Video Marketing | Simple Steps to Create Effective Content

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.

With the prominence of video content on social media platforms and search engines continuing to grow, having a video marketing strategy for your business has never been more important. That’s why I’ve created a free and exclusive product video marketing guide below.

This guide is for you whether you are a beginner or even an experienced content marketer. More so, in order to help you get started on your video journey, or simply have a refresher.

What Is Video Marketing?

The basis of Video Marketing are 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.

Overall, video marketing strategies are nothing new. 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. 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.

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

So, getting this written down and finalized should be step one of your video creation process. By 2020, the video industry will account for 82% of all internet traffic, according to Cisco. 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. Television is still, today, 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 are Videos Useful in Marketing Campaigns?

It’s not too hard to see why 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.

And those of you who are headed towards digital marketing careers should have a complete understanding of the power of video as a marketing tool. This is not only because they might be interested in making amazing videos, but because they’ll probably have to learn to incorporate

Whereby, as a result of incorporating videos into their content, they’ll remain competitive. 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.

Related Topic: Toonly | The Simplest Drag & Drop Explainer Video Creator

Additionally, consumers like videos because they are easy to digest, they are entertaining and more so, they are engaging. Whilst, 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 towards higher quality video on a professional level. Although, anyone can hop onto their laptop and create their own video in under an hour.

To develop your Video Marketing strategy, you’ll want to:

1. 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.
2. 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?
3. 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?
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Analyze: Track metrics and stats, to determine which videos do the best – and why.

Why is Video Marketing important?

First of all, because product video marketing is all over the Internet. Look no further than your favorite brands, your Facebook, 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. 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.

What are the Brand Benefits of Video Marketing?

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. You can jump to the following categories to see statistics related to that category.

Consider the following key categories:

• Video Marketing Stats
• Emerging Visual Marketing Stats
• General Visual Content Stats
• Social Media Stats
• Infographic 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 as powerful tools for brands in many ways.

Particularly, those looking forward to being able to communicate more easily with their readers. At the same time, virtual reality (VR) is finding its place as a marketing tool in numerous businesses.

The Key Benefits of Video Marketing include:

• 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 that include the word “video” see a 19% increase in open rates and a 65% boost in click-throughs.

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

Which are the Best Practices for Video Marketing?

Consider this; YouTube is owned by Google. 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, 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.

Today, we’ll look at what you need to know to put a video strategy together. And I’ll provide tips to make it both robust enough and agile enough to use in the short, medium, and long term. But, first;

You’ll need to ask yourself;

• 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.

Mind your video 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; in 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.

How to articulate your goals

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.