You may be wondering how to use video marketing to meet your business needs in today’s landscape. If so, this guide is designed specifically for beginners who want to utilize the power of video marketing.
Video marketing is an incredibly powerful tool that can help you achieve a variety of business goals. This guide will teach you how to produce videos, create a strategy, and measure success.
With video marketing, you can build trust with your audience, increase brand awareness, and drive conversions. By following the steps in this guide, you can start using video marketing to reach your business goals today.
What is Video Marketing, Exactly?
Video marketing is a form of content marketing that involves creating and sharing videos online. The purpose of video marketing is to promote a brand, product, or service through engaging and entertaining videos.
Video marketing can be used to increase brand awareness, build customer relationships, and drive sales. When done correctly, video marketing can be an extremely effective way to reach and engage audiences.
There are a number of different video formats that can be used for video marketing, including live-action videos, animated videos, and product demonstrations.
The key is to create compelling and informative videos that will resonate with your target audience. With the right strategy in place, video marketing can be a powerful tool for driving leads and sales.
3 Reasons Why You Need to Use Video Marketing
You may be thinking, “I don’t need to know video marketing. I’m not a YouTuber.” or ” Video marketing is a waste of time. Nobody sits through videos anymore.” But the fact is, video marketing is more important than ever before.
In 2019, HubSpot reported that 54% of consumers want to see more video content from brands and businesses they support, and Cisco predicted that by 2021, 82% of all internet traffic will be video traffic. In 2022, these numbers have far been succeeded.
Here are three reasons you need to start incorporating video into your marketing strategy:
1. Videos are more engaging than other forms of content
A study by Brightcove found that people are 1.8 times more likely to engage with video content than any other type of content.
This is because videos are visual and auditory, which means they can capture our attention more easily than text-based content.
2. Videos are shareable
With the rise of social media, it’s easier than ever for videos to go viral. And with platforms like YouTube and Facebook, people are more likely to watch videos than ever before.
If you create compelling video content, there’s a good chance it will be shared by your audience, which means more people will see your brand and your message.
3. Videos are memorable
Research has shown that people are more likely to remember information if it’s presented in a video than if it’s presented in text form. So if you want your audience to remember your brand and your message, video is the way to go.
There’s no doubt about it: video marketing is here to stay. So if you’re not already using video in your marketing strategy, now is the time to start.
Starting Out With Video Marketing Step-By-Step
A video is a powerful tool that can help you connect with your audience, build relationships, and boost sales. Here’s a step-by-step guide to incorporating video into your marketing strategy:
1. Defining Your Goals
Most businesses use video marketing to sell products or services. You may have also seen videos that entertain, educate, or inspire. Video marketing can be any type of video that serves a purpose for your business.
That includes ads, social media posts, interviews, product demonstrations, how-tos, and more.
If you want to succeed with video marketing, you need to start by defining your goals. Without a clear goal, you won’t be able to measure your success.
So ask yourself: what do you want your videos to achieve?
Once you know the answer, you can create content that helps you reach your goals.
- Increase brand awareness by creating videos that showcase your products or services in a positive light either from your marketing team or by hiring influencers or review channels.
- Generate leads by including call-to-actions at the end of your videos by utilizing lead magnets and giveaways to entice viewers.
- Increase sales by focusing on creating product demonstrations and ads. Demonstrations are great as many buyers look for in-depth reviews and walkthroughs before buying. By having this setup, you’re able to push tentative buyers over the line.
By defining your goals upfront, you’ll be able to create more effective videos that achieve results.
2. Identifying Your Target Audience
When you’re producing video content, it’s important to have a clear idea of who your target audience is. After all, the whole point of creating videos is to reach a specific group of people with your message.
The good news is that there are a number of ways to identify your target audience. One of the most effective methods is to create buyer personas. This involves developing detailed profiles of your ideal customers, based on factors such as age, location, and interests.
You can also use market segmentation to identify potential customers. This involves dividing up your customer base into different groups, based on shared characteristics.
Some questions to ask, include.
- What is my audience demographic?
- What are their interests?
- What videos are they likely to watch or are already watching?
- What kind of message do they respond to?
- What are their needs and pain points?
Once you’ve identified your target audience, you can start creating videos that are tailored to their needs and interests. This will help you to maximize the impact of your video marketing campaigns.
3. Planning Your Content
Before you start shooting, it’s important to take some time to plan your content. After all, a well-crafted video can be an extremely effective marketing tool, but a poorly executed one can do more harm than good.
Here are a few tips to help you get started:
– Define your individual video goal
What do you want your video to achieve? Are you trying to increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your website? Boost sales? Once you know what you hope to accomplish, you’ll be able to develop a more focused and effective strategy.
– Know your audience
Who is this particular video for? What sort of things are they interested in? What tone should you use? Answering these questions will help you determine what kind of content will resonate with your viewers.
– Choose a platform
Each platform has its own language and style of content, so dive into the one your audience uses most and cater your content to this.
Are they on TikTok? Create short-form content.
Are they on YouTube? Long-form content is ok
Are they into Twitch Streaming? Utilize live video and/or Q&A
– Keep it short and sweet
No one wants to watch a long, rambling video. Aim for something that’s around two minutes or less. That way, people are more likely to stick with it until the end.
The attention spans of viewers are only getting shorter so it’s important to consider this. Utilize the use of jump cuts and cutting unnecessary fluff-talk. Write a script if it helps.
– Make sure it’s relevant
Your video should be closely related to your product or service. If it’s not, people aren’t going to be interested in watching it, no matter how well-executed it is.
– Have a Call-To-Action
The whole point of making a video is to get people to do something, so make sure you include a call to action at the end of your clip.
Tell viewers what you want them to do, whether it’s visiting your website, subscribing to your YouTube channel, or making a purchase. If you don’t include a call to action, all your hard work will have been for nothing.
4. Promote Your Videos
If you’re like most businesses, you want to find ways to promote your video marketing videos. After all, what good is a video if no one sees it?
Here are four effective ways to promote your videos and get them seen by more people.
- Share your videos on social media. This is a great way to reach out to your existing customer base as well as potential customers. Make sure to use relevant hashtags and post your videos on multiple platforms for maximum exposure.
- Feature your videos on your website or blog. This will show that you’re serious about video marketing and will help draw attention to your site. You can also embed your videos on other websites or share them via email or social media platforms.
- Create a paid advertising campaign around your videos. This will give you a chance to target specific demographics and ensure that your videos are seen by people who are likely to be interested in them.
- Hold a contest or giveaway that features your videos. This is a great way to get people talking about your brand and can generate a lot of buzz for your business. Here are a few gift card strategies to increase loyalty and brand advocacy.
Be sure to promote the contest through all of your channels so that as many people as possible have the chance to enter.
4 Key Considerations For Successful Video Marketing
1. Make sure that your videos are high quality
This means investing in good equipment and making sure that your videos are well-edited. If your videos look amateurish, people will be less likely to watch them. If you’re on a budget, focus on audio first. Viewers can forgive a 720p video, but they can’t give terrible sounding, quiet, or fuzzy audio.
2. Create a scheduled content queue
It’s important to keep your content coming regularly, which means having your content headings ready to go beforehand. This is not only good for the algorithms but viewers start to expect content and it’s important you deliver.
A good way to find content ideas and headings is to consider your audience’s pain points and use a tool like Quora to narrow down what they are actually asking and with what kind of language.
Also, look to your competition and see if you can produce better informational content on the same subject.
3. Transactional Content vs. Value Content
Not all content is there to make money, you should also create content around giving free information that focuses on building authority in your market.
Value content is generally delivered with the sole purpose of giving value and zero “ask” on the back end, often even omitting call-to-actions. They generally follow a “How To…” formula, for example: How To Make Almond Milk
However, transactional content should be your main focus and this involves going after traffic that is already in the buying phase of their search.
Buyer traffic already tends to have a general idea of what they want, they are ready to buy but just need a last little push. The most common searches of buyer traffic are:
- PRODUCT Review (BreadnBeyond Review)
- Top 10 NICHE Products (Top 10 Saas Startups)
- Best NICHE Products (The Best Digital Business Cards)
- PRODUCT A vs. PRODUCT B (Gmail vs. Hotmail – Which is better?)
4. Learn the Basics of SEO
It’s important to understand the importance of headings, descriptions, and thumbnails. This is what people see first when on any content platform.
- Familiarize yourself with Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs to optimize your video titles so your SEO ranking is as good as it can be.
- Use a tool like Canva and the templates available to create eye-catching thumbnails.
- Utilize your keyword in your descriptions and where applicable use relevant hashtags and meta tags.
Taking Video Marketing to The Next Level
Now that you’ve got the hang of video marketing and you’re putting out regular content, it’s time to take your strategy to the next level.
There are a few things you can do to stand out from the crowd and really engage your audience.
- Tell stories with your videos. We all love a good story, and when you can craft a compelling narrative around your brand, people will be more likely to remember your videos.
- Experiment with different formats and styles of videos. If all of your videos look the same, people will quickly get bored.
- Create a format. It’s a good idea to follow a structure in your videos. For example, a video introduction, a body, and a conclusion. You may also want to play around with different segments depending on what content you are putting out.
- Try out new editing techniques, film in different locations, and use different types of equipment to keep things fresh. Finally, don’t be afraid to have some fun with your videos.
Wrapping Up
You now understand the basics of video marketing and how it can help your business. But there is still more to learn!
The best way to become a video marketing expert is to keep learning and practicing. Watch other videos, take online courses, and attend workshops.
Most importantly, experiment with different styles and techniques until you find what works best for you and your business.
What do you want to create next? Leave us a comment below and let us know!
Author: Chris Hardy, content marketer at SelfMadeNewbie.
