, these screenshots are linked to a YouTube or Vimeo video. You can then embed the video in an email, allowing your customers to click through to the link.
BombBomb
You can have videos hosted and sent for you with BombBomb, which helps you massively when it comes to avoiding technical difficulties. Video isn’t easy for everyone, but BombBomb makes it simpler!
TailoredMail
You can have your videos uploaded, encoded, and embedded to be sent immediately with TailoredMail. You can even see the analytics of your viewers, such as their behaviour and click rate.
Why Videos?
Currently, a video has way more support with email than it ever has, but it still won’t play instantly. 48% of consumers want videos that they are interested in, and if they have signed up for your business email list, they’re already engaged!
Companies using videos for their onboarding are making smart decisions. They are used to get new users familiar with a product or service. Incidentally, over 90% of people have watched a video to understand how to use a product better.
Onboarding videos will help your business to gain a bigger audience and appeal to new customers. It’s far easier to watch a video than read an article about how to fix or use a physical product, and onboarding videos will put your business in a positive light, too.
Across social media platforms, video is the preferred method to get a message across to an audience. Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories have proven their popularity, with over 500 million Instagram story users every single day. Company videos shared on social media can be shared across all social media platforms, and it’s an excellent way to improve how a company reaches its audience.
How can you make sure your video marketing strategy is working
If you have got to the stage of knowing where you want to host your video and what you want to create, you also need to know your video’s goals. You should know what you are trying to achieve with it and the metrics to watch out for. If you identify the best metrics for determining whether you’ve reached your goals, you can get it right the first time.
Your goal can include anything from increasing brand awareness to enhancing your engagements with your audience. You should consider the target audience when you are thinking of your goals for your videos, and you should review their interests and what could tip their purchasing decisions in your favour.
All of these considerations can help to guide you to the type of video you should make and where you should upload it (email or social media, or both?)
Watch out for the metrics!
- The view count of your videos is an important metric to consider, and if you are trying to increase brand awareness, this is important. Each platform measures views differently, which is something to consider before choosing the platform you want to use.
- If you’re going to determine the relevance of your video and how it appeals to the audience you are reaching, you need to look for the video’s play rate. There is no point in 1,000 people seeing your video if your engagement is low, and this can help you to choose how to optimize your content.
- Another metric to consider in regards to relevance is social sharing and comments. Those who are sharing your content can tell you that your videos are great! Social shares are a must; the more it’s shared, the more views you get. It’s a simple and yet useful metric.
- You took the time to plan and shoot a video, which will help you learn the video completion rate. You want people to watch the video to the end, and the completion rate is the rate of those who completed the video divided by those who just pressed play.
Each of these metrics can help you learn whether your videos are compelling and reach the correct audience. If any of these are not showing you the results you want, you can make improvements.
Pay attention to the data that these metrics pull, but don’t panic if they aren’t what you think they should be. For example, you need to ensure that the customers you gain are a good business fit and not those that click through and don’t go anywhere.
Conclusion:
Video marketing is essential for exposure, engagement, and upping your relevance as a business. It’s more affordable today than ever, and the advances in technology allow videos to spread across the world, enhancing your reach and giving you millions of views!
You can use video in your marketing strategy to advertise a product, explain how your product works, and give customers insight into how your company works! With video marketing, you can ensure that your company steps into the spotlight, remaining popular to your audience for good.
Photo by Harrison Kugler on Unsplash
