Video content and video marketing is more than essential in the current digital world we live in. Consumers increasingly expect video content as they look for products and services, and they use video content to inform their decision-making processes and also educate themselves on the important features of a product or service.

Most digital savvy businesses are already using video marketing as a tool to increase their brand exposure. This number has risen up with the economic changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the market demand for video content will  keep growing as businesses of all sizes and different industries realize the benefits that video marketing brings to their business.

The reason why video is so important in attracting traffic and sales is because of its accessibility, customer education opportunities, and engagement that video content offers to users.

What is video marketing?

The definition of video marketing is simple, it is using video is a media to promote or market your brand, product or service. The best marketing campaigns incorporates video into their content mix. It helps increase the engagement on your digital and social media channels, educates your target audience, and allows you to reach them with a new medium.

Video marketing isn’t only about generating sales, you can use it to encourage website visits, social media engagement, email signups, and improve customer service. Type of video content can include: Customer testimonials, videos from live events, how-to videos, explainer videos, corporate training videos, viral (entertainment) videos, etc.

How to start video marketing today?

1. Create a video marketing plan

Videos are one of the best ways to boost your company’s brand awareness and reach greater financial results. While video marketing is essential, you shouldn’t spent your whole monthly marketing budget only on video marketing. Plan your marketing budget well and try different tools and media in order to understand what gives you the best return on investment.

When you plan your future video marketing strategy, it’s essential to be realistic about your results and expectations. Even though videos are a highly effective form of marketing, they are not magic wands and it requires effort to prepare and create a highly engaging and relevant piece of video content. That’s why you should always:

• Decide how many videos you can create per month
• Decide how you will promote your videos and whether you will use paid promotions
• Decide which platforms that you will use to play your videos and consider the specifics of these platforms
• Define your video marketing goals and track your achievements.

Only by creating a good video marketing plan and establishing the goals that you plan to achieve can you find the most suitable scheme for your business. Make your video marketing plan, knowing you will adjust it in the future according to the results that you get.

2. Conduct video marketing research

Your direct competitors might be the ones whom you should look at to understand what you can do with your video marketing strategies. For example, find out if they have their own YouTube channels or if they use short videos to promote their products and services on Instagram. You can also see if there is an adequate reaction and audience engagement on their video content posts. You can also see what mistakes have your competitors done when creating their videos and how can you do better than them.

3. Know your target audience

How do you find out the main trends among your target audience regarding video content? You will need to pay attention to the demographics of your target audience and consider the platforms and content formats they prefer.

You can do this by creating a buyer persona, For example, the latest stats show that Facebook is used mainly by an urban population aged 18-29 (81%) and 30-49 (78%). If your audience buyer persona matches these categories, you can dive deeper into creating videos oriented towards this Facebook audience.

4. Analyse different options for content creation

These days, it’s hard to imagine any type of work that you wouldn’t be able to outsource to someone else. Many freelancers and creative agencies offer their services in the video content creation field, and video production is no different.

But, if your budget is very tight, you can try creating videos yourself. Many small businesses have to learn to be a jack of all trades, from business development to video marketing.

5. Just start creating videos

You will never know how to do something properly until you actually give it a try. Even if you don’t have experience in creating video content, you can always learn how to create videos like a pro or just hire a real one.

So, when you have an idea for a video in your head, you can start by creating a description or script of it in order to provide yourself or your outsourced specialist with a detailed task. Write down how long you want a video to run for, any exact words that have to be included. Even if you are going to just create a video yourself, you will still find the script and notes that you have prepared beforehand very useful, as you will avoid missing out on some important points.

6. Promote your videos

Sometimes cost of advertising can hurt your budget even more than the actual price of producing the video itself. But, any marketer will tell you that creating a video is just the beginning of a complex process of video content marketing development. You can promote and advertise your videos many ways including: paid ads, SEO, social media, newsletters etc.

What tools to use for video marketing?

Whether you decide to make your videos in-house or prefer to use an existing template or animation, there are plenty of available tools to help you making great videos.

Here are some tools that can help you with everything from creating a video from scratch to perfecting your video with advanced editing tools.

• VideoScribe
• Fastreel
• Video
• Animoto
• FlexClip
• Magisto
• Vyond
• io

How to measure success in video marketing?

While creating video content is important, what is more important is for the video content to show results. Here are the metrics you will need to track and measure the engagement around your videos:

1. Play Rate

The play rate is the number of times your video was played divided by the number of views it has generated. So, out of all the users who saw the first few seconds on auto-play, how many actually decided to continue watching.

A low play rate indicates that your video is irrelevant to the interests of your audience. It could also show other discrepancies with your video such as the copy around it, the absence of subtitles, its visual appeal to user, or simply the network it has been shared on.

2. Number of Shares, Likes, Comments, and Reactions

The above video metrics all come together as they typically indicate the overall popularity of your video. Comments, can reveal the emotional effect that your video has had on viewers. According to social media giant Facebook, when people like a video, they’re far more likely to share it later on, which helps get that video in front of more viewers. Social media shares are like word-of-mouth marketing, the more a video gets shared, the more your brand is seen as credible, trustworthy, and likeable.

3. Click-through Rate

When a website URL is included in a video, the click-through rate measures the percentage of people who were compelled to take the desired action beyond watching the video. Click-through rate (CTR) is calculated by dividing the total number of video clicks by the total number of views.

Whether it’s at the beginning, middle, or end of your video, a call-to-action must always be included for engagement. However, if a call-to-action is placed at the wrong point in the video or is irrelevant to the topic of discussion, it could result in a low CTR. Keeping your video short, clear, and concise is crucial for getting viewers to reach the call-to-action before losing interest.

4. Watch Time

Video watch time refers to the total amount of time viewers have spent watching your video content. It provides a strong indication of what information viewers saw on your video and what was missed based on when they dropped off. Tracking watch time is also good for deciding on the length of future videos.

How to optimise your video marketing?

Step 1: Design videos with the right goal in mind

Beside branding and engagement, a strategic and purposeful video can also guide leads through the sales funnel and enhance conversion.

To plan the goal of your video, first determine:

• The emotions you want to evoke and why (fear, excitement, and love are a few that work especially well)
• The target buyer personas to which the video will be appealing to
• The actions you want your leads to take based on the content they are consuming

Step 2: Have the right calls-to-action to get results

How many times have you reached the end of a video only to find that it fades to black with no calls-to-action? Although most marketers know the importance of a call to action, they are sometimes missing from a lot of today’s video content.

Before you release your next video, make sure you have included specific calls to action.

Such CTAs could include:

• A series of YouTube annotations pointing to different conversion resources
• A direct prompt from the video’s host to do an action
• A short link at the end of the video directing viewers to a landing page or website

Step 3: Set up a way to capture leads 

Once you have your video content ready to go, it’s important to consider including a lead capture method, because these will go wherever your content is shared on all social networks, providing a simple way to find out which leads are interested enough and willing to give you their personal information.

Additionally, some video marketing platforms let you build lead capture forms to include at the end of your videos. Basically, you can collect multiple fields of information in addition to the viewer’s name, and email address.

Step 4: Keywords and descriptions for SEO

SEO can be difficult, in part due to the frequent algorithm updates from Google; but making your videos more search-friendly is easy if you focus on these three things:

Keywords and descriptions:

Using Google’s Adwords Planner, you can do some initial research on the keywords you would like to rank for within your specific industry and use those keywords in a clear phrase format for your video’s title and in your meta descriptions.

Use Transcripts:

Because YouTube and Google don’t extract all of the phrases and words from your videos, search engines can’t be 100% sure of the actual subject matter in your videos. To help with video SEO, try transcribing your whole video and turn the video’s accompanying text into a full fledge blog post.

Multi-Platform Promotion:

After you have embedded your whole video into your site, put it up on YouTube and other video distribution channels with a different title. Because YouTube and Google are the two top search engines, you don’t want to cannibalise your own SEO efforts, so tweak your content just slightly to take advantage of both platforms.

Step 5: Analyse your video content performance, & plan future content

The last step to getting the most out of your video content marketing is to take a look at some data and analytics. If you’re creating lots of videos, you will want to consider investing in a video marketing platform that provides access to this detailed data. This is because interpreting your prospects’ digital behaviour is the key to making informed decisions about your future video content.