Videos are virtually ubiquitous; statistics show that a third of online activity is now spent watching videos. More than 500 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube each day. Such statistics are why there is a rise in streaming services such as Netflix, IGTV, Amazon Prime Video, and many more; it also explains why over 87% of online marketers prefer engaging high-quality video content strategies for their campaigns.
Leveraging social video marketing is necessary to capture and satisfy a captive content-hungry audience. Over 51% of marketing professionals have cited video as the type of content with the best ROI. 81% of businesses use video content in their strategies. Videos are versatile, impactful, and very profitable digital marketing tools that you should not ignore.
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When applied in the best ways, they will inspire your audience to become long-term visitors. So, with this said, here is a breakdown of how to achieve this in the easiest way possible, but first, here are the basic things you need to understand.
What Is Video Content Marketing?
Video Content Marketing is the practice of using videos to promote your products, services, and brand as a whole. It may embrace various forms like live videos, tutorial videos, explainer videos, DIY, or even customer success stories. You can simply say, video content marketing informs, educates, and entertains.
These videos can be used on landing pages, email marketing, social media posts, or even press releases and broadcasts.
What Is the Difference Between Video Content Marketing and Video Advertising?
With the above understanding of video content marketing, video advertising on the other hand could be considered as the running of video ads across digital platforms using advanced audience targeting to reach precise markets. It’s the paid component of video content marketing. You spend money to get a marketing video in front of a larger audience.
Why Is Video Marketing So Effective? How to Do Video Marketing and Why Should You Use It?
Today, to engage and inspire your audience, you have to tell a good story. And if it’s authentic, consumers will be more interested in what you have to say.
The challenge with most marketers is to actually tell a story that will rise above the noise. As a brand, you must cultivate your consumers’ attention and trust rather than consider them exclusively as consumers with choices that you must conquer. How do you achieve this? By telling stories that they want to hear.
A worthy story can communicate the entire personality of a brand in less than 2 minutes. When the correct features and formats are used, you can use compelling stories to break down any complex concepts about your brand and open up your world to them. Make them part of your brand story, after all, this is the whole purpose of marketing.
Visuals are the first vector of sales.
Use Professional Styled Stock Photography to Promote Your Business.
Video Content Marketing Benefits
As consumers crave human interaction and authenticity, the use of smartphones coupled with platforms such as YouTube and social media have made it easy for them to easily access videos, for brands, this means people can learn about your products or service in seconds. So, here are the advantages of video marketing:
a. It’s What People Want
Video marketing statistics show that video is the preferred source of information, consumers prefer videos to emails, social media images, or downloadable content e.g. PDFs. Most consumers search for products or product reviews in video format before purchase. Why is it so?
Video is super easy to consume, in such a busy world people don’t have time to read long product descriptions or dive into a long list of services, even the laziest consumers can just engage the eyes and ears and capture your product or service in action.
This is a great opportunity for brands to show themselves to consumers in a persuasive manner.
b. They Boost Conversions and Sales
Vision is the most dominant sense; it’s almost automatic that you’ll gain more when you incorporate video in your campaign. And because they increase the length of time people stay on your page, they end up giving your brand message a longer sink in time.
Statistics have shown that 72% of businesses that used video improved the conversion rate of their websites. It also showed that 74% of users who watched explainer videos about a product ended up purchasing it.
This means you can engage, inform and attract even new visitors and still end up with good conversions.
c. Video Marketing Builds Trust
Besides high conversion rates and ROI, building trust with your consumers should be a solid goal on its own. This is how you create long-term relationships that lead to loyal customers. If you focus more on offering them relevant and useful information, they’ll invite themselves into buying.
Create videos that present your brand in a conversational form, this will build their confidence in you, and eventually, this will convert into a purchase.
d. Google Loves Videos Too – SEO Goldmine
Video Content Marketing can greatly boost your search engine ranking when properly applied. When you correctly reach your target audience, they end up spending a little more time on your site, this longer exposure develops trust and at the same time signals search engines that your content is worth the time (good quality).
This is especially so because Google owns YouTube, which means there are higher chances for your content to get noticed if you embed videos on your website.
The key thing here is to ensure that your content is optimized for SEO. This includes titles as well as descriptions.
e. More Traffic and Backlinks
One thing that is so hugely sought after by marketers is organic traffic. Brands are always working to get linked to high-quality sites because this does a great job of increasing a site’s authority which in turn increases the SERPs position, and this eventually boosts the amount of organic traffic they get.
But another much easier path is through consumer engagement. When you engage your audience well, you reduce even the bounce rate, and so far, as seen above, video has the highest levels of engagement.
Up to 62% of businesses who used video found that it helped boost the amount of organic traffic according to Wyzowl.
Link-backs and shares are made even more powerful with videos and this is why any video marketing company should create videos that are excellent for social sharing and for backlinking. The videos must provide a solution to an existing common problem, must be educative, and at the same time entertaining.
Types of Video Content Marketing
Even though the type of video marketing you use is mainly going to be determined by your objectives and the kind of business you’re into, it’s important to know the various types available.
Generally, there are three main categories of video marketing, these are:
Engagement Category – These videos are for drawing the viewers’ emotions in order to spark a reaction, whether it’s a like, a comment, or a share.
Awareness Category – These videos are for getting you known. They typically have a wide appeal to be able to capture as many viewers’ attention as possible.
Education Category – This category is about teaching your audience something that will add value to them.
With this knowledge of the 3 main categories, here are the specific types based on these categories.
Awareness Videos
i. Behind the Scenes Videos
One thing that really makes the audience feel like part of a process is the behind the scene videos if you have exclusive access to a process say production, project, or an occasion your customers would be interested in, consider creating a behind-the-scenes video. These kinds of videos involve lots of raw footage so they may not necessarily be very perfect. It however creates a sense of authenticity.
These videos put a personality behind the brand and make customers feel closer to them; they make the brand more human and less about just making profits.
Here is an example of a behind the scene video:
ii. Round Up Videos
These are majorly lists created regarding a certain theme, for example, “5 Best Holiday Destinations”. For these videos to be successful, the trick is to keep them short (around 4 minutes) in order to keep your audience engaged. They also need to include visuals of said products or places, not just your face speaking to the camera.
Give as much variety as possible having in regard customers have very varied tastes and choices.
Here is an example:
Source: Erik Conover
iii. Culture Videos
A brand’s culture is the secret sauce that absolutely taps into the consumers’ engagement appetite. This can include corporate sports day, birthday surprises, employee work-in-a-day experience, and so forth.
The main goal for this is to show that your brand is made up of humans with lots of personalities, not just a workstation with automated robot-like employees. And as companies out there struggle to be seen, you can stand out from the pack by differentiating yourself through a great personality. Your office or brand culture is a sure way of showing this.
iv. Interview Videos
Interviews are an excellent way of pumping some authority into your content. They build relationships with referral partners while exhibiting you as a crème in the game. A good interview should feel unscripted. Let the interviewee do most of the talking.
By inviting guests to an interview series, you’re able to easily come up with unique content while leveraging any new information that you may get from them. And as said above, this will build more credibility with your audience as well as your interviewee’s audience because the likelihood that they will share it with their customers is high.
Engagement Category
v. Vlogs
This is a diary type of video and it’s typically filmed by one person describing his or her experience or opinion about a certain topic. These seem to be replacing traditional blogs because they’re fun, more engaging and they’re also cheap to produce.
Most companies, however, have not mastered how to use vlogs and instead spend their campaign money on product demos and such content. However, vlogs are not just the territory of influencers alone, companies can use them to share their journey in a way that would be comfortable for them. It creates intimacy with the viewers.
vi. Live Events
Someone else might still break this into live videos or event videos, but here is why they’re perfect when working on one. If your company holds or participates in events, streaming it live will attract a higher engagement rate as compared to a video on demand.
Viewers spend up to 8 times longer when watching live events. For companies this is a great opportunity to engage with them in real-time, it also presents them with an opportunity to showcase more of what the brand has to offer while they still have eyeball time.
Here is an example:
Source: Trading programs
Education Category
vii. Explainer/ How-to Videos
These are videos made to walk your viewers through a certain process or solve a common problem. They’re typically short but precise. They offer a great opportunity to build your brand’s credibility and gain the trust of your audience.
Source: Tailwind
viii. Product Review Videos
These types of videos are most popular with tech sites and the beauty industry. And they are so popular because consumers today buy products based on what they hear from friends or family, social media, and such reviews.
The audience loves them because they feel they can trust reviews made by people who have already used the products. As a company, reviewing your own products will definitely seem biased, what you do in such a case is identify relevant influencers in your niche and try offering them free samples and ask them to share their honest opinions in a video.
If you get recommendations, then you’re on the right path.
Source: NikkieTutorials
ix. Testimonial Videos
Testimonials are close to product reviews, except that these are mainly like company reviews. They are perfect when done during a company event, where you can record live testimonials from existing customers.
Alternatively, you could create a contest or offer a discount for customers who can offer in-person video testimonials. Generally, you want your customers to raise any concerns they might have encountered while buying the product, the results versus the expectations they had, any specific feature they liked the most, and what they would want potential customers to know about the product or company in general.
x. Live Talks/ Presentations
You can always take advantage of an opportunity where a team member is giving a speech or presentation by filming it and using it for marketing. Double benefits. Another way brands can benefit is by giving targeted talks at related company events or small-scale networking events.
![Video Marketing Statistics that’s Going to Rock 2020 [INFOGRAPHIC]](https://breadnbeyond.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/video-marketing-strategy-800px.jpg "Video Marketing Statistics that’s Going to Rock 2020 [INFOGRAPHIC]")
Courtesy of: Breadnbeyond
8 Effective Steps for Developing an Effective Video Content Strategy
Any video content strategy that has as its main and only purpose to sell is destined to struggle if not fail. Of course, selling is the final purpose of any marketing campaign, video marketing strategies have also this ultimate goal, but today’s audience wants much more than that. In order to be successful, your video marketing must entertain, educate and inspire, genuinely convince the audience that your offer is valuable and perfectly able to solve their problem.
Video Content Strategy Step 1: Know Your Goals
Your goal could be brand awareness, sales, or traffic generation, whatever it is, you ought to be clear and base each decision you make on this goal. Without goals, it will be impossible to measure the success of your video content strategy and one of the subsequent campaigns.
Successful goals must be specific. This simply means knowing exactly what you want to achieve. They should also be measurable, meaning you must identify key performance indicators that can be used to measure success. These goals must also be attainable or achievable and relevant to your overall business. Finally, they must be time-bound; you must have a specific time frame in which these objectives can be achieved. This will guide every step that you take and the time to spend on it.
Step 2: Understand Your Audience – Research and Insights Are Keys
A good campaign always starts with thorough research on who you’re targeting and what you want from them. Here you must know the kind of content that will resonate with them and as consumers’ appetite for video content increases, brands are learning that targeted video content that’s specific to their audience’s needs and solutions is what’s driving better outcomes for their campaigns. What this means is that the content you create should be about your target customer and must be what they’re looking for.
By being relevant to them, your content will attract more of the right kind of customers because they will organically align themselves with your brand. Use analytics and metrics to review previous data and see the things that your customers liked in the past and use similar content to find more potential customers.
Video Content Strategy Step 3: Type of Video and Where to Publish It
Having identified your specific target, it will now be easier to depict the best place to find them and the type of video that will work best. Consider the story you want to tell them and identify the video style that will suit them best.
Another important factor to consider is where this entire video campaign will fit within your brand’s customer journey and marketing funnel. Have in mind that all your customers are not in the same spot in their purchase journey, so your message and videos must address all of these various points.
There are various platforms you can use to publish your video; the main ones are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. This, however, is largely dictated by your target audience, publish it where they are.
Step 4: Set Your Budget
Your budget will always influence the creative tactics you can employ. And all the video marketing examples listed above vary in cost because they all vary in the kind of resources they will require. This notwithstanding, the quality of your video and its authenticity should be a priority.
Another consideration will be whether you will create this video in-house or you’ll outsource it to a production team.
You must also consider the frequency of creating them and the equipment needed such as the video camera, a tripod, a stabilizer, lighting, audio, and editing equipment among others. If at this point you can’t afford any of this, start with your smartphone. It’s not that complicated.
Video Content Strategy Step 5: Identify How You’ll Measure Your Success
The good thing about video is that it’s quite easy to track the metrics. Some of these metrics include:
Average view duration – Measures how long viewers watch your videos on average.
Average completion rate – Measures your video’s ability to keep the viewer’s attention.
Re-plays – Number of times people re-watch your video.
Audience retention – This shows you the number of people that watch the video from beginning to end.
Click-through-rate – Measures how viewers respond to your call to action.
Engagement – Shown by likes shares and comments.
And also, take a look at experts and check on their video marketing mistakes, in order to avoid them.
Step 6: Create!
This is the fun part. Here you may encounter a few issues e.g. your editing skills may not be professional yet, you may discover that you need more than one camera angle and so forth, there is the lighting issue and the truth is, your first video is not going to be your best video, but it will place you in a position to get better, so go ahead!
Video Content Strategy Step 7: Edit and Publish with SEO Guidelines in Mind
There are myriad free video editing programs and apps available. Examples include Adobe Premiere, Corel Video Studio, CyberLink Power Editor, Movavi, or Splice. Keep the best clips and cut out unnecessary footage.
Once you’re done editing, publish your video while considering SEO guidelines. These include optimizing your title, description, and use of hashtags with relevant keywords. While applying this, don’t forget to be catchy and appealing.
With this done, you’re good to publish!
Step 8: Promote
Finally, remember to promote your video across all relevant channels, depending on where your target audiences are. This could mean through emails, social media channels, affiliate websites, and so on.
Responding to any comments you receive on your video is also a great way of boosting engagement which may lead to more shares.
5 Super Tips for Incredible Video Content Marketing Strategy Success
1. Optimize Your Content
It can’t be emphasized enough, so here it is again, SEO is a big deal. First of all, Google loves video content, so to maximize your video marketing campaign, ensure you accompany the video with a well-written description and title that are tagged with relevant keywords to boost your SEO.
2. Call to Action
Remember a marketing video has a goal; there is a certain action you want the person consuming this content on the other side to do. Include a call to action by encouraging them to take this action albeit in a subtle manner.
3. Tell an Interesting Story
As said earlier, focusing your video purely on sales alone will get you ignored! Tell your story in a way that your viewers can connect with. Humans are emotive beings, take advantage of that and speak to their emotions as you appeal to their needs and desires.
4. The First 10 Seconds Will Make or Break Your Video
The first ten seconds act as your subject line, if it doesn’t inspire, inform or entertain your viewer, you will be in trouble. The online attention span of viewers is just 8.5 seconds. You must therefore be able to bring life to your story within these 8 seconds. In this short period, you must be clear on what you’re all about and why you’re worth your viewer’s time. A quick preview of what’s featured in the video is one way to capture them.
5. Share, Share, Share!
This is really simple, having known where your target audiences spend their time, act, and share your video in these places and any others you may think of. You never know where a new loyal fan is going to pop from.
Conclusion
The play button is the most compelling call to action on the web right now and while this is happening, using writing to communicate with your audience is quickly going out of style. The importance of video marketing can therefore not be over-expressed. A brand is no longer what it tells the consumer it is; it’s what the consumers tell each other it is, and video marketing strategies go a long way into influencing these consumer-to-consumer talks by bringing authenticity and relevance into marketing. So, go ahead and create videos.
