“Content is the king”. This age old saying still holds truth but one has to also consider the medium of the content in the digital age. For the past few years, video content has been sweeping the internet, be it your Facebook posts or your online community.
Here’s an interesting data that spills the facts on videos as a medium of communication – a survey by Wyzowl found that 96% of the users have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or software. Moreover, 92% of marketers regard videos to be a critical part of their marketing strategy for greater ROI.
What is Video Marketing?
Customer engagement is key to any business. Right from their first interaction with your brand till beyond their first purchase, it is a business’s objective to keep their customers engaged. It is a challenging task but prioritizing video across your marketing is proven to boost customer interaction in the recent past.
Although video marketing has always existed, with internet penetration and new platforms emerging, there has been a lot to explore for businesses to engage their customers. One might still ask, what is it that a video can achieve that other traditional mediums such as a print ad can’t? We humans are sensitive creatures. To portray emotion in a text format, you need to write hundreds of letters while videos can achieve the same impact or even more in very few moments and limited words.
Stats too support this claim as it was reported that online videos had an audience reach of 92% among internet users worldwide in 2021. Whereas for 2022, it is reported that 82% of global internet traffic will come from either video streaming or video downloads.
Video Marketing Strategy
Video marketing is a powerful tool for a business to stand out in the crowd. While creating videos sounds easy, there is much more to it as a lot happens behind the screen.
First of all, you need to have a goal or a vision that you want to accomplish through videos. It can be achieving sales volume or converting more consumers within the same market. So, you need to set a bigger picture and integrate that into your approach.
Once your purpose is set, you need to understand the target group. A common mistake that most brands do is by assuming that their target audience will arrive at their channel by generating more and more videos every week. Based on your target audience, you can script the story or a message that can gauge maximum emotions. Think along the lines such as, infusing a sense of independence or helping your consumers succeed in their life by using your product or services. Brands need to focus on adding value to their customers.
Types of Videos in Marketing
Depending on the products or services you offer, there can be different types of videos. Let us explore a few.
- Explainer Video
These concise videos are to help the customers better understand your product/service concept and how it solves a problem. Even sophisticated services can be offered in a simple yet innovative way that inspires the customers to come to a decision.
- Educational Video
Educational videos are aimed at generating awareness among people. Valuable information about your brand’s expertise in its niche can result in a long-term partnership with the customers.
- Testimonial Video
An honest endorsement from real people can do wonders for your product. By focusing on their pain point, the other people can relate.
- Product Video
An image of a product might give a fair idea about the product but a video often seals the deal for customers as they provide the confidence in making a smart buying decision. Through these videos, a brand can humanize the experience for a visitor to somewhat store experience.
What type of video will work for your brand?
Well, one size doesn’t fit all. The right type of video to carry your brand message depends on your objective and goal.
Production Stages for Video Marketing
The stages of production involve proper planning and preparations before creating a masterpiece. Here you precisely determine both the filming and editing part. There are three most important production stages that one needs to follow.
- Pre-Production
Pre-production is where you will identify your goals, target audience, concept, script, storyboard, budget, and actors/influencers. Further, determine the duration of the video based on platform/s. Clarity on these points will help complete the shoot on time.
- Production
The production stage is where you will film the video. Ensure that you stick to the plan although some aspects might go the other way, and keep yourself prepared.
- Post Production
This stage begins after the filming is wrapped up and now you need to put in effects, graphics and music. The editing part is as important as shooting as these minor additions can further enhance the entire product.
Choosing the Right Platform to Promote Your Video
Picking the right platforms to promote your videos is as essential as creating them. We know for a fact that videos are everywhere and selecting ideal platforms is not cut and dry. Even if you have shot a brilliant video but if no one watches them then it’s a lost opportunity. Let’s check out a few of the possible platforms for your brands:
- Brand Website
These videos can be right up there on your homepage laying out basic information about the business.
- YouTube
YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. And more importantly, it’s a video search engine platform perfectly fitting your need.
- Social Media
Last year, during Instagram Live, Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, said that videos are “driving an immense amount of growth online for all major platforms.” Today, 59 per cent of the world’s population uses social media with an average daily usage of 2 hours and 29 minutes.
Video Marketing amplifies SEO
While text posts and images can boost your site on search engines, they come nowhere closer to the power that video content has. Websites having a video has an upper hand on search engines because it has a higher possibility of visitors’ time on the page which also answers the queries, keeps them engaged, and provides a good overall experience.
Analytics & Performance
To understand how your brand is performing, it’s important to understand the way your audience is interacting with your content. Most of the platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter, have a free and automatically integrated analytics tool. These analytics are kind of your annual results that evaluate your marketing strategy and its success.
Below are a few of the top metrics that can measure the success of your video content:
View Count
One generally thinks that a view is counted every time a video is being watched on any device. But repeated views count up to a certain point only. Different platforms have different ways of gauging view counts from 3 seconds to 30 seconds.
Impressions
An impression is a metric used to quantify the number of digital views or engagements on your video.
Click-Through Rate
As a brand, you want to encourage the viewers to take a desired action while watching the video. Click-Through Rate (CTR) gives information on what is the ratio of people who click the links that you place. A lower CTR indicates that you need to alter the placement of your call-to-action in your video.
Location and demographics
Demographics which provide a statistical study of a population and their locations have revolutionized businesses. This data helps you target those markets precisely where it is being sought for.
Optimizing Content
Optimizing a video is all about SEO which can do wonders for your website and social media engagement across platforms. This step becomes necessary when a video isn’t getting the right response. So minor tweaks can help your video’s visibility. For example, on a YouTube video, you need to use keywords the way people often tend to search or can rename the title with fewer keywords. Tagging and categories are attractive to the search engine.
Whereas, while optimizing videos for Facebook or Instagram, make them square which best fits the mobile screen size. Add closed captions or subtitles options have proven to be improving engagement and SEO rankings. Trim video lengths according to platforms using relevant hashtags.
Do you want to have a video for your brand that would resonate with your audience?
Contact The VUE today to discuss how we can develop videos for you that could infuse life into your brand, with a clear focus on ROI.
