Have you ever wondered why some businesses are so successful? The key is simple – effective marketing strategy. People all around the world use this method to attract customers.
In simple words, video marketing is the use of videos to market or promote a brand, service, or product. It is a more vivid and memorable presentation that results in better sales. Video marketing is the perfect opportunity to give power to storytelling and touching the audience emotionally. According to a report, more than 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands. Google’s research shows that 6 out of 10 people prefer to watch online videos rather than television.
According to YouTube, its users view more than 1 billion hours of video each day on the platform (as of 2017). To meet the public demands, all social media platforms have created video-friendly placements. Overall, these changes and development mean that videos are now easier to make and more popular than ever.
Following are some of the best tips for effective video marketing:
Defining Your Audience
The key to a successful campaign is to show that a business knows what customer they want to attract. If you define your target audience, it is much easier to know what your customer is interested in. A useful way to set a target audience is to create a customer persona about how your ideal customer looks like. The easiest way to create that is to look into any data you already have about age and gender.
Now, if you don’t have the sources or were unable to collect any data, don’t worry. Simply use your imagination and think of a problem that a customer would have with your product. Solve that problem and think what kind of customer would have that or would point that out.
The clearer your understanding of your audience, the easier it will be to market to them.
The Right Video Making Tools
Have you ever heard of a video maker, a scheduler, or a dashboard? These are the 3 life-changing video marketing tools, and they will save your time too, but choosing the right tools is very important because we don’t want subscriptions or ownership of tools that don’t even work.
Choosing a Professional Video Editor
Before choosing a video editor for your video marketing strategy, especially a paid one, always make sure to go through your requirements. Go for an editor that has got all the essential video editing tools and a user-friendly interface.
Choosing a Social Media Scheduler
When choosing a scheduler, you need to consider whether you want to schedule your videos on only one social media handle or all of them. Scheduling your content beforehand makes it easy for you to take care of other things while your video gets to the audience without you posting it every time.
Choosing a Dashboard
A social media dashboard is a powerful tool that compiles your media metrics and refines your video marketing efforts. When you are looking for a dashboard, just see how easily it integrates with your channel. Usually, people use the dashboard provided by the scheduler tool because it is easier to compare content and results all in one place.
What Does Video Marketing Include?
Following are the ten types of videos you can use in your video marketing strategy:
The Spot
This is the most classic kind of video that lasts only 15 to 13 seconds. In this video, you can portray any story you want, depending on the brand. You can show these on YouTube or television commercial breaks; the key is to make them engaging and catching.
The Explainer
If your business offers a service or product that is a bit difficult to understand or not commonly known, you can use an explainer video to market it in the best way. These videos usually feature animations (character animation or whiteboard) along with a voiceover that explains what product/service you are offering and how it can help people.
Product Demonstration
The purpose of this type of video is to flaunt your product. It is different from the explainer as it shows the features and the perks of your product or service instead of going into details.
Company Culture Video
These videos highlight the characteristics of the company, and they don’t just market the product or service but market the brand as a whole.
Behind-the-Scenes Video
If you have an interesting process in developing and manufacturing your goods and services, show it to the world using BTS videos. People love it!
Customer Testimonial Videos
A great way to attract your audience and potential customers is to have the existing customers sell your brand for you. Have an existing customer talk about how much they like your product and show how they couldn’t have done it without you. This will excite your potential customers to try your product/service at least once.
Employee Portrait Video
Instead of a picture or short description of the company’s leaders, short portrait videos can help your audience engage with your business on a human level.
Web Series
Although web series might be the hardest to conceptualize or produce, they are also fun and unique. Consider these as short script videos that revolve around your business, and the runtime of these videos should be short enough to keep the audience interested.
The Branded Mini-Documentary
This is just a short documentary that shows the business over time, along with an in-depth look at the employees and their talents.
The Branded Short Film
One creative way of advertisement is to make a short film. Yes, a short movie with characters and a storyline is a lot of work, but once it is up and gets viral, just imagine it in terms of brand marketing. Your business will know no bounds.
What Topics to Include in Your Marketing Videos?
Well, you must remember that we talked about the audience persona above? It will come in handy now. Customers and their interests are the perfect compasses for you to outline those marketing videos. The content you create has the greatest chance to succeed if it’s according to the customer’s interests, or you can just see what your competitor is up to. You can find what popular topics your competitors are talking about and look for the trends people are adopting these days.
A Storyboard
They say that story is the vehicle for your message. Most commonly, a story contains the main character that overcomes obstacles in marketing. The customer is the main character, and the problems they overcome are solved by your product or service.
The second most common story is a news story. This focuses on questions like who, what, when, and where.
Now, the question that arises is how do we choose between these two? It is easy to judge: the narrative format is best for promos or advertisements, while the news story format is best for infographics and listicles.
Once you picked out the story style, all you have to do is write notes. In the story format, you can answer the questions, and in the narrative format, you can point out the problems and solutions.
Writing a Script
Writing a script can be a daunting task, but you can make it easy with a few tips. First, start referring to the audience as you and write in easy language. Lastly, keep it short and sweet. Now all you have to do is shoot the video and edit it.
Once you have written the script and shot the videos, you must create a posting schedule. Creating a posting schedule is extremely important. Although if you have a scheduler, you shouldn’t be worried about it. But still, you do need to keep a close eye on the schedule.
At last, many video hosting sites offer analytics. You can use these to analyze metrics, such as the number of times your video is played or how often the play button is clicked.
Conclusion
Video marketing is the simplest and most effective way to reach prospective clients. Still, your big picture goal regarding video marketing should always be educating customers about your product and your brand. All you have to do is follow all the tips mentioned above, make amazing videos, and post them on your social media handles.