Video Marketing | Top 5 Steps & Key Tools For Visual Adverts

Realistically, if you’re looking for an elaborate video marketing campaign guide, you’re not alone. For one thing, according to HubSpot, you may be among 79% of marketers who aren’t using video plans to build a video strategy. Not to mention, on the contrary, 99% of those who already use video marketing campaigns are planning to use them even more.

Nowadays, the reality is that there’s no digital online marketing strategy that works better and more effectively than video marketing — for educating, generating leads, and converting customers. On that note, all digital online brands and web-based businesses need some sort of video marketing strategy — this idea isn’t new to most of your competitors either.

What has changed is how important video has become on every platform and channel. So what do you think you know about video marketing, and what do you want to learn? It’s not too hard to see why social media video is so popular these days — for one thing, it’s an easy-to-digest format that gives our eyes a rest from the overabundance of textual information online.

This would be why the world reportedly watches 1 billion hours of YouTube social video per day. Perse, those of you who are headed toward digital marketing careers should have a complete understanding of the power of video as a marketing tool. Whereby, as a result of incorporating videos into their content, they’ll remain competitive.

User Video Tutorial: What A Strategic Video Marketing Campaign Plan Entails

The basis of Video Marketing is just as straight as the term itself. By definition, it’s a forward-facing marketing strategy that integrates engaging video into your marketing campaigns. Video marketing can be used for everything from building customer rapport to promoting your brand, services, or products. Video Marketing can be used for everything.

From building customer rapport to promoting your brand, services, or products. Additionally, video marketing can serve as a medium to present how-to’s, promote customer testimonials, live-stream events, and deliver viral (entertaining) content. Overall, video marketing strategies are nothing new to professional content marketers and advertisers alike.

It’s just like you wouldn’t create a commercial and buy airtime during the Super Bowl — without researching and strategizing first. And on that note, you shouldn’t create a digital marketing video without this understanding. Notwithstanding, the first thing to be successful is by doing proper research and then creating a workplan.

Learn More: Video Subtitles & Captions | No #1 YouTube Marketing Tool

Also, not forgetting, your video marketing strategy will ultimately be what guides you. As well as your budget, your timelines, your production processes, your conversion metrics, and more.

So, getting this written down and finalized should be step one of your video creation process. By 2025, according to Cisco, the video industry will account for 82% of all internet traffic. And it’s easy to see why. The combination of visual and audio content has long been compelling to people.

More so, as we saw with the groundbreaking inventions of film and television. Today, television is still the most effective way to advertise, and certainly one of the most expensive. Online video can be a powerful tool, but it is, like television, pricey when compared to banner ads, and audio ads.

Why Videos Are Useful In Marketing Campaigns

Chiefly, most people agree that video is hot. No matter the subject matter or the forum, videos are literally cropping up all over the Internet. While just a few years ago you had to turn on the TV to get news videos, now they can be found on a news company’s smartphone app or websites. People even make video blogs about the news to accompany their blog posts.

Consider this: Cisco estimates that video traffic will drive 82% of IP traffic (Internet traffic) this year. On both social video platforms like YouTube and visual social networks like Instagram, there are videos about all kinds of products. Many of these are made by influencers, while others include tutorials about everything from makeup application to car repair.

These videos can even depict the use of something in everyday life. Some are sponsored, while others aren’t. Video marketing provides businesses seeking to find more customers with a variety of unique advantages.

Consider the following:

First, it blends visual imagery, sound, special effects, and text headings that offer potential customers a richer picture of the ideas you are attempting to communicate in your sales videos.
Secondly, it is a combination of attention-grabbing media that simply describes your business concept.
Again, videos help a viewer to get a peek at your product or service and demonstrate real-life uses for social media users.
Lastly, videos also give prospective customers the advantage of getting any questions they may have answered before buying, thus driving purchases.

For us, marketing professionals, this explosion of video content presents a golden content marketing opportunity. But do you know where to use it to get video views? How do you make videos that go beyond just the old-fashioned TV commercial? Is it a simple matter of video production quality, or is the power of video marketing driven by something else entirely?

So … if you are not using this extraordinarily effective form of marketing, maybe the following statistics will give you the kick in the pants you need to take the plunge into crafting marketing video posts. Additionally, consumers like videos because they are easy to digest, they are entertaining, and more so, they are engaging.

Most marketers like it because it can give a potentially huge Return On Investment (ROI) through many channels. Video is also very accessible to anyone with internet access, both to watch and to produce. However, there is certainly a trend toward higher-quality professional videos. Although, anyone can hop onto their laptop and create their own video in under an hour.

To develop a video marketing strategy, you’ll want to:

Allocate resources: You’re going to need to designate some budget for video – at the least, decent equipment, good editing software, and a video marketing guru (or, better, team) – as well as time to create it.
Tell your stories: Storytelling has never been as important as it is in the video, so get brainstorming: What stories do you want to tell? How will you tell them?
Engage: It’s not enough to simply tell your stories; you must engage your audience while you do so. How will you make your stories interesting? What will hook your audience?
Keep it short: There’s no set length for marketing videos (although there are recommendations), but the general rule is that shorter is better. Be ruthless with your editing. Cut, cut, cut out everything extraneous. Attention spans are short, so make the best of what you get.
Publish: Publish your videos far and wide – embedded in your website, uploaded to Google-owned YouTube, and on all your social media channels. Then, promote, promote, promote.
Analyze: Track metrics and stats, to determine which videos do the best – and why.

Why does video marketing matter? First of all, because product video marketing is all over the Internet. Look no further than your favorite brands, your Facebook, and your YouTube homepage, and there it is successful video marketing that has found its way to your eyes. To enumerate, if a photo’s worth a thousand words, then how much more valuable is a video?

That’s the basis of video marketing. Secondly, it’s a forward-facing marketing strategy that integrates engaging video into your marketing campaigns. On the surface, the how of video marketing is pretty simple. For instance, your brand creates videos that, in some way or another, promote your company.

Resource Tool: Toonly | The Simplest Drag & Drop Explainer Video Creator

Likewise, they’ll also drive sales, raise awareness of your products or services, or engage your customers. But, in practice, it’s a little more complicated. Why? Simply, because, like many of your marketing efforts, video marketing is data-driven. Meaning, you’ll want to monitor various metrics and track customer engagement.

Equally important, as a medium, it takes more time to produce a video than any other kind of online marketing. Therefore, to ensure you get the best value, a video marketing strategy is required.

The Topmost Video Marketing Benefits You Should Know

Surprisingly, in 2017, video content accounted for an estimated 74% of all online traffic. Your customers love videos. Would-be customers also love video, which means good video marketing can attract new visitors. The benefits of video marketing to brands are just too many. In that case, let’s begin with easily quantifiable statistics, numbers, and data for instance.

It’s just amazing how fast things can change in just one or two years. And as such, video marketing is a no-brainer too. But, how do you keep pace with these trends? The only way is to take a look at some visual content marketing statistics that demonstrate the impact visual content has on reach, engagement, and sales. Have a look at the following statistics categories.

Consider these stats:

Recently, we’ve seen the continued importance of visual content emphasized by the changes that occurred across almost every major social network. Including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. At the same time, videos continued to grow still.

More so, as a powerful tool for brands in many ways, particularly, those looking forward to being able to communicate more easily with their readers. Similarly, Virtual Reality (VR) is finding its place as a marketing tool in numerous businesses.

The overall benefits of video marketing:

First, video helps you connect with your audience. Today, so much of a company’s marketing efforts are designed to help build trust.
Secondly, videos are the bridge that links what you say to who you really are. Allowing customers to peer behind the curtain and get to know your brand.
Generally, videos are an SEO gold mine. By helping build site backlinks, boost likes and shares (which can affect search rankings), and drive site traffic.
Also, let’s not forget that YouTube is owned by Google. So, be sure to post frequent videos to your YouTube channel.
Using videos is one of the ways to boost information retention.

Always remember, if your customers hear something only, they’re likely to retain about 10% of that information three days later. By contrast, if what they hear is accompanied by relevant imagery, they’ll retain an average of 65% of that information three days later. Email subject lines with the word “video” see a 19% increase in open rates and a 65% boost in click-throughs.

What’s more, four times as many customers would prefer to watch a product video than read product descriptions. Do you like money? Then consider this: after watching a video, customers are 64-85% more likely to make a purchase.

The Best Practices For A Strategic Video Marketing Plan

Consider this: Google owns YouTube. Thus, it’s a good practice to post frequent videos to your YouTube channel. And then add clear titles, descriptions, and meta tags. Then, tag, tag, and tag with keywords/keyphrases related to your video content. As a result, this will evenly boost your video information retention rate.

Meaning, that if your customers hear something only, they’re likely to retain about 10% of that information three days later. That’s why it’s good to make sure that you create engaging videos. For example, when evaluating the ROI on a piece of real estate, it’s important to consider all associated expenses, including marketing and real estate video production costs.

Today, we’ll look at what you need to know to create a video strategy. And we’ll provide tips to make it robust enough and agile enough to use on all occasions. But first, ask yourself

These questions;

What is the purpose of each video?
Who is the audience?
How does the video further your marketing goals?

By contrast, if what they hear is accompanied by relevant imagery, they’ll retain an average of 65% of that information three days later. In that case, from these challenges, there rises a need for video marketing best practices. Oftentimes, it all comes down to your video marketing strategy and content creation.

If you want your video marketing to have results, then you must plan, test, analyze, and test again. Yes, the goal of your videos is to tell a story and engage your customers. Let’s look at more best practices for your video marketing campaign strategies below. You can consider the key ones that you’ve missed all this time and then integrate them into your strategy…

1. Mind Your Video Marketing Content Goals

From a marketing perspective, your videos must align with your sales funnel. The bottom line, overall strategy, and data should drive your video marketing strategy. First, plan a solid strategy to develop video(s) for each level of your sales funnel. Second, outline the content and goals of each individual video. Determine what metrics will best determine a video’s success.

Then, test. Analyze. Tweak your videos (and their deployment), when necessary. Work to make them more effective. Must be remembered, whatever you do, do video; this year and beyond, it’s the cornerstone of your brand’s marketing efforts. Step one is to articulate why you’re attempting to use product videos for marketing as a part of your mix.

Setting video goals, objectives, and KPIs is fundamental to creating an efficient video marketing strategy. It will help you justify the resources you need, and allow you to clearly see how well video marketing is contributing to your broader marketing goals. A recent study from Ascend2 found that businesses commonly use video marketing for a variety of reasons.

They use videos to:

Educate customers
Build brand awareness
Drive engagement
Increase leads
Improve conversion
Build a community
Send traffic to their website

These goals may work as nothing more than inspiration for you, or may well be some of the things you want to replicate for your strategy. Whichever way you go, use the SMART technique – making things specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound – to set your goals and KPIs for each of these objectives.

Do the best you can to make them both ambitious, and realistic. But be sure to give yourself the freedom to adjust them as time goes on if they show themselves to no longer be valuable parts of your strategy, or are simply no longer achievable.

2. Actualize All Trending Topics From The Internet

A lot of video trends are a flash in the pan, but some stick around. So, what should you do? If you were to go all-in on every video marketing trend, you would be switching up your video stack constantly for little value in return. Trends, by definition, come and go, so include an allowance of time and resources for experimentation.

So that you can try trends and new ideas for size, and see if they show value before making them a permanent part of your strategy. Below are some trends that have grown in this age:

Live Streaming

Although Facebook Live was overhyped, live streaming has proven valuable to a lot of brands. The in-the-moment nature of the format captures people’s attention by establishing a sense of urgency. Live video also feels more intimate as it’s typically more off the cuff. Most platforms that offer live streaming will also provide viewers the ability to comment on a live feed, and interact with the streamer in a unique way which can increase overall user engagement for your brand.

Longer Videos

While users on social media sites like Facebook prefer short videos, YouTube viewers are watching videos that are longer. In fact, it’s something that YouTube’s algorithm is favoring, as it means people are spending longer on the platform, and can, therefore, be shown more ads.

Captions

For Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, animated captions are a great way to catch the eye of users that are scrolling. As videos on these platforms autoplay on mute, these animations can provide the context of what the video is about, and try and hook users in, getting them to activate the sound and watch the whole way through.

You can also do this through closed captions, which you can set to be automatically activated on your videos while playing with the sound off. These provide subtitles and need to be uploaded into each platform with your video content as a .srt file.

This is also a good thing to include in all videos across platforms, as it provides a transcript that search engines like Google can crawl, picking up on keywords, and improving the chances that they’ll show up in search results.

Stories

Snapchat’s popularity has fluctuated, and Instagram’s much-hyped IGTV was a bit of a bust, but the “Stories” format continues to go from strength to strength. Viewers usually expect to see this content in and amongst that of their close friends and influencers, so it needs to feel personal and be designed to be watched alone (often with the sound off).

Stories can be more low-fi than the content you’d expect to see from brands within your Instagram stream, or YouTube and Facebook feeds. If done well, it’s a unique and intimate way to connect with your audience.

3. Utilize Custom-Specific Social Media Channels

Each of the video channels available can be used to target a slightly different audience and requires a certain set of formats. Once you’ve figured out the audience that you’re trying to reach, and the style of video you want to create, it’s time to look for the right platform/s to be on.

YouTube

YouTube is one of the best video platforms on the web. It can handle virtually any resolution or format you want to throw at it, including interactive 360 videos, and 4k resolution. It’s the place to upload if you’re happy to have your users be shown ads before or during your content.

YouTube videos can be easily embedded on web pages. And, as YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web, succeeding on YouTube can have a big impact on your brand’s SEO.

Facebook

It’s difficult to stand out on Facebook at the best of times, and with more video content than ever being uploaded to the social network, decent exposure is getting harder. As a platform, it can handle virtually any length of video (under 240 minutes), offers live streaming options, and can support the regular 16:9 video aspect ratio, as well as square or vertical videos.

However, it can only handle 1080p or lower resolutions. Facebook videos autoplay in people’s feeds until users activate the sound. The feed is both a blessing and a curse, as it prompts the passive discovery of your content, but, being in a feed full of content, rarely results in content longer than a few seconds being watched all the way through.

Instagram

The star of Instagram right now is its popular Stories format, which was mentioned earlier. The other option is IGTV which, after a rough launch, has broadened the formats of video it accepts (no longer exclusively vertical video). IGTV will accept up to 15-minute long videos when uploading from a mobile device, and 60 minutes when uploading from the web.

Videos must be in MP4 format. And they’ll now appear as autoplaying videos in people’s feeds when they’re released, and on your Instagram profile, although only the first 30 seconds will play, and then prompt users to watch the rest in the IGTV part of the app.

Twitter

Twitter is similar to Facebook in that it can handle most formats and aspect ratios. However, it will only accept videos up to 30 seconds in length. You can get around this and upload videos up to 10 minutes long if you go through the ad platform (which is free unless you want to promote the video).

Twitter videos autoplay, so consider the same kinds of things we’ve mentioned previously to stop scrolling users in their tracks. As a platform, Twitter is all about immediacy, so videos that are relevant to the current conversation will perform the best.

4. Concentrate On Quality Video Production

Assuming this is your first time putting together a video marketing strategy, this will be the first time your business will be putting resources into video production, which can involve some serious investment depending on the type of content you’re wanting to create. An efficient video workflow is important when it comes to defining what you need to achieve.

As well as estimating how long and how many resources it will take to get things created. Now that you know your objectives, who you’re trying to reach, and what platforms you need to be on, it’s time to decide what video formats your videos will be in. Will you be creating a series of live streams, with just one person talking to the camera, and interacting with the audience?

Is it an explainer video, requiring graphics, and animation? Each video format will require a different level of investment. This chapter of Envato’s Video Marketing Guide for beginner marketers breaks down the different tiers of video cost from budget buster to break the bank. So that, in the end, you can see what’s most appropriate for your business.

5. Track Performance, Analyze Results, And Learn

With the prominence of video marketing in content terms comes new demands — social media platforms and search engines continue to grow — thus, having a video marketing strategy for your business has never been more important. That’s why we’ve created a free and exclusive product video marketing guide for everyone. There are a few video metrics to keep an eye on:

Watch time

Platforms like Facebook and YouTube place a lot of value on how long people watch your videos. Pay attention to the structure of your content, and ensure you’re hooking people inefficiently at the beginning, and maintaining their attention throughout. Consider whether you need to provide them with incentives to keep watching in the future.

View count

It’s the vainest of metrics, but it still counts. The algorithms of these sites pay attention to the number of views a video has. Optimizing your videos correctly, and sharing links to them on social media, in emails, and in newsletters can drive traffic to them, and help build momentum around them early on. The earlier you can give them exposure, the better, as each platform values relevant, and popular content.

Engagement

Comments, likes, and shares indicate how your content has resonated with viewers. Reactions – good or bad – are better than no reactions at all. This doesn’t mean making your content unnecessarily extreme. But it does mean the content needs to be compelling enough to start a conversation around it.

Click-through rate

Since this is video marketing, most of your videos – regardless of where you share them – will be linking, or driving people back to your website, or product page in some way. Measuring the click-through rate – the amount of times a user has clicked on these links – is, therefore, an important metric to monitor.

Conversion rate

You’ve measured your click-through rate, and now how many of those clicks converted into a sale? Whether it’s a product or subscription you’re driving your audience to, using tools like Google Analytics or Tableau, allows you to see where people have come to your product pages from, and how many of them made a purchase. This metric is key when calculating the direct ROI from your video content.

The Topmost Best Video Marketing Tools For Visual Marketers

Of course, yes, everyone in our industry knows that video marketing is quite a very hot topic that demands its rightful attention. Really hot! In fact, it has been slowly taking over multiple social networks due to its overwhelming popularity. Although at one time it was expensive to produce, nowadays, video marketing is a cost-effective option for most brands.

Once you have a concept ready, you need some tools to bring that concept to life. More than just a camera, there should be a way to upload, digitally record, leverage stock video, and edit to create a video that is unique. Use any platform from the list below to create an amazing video and you can’t go wrong. Has your company tried this type of video marketing?

Well, it should! Whether you’re looking to get into video marketing for the first time, or you just need new tools, there is a variety of some of the topmost best video marketing tools to try for your next video marketing campaign. Below are a few freemium tools for Video Marketing Software, Video Editing Software, Video Animation Software, Video Hosting & Analytics, etc.

Marketing:

Editing:

Animation:

Analytics:

Screenshare:

Optimization:

In addition, the best way to also connect with other people is through live video. While some video platforms like Facebook Live let you do streaming, sometimes you might want to broadcast over several different social networks at once. A platform like StreamYard will allow you to create and disperse premium video clips over several channels live simultaneously.

Be that as it may, for those of you who would like to stream on multiple platforms at once, think about using StreamYard. At all costs, this feature allows you to sit in one place and have fun as you have your professional-looking livestream published across social apps — Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. However, that isn’t the only cool thing about StreamYard.

One thing is for sure, with StreamYard, you can invite more than one person into your live stream, and in this situation, their webcam picks up their image. Furthermore, using their impressive features, you can display comments that appear on social media directly on your livestream feed to increase engagement. It sounds so brilliant, right? Well, just give it a try!

Summing Up:

The most important point to make in light of all of these tips is that they make up a framework that can stay the same, or be adjusted at any time. Broadly, defining your objectives, finding your audience, determining your budget, building a process, and measuring and learning are the considerations that guide you in creating your strategy.

These will not change. But the specifics that come out of these broader requirements can and will. What “works” today in the rapidly changing field of video marketing, may not work tomorrow. So, be aware of your goals, and be open to changing, and adjusting them when necessary. Want to see a few best-of videos in action?

Be that as it may, you can check out this list of enjoyable video marketing campaigns from Hubspot, 10 great examples from Forbes, or these 17 great examples from Big Commerce to gather more useful information. Having said that, we hope the above guide was informative enough, especially, for beginners to create product videos for marketing in detail.

But, in order for your web-based business marketing campaign strategies to yield higher and more results, you should try to have a mix of other marketing methods in your plans as well.

Other Related Resource References:

Overall, video is a versatile and engaging content format that not only gives us a real-life picture of what is going on. It’s also easy to share across multiple platforms. Most content creators heavily rely on it to deliver. This is not only because they might be interested in making more amazing videos, but because they probably learn to incorporate them quite so well too.

Not forgetting, this guide is for you whether you are a beginner or even an experienced content marketer. Especially, in order to help you get started on your video journey, or simply have a refresher. But, if you’ll need more support, you can always Contact Us at any time — let us know how we can sort you out. Our Web Tech Experts will be more than glad to help you.

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