Introduction
Video marketing is a technique devised by brands to create, curate, and use videos to promote their products or services with their target audience. As part of your marketing initiatives, it is a potent type of marketing that effectively engages your audience.
According to Wyzowl’s 2018 Video Marketing Statistics Survey, 81 percent of businesses utilize video as a marketing strategy, up from 63 percent in 2017, and 81 percent of customers have been influenced to try their services after watching the brand’s promotional video. The use of video in marketing is gaining popularity among organizations of all kinds, including small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Creating a social media video marketing strategy requires the same amount of thought as any other marketing approach. To assist you in planning your video marketing strategy, here are ten simple steps to follow:
Create a Buyer Persona
A buyer persona is a fictionalized portrayal of your target audience. To build a buyer persona, extensive market research and interviews with current consumers should be conducted. The more specific your consumer persona, the more likely your video marketing efforts will generate quality leads for your company.
You will be better able to create, shoot, edit, and promote your videos if you are aware of your potential consumers’ demographics, ambitions, and motivations. Not only will this assist you in creating targeted content, but it will also improve your ROI by allowing you to utilize your resources better.
Paint a Clear Brand Image
You need to be consistent with your digital branding whether you’re doing live videos on the go, professionally planned and produced advertisements, or reposting testimonials. Companies with consistent branding are 20 percent more successful than those without, according to McKinsey and Company research. Try to keep your brand colors, logo, and catchphrase consistent to reinforce the brand image in your videos. Maintaining consistency throughout all of your videos can help you gain the trust of your target audience.
Stick To a Video Content Schedule
To implement your content strategy successfully, you must follow a well-organized plan that keeps you on track. Having a schedule for each stage of the process ( from conceptualization to video distribution ) can help you envision how your material is structured and when it will be published, and which channels to utilize to distribute it. Built-in scheduling features are available in applications such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.
Set Aside a Realistic Budget
Focus on your marketing goals and consumer tastes as a brand to accurately plan your budget. Video marketing might be costly in certain situations, but you don’t need a large budget to make it work. You also don’t need to invest in a lot of equipment.
In many circumstances, a smartphone and a portable tripod would suffice. Your budget is mainly determined by the types of videos you want to produce as part of your video strategy.
Choose the Right Type of Video
Before you start filming, you need to figure out what kind of videos you want to make. Consider the story you want to tell and how you can best tell it with the help of a video. You’ll need to select the correct kind of video to help you achieve your marketing goals. Commercials, instructional videos, testimonials, product videos, FAQs, and behind-the-scenes documentaries are just a few of the video formats available.
Include a Call-To-Action
Without a call to action (CTA), most viewers will leave your video without taking any further action, even if they appreciated and gained value from it. CTA buttons, text CTAs, and vocal CTAs are the three main types of CTAs. You may use several calls-to-action to motivate your users to take action, such as:
- Encourage them to join your newsletter or YouTube channel.
- Pose a question that they can respond to in the comments section below.
- Point them to another piece of content or suggest a relevant video.
- Ask them to follow you on other social media platforms.
Optimize Your Videos
It’s vital to remember that quality content alone isn’t enough. You must optimize your videos to ensure that they are seen by more people and are easier to find. This is where SEO (search engine optimization) comes into play. When making your videos, keep these pointers in mind to help them get discovered when your target audience searches for related topics:
- Titles should be brief and informative, with no more than 60 characters.
- To get the most views, keep your video between 3 and 5 minutes long.
- Think about your keywords for your video in the same way you would for a blog post.
- Work to increase the number of organic backlinks to your videos.
- Make your videos smartphone-friendly by optimizing them.
Focus on Sound Design
Sound design is essential for guaranteeing the emotional impact and tone of your video. Custom-created audio is nearly always a better alternative than stock. Bad audio may be the most distracting aspect of a video and the most significant impediment to hearing a captivating story. Focus on sound mixing and narration to get your foley effects, audio levels, narration volume, and other technical aspects just right. Video editing platforms can help you develop a professional sound design for your video.
Choose Distribution Channels Wisely
The key to having your videos viewed is to distribute them on all of the appropriate platforms. Choose your channels carefully, and look at both organic and paid ways to reach your target consumers.
You may begin by embedding the video straight into your emails or posting it to your website or blog articles. You can also share them on other social media platforms, which is a great way to engage with potential customers and reach a wider audience. Paid alternatives for promoting your video content include Search Ads, Influencer Outreach, Social Media Ads, and Sponsored Content.
Evaluate Your Progress
It’s critical to know that the time, effort, and money you’re putting into your video marketing strategy is helping you achieve the objectives you set out for yourself when you first started. Here’s a rundown of some key metrics to keep track of for each video campaign you create:
- Comments
- Engagement rate
- Number of Views and Unique Viewers
- Social sharing
Keeping track of how well your videos are performing will allow you to learn from your mistakes and improve.
Conclusion
The benefits of video content marketing are undeniable: it allows businesses of all sizes and types of industries to engage with potential and existing consumers in new and exciting ways. To reap the benefits of this opportunity, you must take advantage of it and develop your video marketing strategy. Once you’ve established a plan, you’ll be able to understand how your video content matches your company goals and begin utilizing assets more efficiently.