5 Things You Should Know About Video Marketing – The Beginner’s Guide

Are you stepping up on your digital marketing strategy? Well, there is one thing that would definitely move the needle for you: video marketing campaigns. Video marketing is quickly rising in popularity and proves to spur greater engagement as compared to the mainstream content formats like articles and infographics. This is especially true if you are running paid search and social campaigns.

What is a Video Marketing Strategy?

Video marketing strategy is tightly related to drafting a plan on how to promote your brand, products, and/or services via interactive media or video content. According to Wizowl, 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. You don’t wish to lag behind your competitors, right?

But let’s leave aside the competition for a second and think of ROI. The same study quotes that:

• Marketers see an 86% increase in site traffic due to their actionable video marketing campaigns;
• An 83% increase was observed as it comes to time spent on site, thanks to embedded videos on landing pages;
• 84% of the interviewed marketers admit the importance of videos in lead generation and, respectively, their considerable impact on sales.

Do you need more persuasion in order to consider video production as an integrated part of your digital marketing strategy?

Video helps brands to increase their target audience’s understanding of their product and/or service. As a result, businesses report a decreased number of support calls, which is a cost-saver in the long run.

It seems like video marketing is a win-win solution for businesses that are focusing on growth and higher market share. But how should you start drafting your video marketing strategy?

What Are the Types of Video Marketing Content You Can Create?

The most popular videos you could integrate into your online marketing campaign are:

• Animated explainer videos;
• Testimonial videos;
• Company culture videos;
• Event videos;
• Whiteboard videos;
• Animated videos;
• Unboxing videos;
• Demo videos;
• Employee or expert Interviews;
• How-to videos;
• Case Study videos;
• Live videos;
• 360° videos.

In order to have a successful video marketing campaign, you should make sure your video production efforts align with your well-defined marketing goals.

If you keep in mind that the marketing funnel follows the target customer’s purchase journey from:

• Awareness;
• Interest;
• Consideration;
• Intent;
• Evaluation;
• Conversion or Purchase;

you could easily plan your video creation efforts and assign a different campaign per each of those stages. For example, this patriotic t-shirts apparel company, leveraged social media videos to raise awareness of its products through influencer marketing and gained traction fairly quickly in building a loyal audience for its social cause and values-based mission.

In addition, if you are to address potential customers who are in the awareness stage you can introduce them to your company culture, your values, and philosophy. In this regard, branded videos would be a great fit for this particular customer segment. You could also create 360° videos of your office or products to further introduce customers to your business, products, or/ and working environment.

If you are targeting customers that are already interested in your products and/or services you can offer them a sneak peek behind the curtains with a case study video or behind-the-scenes video. This works really well for fashion brands and other consumer products as well. For example, beauty and fitness brands do well with BTS or “real life” footage as that lets customers feel a part of the brand’s company culture.

On the other hand, target customers who are already considering your brand require greater involvement. They’ve entered a phase when they are in need of verifying your credibility from 3^rd party sources. This is an excellent time to share with them your authentic video testimonials. Don’t stop with a single one. Make it a habit to regularly gather customer reviews of your work and share those online.

You’ve managed to guide your target customers down the funnel to the intent phase – now’s the time to get more specific with your video content. They are almost convinced to convert, help them justify those couple of steps in their customer journey. Create How-to videos to further educate your audience. Give them the power to make an educated decision and to feel proud of it afterward.

Target customers, who are stuck in the Evaluation stage, can be motivated to take action if given a glimpse of the “real thing”. Scheduling live videos would be a great way to approach them. Furthermore, sharing videos of company events that those were unable to attend would be another just as insightful idea.

Are you already visualizing how you’ll create separate video campaigns for all those target customers in order to help them make their way down the funnel from a simple lead to a converted customer?  Great!

Do you want to learn some more about what platform would be the best fit for publishing your video content? Let’s get over this one as well!

Where Should I Post My Videos?

At first sight, the answer is pretty straightforward, right? Where your target audience spends their time at.

Can we be more specific? Let’s see:

On the Official Company Site

You might be well aware of the importance to feed your official company website with fresh and relevant content, but do you know why adding videos to your landing pages is so essential?

We’ve already mentioned that videos could prolong your visitor’s stay. However, there is so much more to it.

Producing creative and valuable video content could bring you a lot of authority online referrals and that’s pretty important. Quality inbound links to your site have the power to boost your authority and, respectfully, your positions in Google search result pages.

Creating long-form videos for your site like expert interviews and case studies offer great opportunities as long as you add a complementary transcript or a blog post to each one of them in order to help search engines make sense of the conversations, the semantic core of the topics discussed and the keywords covered in the video.

On Social Media

Creating videos to support your social media marketing is a great idea! Practically you can share any type of video content here, don’t be shy.

Of course, if you are working with influencers you might focus on some specific video types like:

• Unboxing videos;
• How-to videos;
• Haul videos.

And remember live videos are a huge thing nowadays, especially in pandemic times when worldwide lockdowns have limited our real-life interactions. Live videos with the opportunity to purchase a product “right here and right now” are gaining massive popularity. 

Newsletter

Last, but not least, think of email marketing when producing your branded videos. Keeping in touch with your current and potential customers is a must, but nurturing their attention and fondness could be a challenge.

Let them know of your latest project success via a case study video, or introduce them to a satisfied customer that you’ve helped out. Let them catch up with your company’s growth, activities, and news. Don’t let them turn cold; after all, you’ve invested so much time into converting them into paying customers.

Are you eager to start creating your own company videos? Well, you surely know where to start. Just remember to tell a story with your video. Use the vocabulary of your target audience and attempt to trigger their emotions. Action!

This article has been scheduled in accordance with Socialnomics’ disclosure policy.