Internet content continues to evolve by the day. We’ve moved past simple text and image based content now. With live streams, interactive 360 videos, augmented reality, and more, it’s all about interactivity and richness of experience.
The digital video marketing industry in the US itself is worth $135B. That means brands across the world are realizing their potential and are investing in video-based marketing campaigns and tactics.
Video production in 2022 is more cost-effective and easier to execute than ever. Today you can shoot a video in high-quality or 4K resolution with nothing more than your smartphone.
But between strategy, scripting, equipment, and editing software, video marketing is still one of the most complicated parts of marketing strategy.
Regardless, video based content marketing has a lot of upside when executed properly. You’ll find that the extra effort is worth it.
Video Marketing: A Necessity In 2022
Video Marketing involves using video to promote and market a product or service, increase engagement on digital and social channels, educate your consumers or customers, and reach your audience using a new medium.
As the technology to create quality videos became easily accessible, Video Marketing became more and more popular with marketers.
But that’s not really the reason why video is the dominant form of communication today. Here are the major facts that support Video Marketing as a necessity in 2022:
- The pandemic boosted online video consumption by up to 300% on a daily basis
- The most used social media platforms are video-centric
- Social media posts featuring videos get 83% more engagement than any other form of media
With such a leap in video consumption metrics, Video Marketing doesn’t only promote a product but also generates audience trust for your brand.
It’s a great tool for educating, planning, sharing your stories, training, and building a brand reputation that brings up conversions.
There are endless choices available when it comes to creating a video. Onboarding Videos, Knowledge-Based Videos, Meet The Team Videos, Support Video Calls, and Customer Stories are just a few ways that a video can create a more personalized and trustworthy customer support experience.
How To Create A Video Marketing Strategy
Before you start recording or editing anything, always plan your marketing strategy ahead of its time.
Why? You have to make a lot of decisions on the fly while creating video content. You need to know the goals and objectives up front, and also what call to action you will present to your viewers.
A lot of factors such as timelines, budget, production process, and conversion metrics should guide your decisions. Start with the strategy, and line everything up behind it. Otherwise, you’ll waste time on reshoots, repurposing content, or post-production and editing.
Here’s How you create a good video marketing strategy based on your target goals:
Step 1: Choose your target audience and find out where they spend their time
Start by selecting the right target audience before tackling the video. Get this right, and you’ll perform better with respect to reach, popularity, and engagement of each video.
If you haven’t built a strong target audience community for your brand, start building one right away. For those of you who already have a community of buyer personas, make sure you keep them in mind when you plan your next video.
Step 2: Connect with stakeholders to align on a plan for the video
There are typically a lot of players when it comes to making a video.
How can you ensure they’re all aligned?
Create an input form (like a creative brief or marcom strategy doc) and share it with all the stakeholders of the project. This way, you can ask the same questions to everyone and record all their responses in one place.
At this stage, it’s super important to have a clear set of goals aligned.
Step 3: Set a timeline and budget for your video
Start your video planning with a clear goal in mind. Then, start splitting your goals into small sprints.
Create a well-defined timeline using a calendar app. You will need to align your goals with a lot of players that participate in a video creation process.
Create a clear timeline for every player in every step of the process and plan for occasional delays. Even the simplest video production relies on the multiple skills of different people.
You should plan for unexpected challenges and changes to come up along the way. With the right amount of forethought and planning, you’ll be able to sidestep road bumps and keep the process moving along smoothly.
Step 4: Choose the best platform based on the presence of your target audience
Before you start making your video, research the platforms your target audience relies on to consume content. Once you find them, create your videos based on where you’re planning to broadcast or share them.
In the past few years, YouTube SEO is becoming as important as website SEO. Plan your content script based on the platform you’re broadcasting it on and keep these metrics in mind:
- Average view time
- Size and sound limitations
- Communities
- Budget
- Promotion
While videos are often used for promotional activities, a video doesn’t just work itself. Some platforms have built-in algorithms or paid engines to fulfill your target goals, while others will force you to contribute time and effort to get more engagement on your video content.
Step 5: Develop engagement and choose the right video types for your community
The very first goal of a video should be to communicate a message. If you’re a bit confused about where to start, check out one of these examples of Animated Explainer videos by our team to help you with your video marketing strategy.
If you still are unsure of the message your video should convey, keep your community in mind and plan what best you can offer them.
Keeping your budget, skills, and resources in mind, think about the creative breakers that might arise. Choose a path where you hit fewer breakers and can achieve your goals faster.
Step 6: Decide which metrics need to be tracked and how will they measure success
Before you dive into production, you need to define your video goals and find the best metrics to prove that you’ve accomplished those goals.
You can stick to using the metrics available on platforms of your choice. But this is an inferior way to figure out if your video strategy is performing over time. You will only be able to track multichannel effectiveness if you can develop some global, platform-agnostic metrics instead.
Choose all the key performance indicators that align with your video marketing goals. Always go in with the end result in mind, and know what metrics you can track to evaluate success afterward.
Of course, video content can do more than just engage and encourage action. It can also play a key role in your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) success. Let’s review how the two work together now.
How To Improve SEO With Video Content
There are billions of tips we can share for you to implement and improve your website SEO. One of the best strategies is to have high-quality content that not only informs but educates your viewers about your product or service.
If you’ve already created a video, never keep it to yourself for reference. Video is super informative and the boost in SEO that comes along with it could pay off majorly in the long run.
Here’s how you can use a well-scripted and informative video to drive traffic for your domain:
Use Videos on Your Website
When it comes to publishing a video, the most common mistake marketers do is to neglect the website distribution of the video. Use them on all relevant pages.
Product videos, for instance, have a lot of potential for use in different places, such as the home page and the product/service pages themselves.
When you publish guest blog posts on other websites, include the video there. For guest posts on your own website, go ahead and include it there too if it is relevant to the materials!
And of course, any sort of explainer videos, walkthroughs, and support videos might be perfect fits for your FAQ page for the individual products or services you sell.
Embed Videos Into Quality Content
Don’t make the mistake of posting your videos on otherwise empty / blank pages. Search engines may not know what to do with a video that is presented in a vacuum.
Instead, always include videos on pages with relevant and informative content also present.
In addition to helping search engine crawlers know that you have engaging multimedia on your site, this approach will indicate that you provide a ton of valuable and useful information overall.
Make sure the content is related to the video and reflects relevant information available in the embedded video itself.
Be Consistent – Post Video Content Frequently
A well-scripted video is great. But you can greatly boost your chances of driving engagement by posting video content as often as possible.
Of course, you would probably find it extremely daunting to create and post new videos every single day. Don’t worry about that. Focus on consistency, even if it means only one or two per week.
For big announcements and milestones (e.g. educating your audience about an upcoming launch or project), plan a video around those events. It’s a great way to make a splash and gain new eyeballs on your content.
Try overlaying text on a piece of stock footage on your website and watch for engagement and visitors from organic search. If a piece of stock content can be this engaging, imagine what effect a well-scripted video can have.
Don’t Forget to Add Video Details
SEO isn’t just about quality content. The content needs to be presented, tagged, promoted, and linked to if you want to really see it perform.
Technical SEO needs to be in place for any sort of rich media. Product Videos need to follow those rules just like any other interactive material.
When you post a video on your website, always remember the technical details you need to add: Title, Description, Tags, and Annotations. Almost all video hosting platforms will let you edit these items.
Now that we know how to create a well-planned strategy and how to use videos to improve SEO, let’s move to the production aspect of the process.
How To Create A Good Explainer Video
Digital cameras have revolutionized photography. Now that we have high quality cameras built into smartphones, you can create a video for your brand quickly and easily.
Follow these nine steps to create a good video for your brand:
- Write an appealing script for your video
- Based on your choice of video, set up your studio
- Get your talent / characters ready to go
- Prepare a list of your shots and get used to your equipment
- Animate or shoot your video
- Revise footage and edit your video
- Choose your background music
- Record the voice-over
- Upload your video
Now that you are done with video production, you will need to turn your attention to distribution and promotion.
Let’s look at how to distribute your videos to your targeted audience.
How To Distribute Your Videos To The Right Audience
This is the final phase of your video marketing strategy. You’ll find that distribution can be one of he most challenging parts of getting your video content in front of people.
This is the stage where the rubber hits the road, where you figure out if all of your hard work will pay off with video marketing.
Here are the most important channels you can capitalize on for distributing your videos to your target audience:
Self-Owned Channels
Your brand should have dedicated communication vehicles for you to lean on.
Start by posting to your website and/or blog. Email your list to get some quick views.
And have the sales team mention it to prospects and customer, if the content is a good fit for that part of your business.
Paid Marketing Channels
Paid marketing channels are just that — pay to play platforms. You can pick from a list of options, including:
- Native Ads
- Video Outstreaming Ads
- Display Ads
- Instream Video Ads
- Interstitial Video Ads
- Sponsored Content
- Influencer Marketing
Social Media Channels
If you’ve done a good job establishing your brand, you should already have social media channels to capitalize on.
The biggest platforms we usually see for this purpose include:
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- Facebook / Meta
- TikTok
Conclusion: Video Marketing Bottom Line
Distribution is the major challenge for your Video Marketing Strategy. But don’t worry.
Focus on consistency and engagement. Additionally, here are some tips to consider for making the whole process easier:
- Always create a distribution calendar and repurpose your content based on platform
- Make sure to note analytics and improve your content regularly
- Try to use a clear background and a good light source while shooting your video content
- Always avoid places with background noise for voice-over content
With all of these video marketing tips in mind, you should be able to make the process work well and the execution smoother. Good luck wowing your target audience!
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
Feature Image license info: Creative Commons 3 – CC BY-SA 3.0
Source: https://www.picpedia.org/chalkboard/v/video-marketing.html
This guest post brought to you courtesy of Return On Now, Professional Austin SEO and PPC Services Company.
Komal Kokate
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