7 Indispensable Factors For Creating Your Video Content Marketing Strategy
Marketers are always looking for the next big thing. Something that helps their clients and brands to stand out. Often that means taking existing platforms to new heights — taking something familiar and adding a twist. Video Content Marketing has been around for years. It’s nothing new.
But, it’s recently started to expand rapidly and evolve way past the traditional television ads that marked video content in the past.
Demand For Video Is Huge And Still Growing
If you haven’t considered using video as part of your marketing strategy yet, it’s time to get off the fence. Here are some facts and information about current video trends to jump-start your interest in visual marketing.
The market for video content is giant. Time spent viewing content on digital devices has increased by more than three times since 2011 and shows no sign of slowing down.
On an average day, a person will watch over five hours of video — almost one and a half hours of that on digital devices.
Videos are leading the digital age as people become drawn to popping visuals and cinematic qualities.
Given the finite amount of time in a day, growth in video content has to come at the expense of other mediums. If you do not include video into your strategy, you’re slowly missing out on more and more of your audience’s time.
1) Strive for High-Quality Videos
Videos should be at the forefront of content creation.
If you’re going to put together a short promo or virtual tour of your office, you want it to be of high quality. It has to match the caliber of your, or your client’s brand.
Sometimes that means hiring a production company that uses professional, state of the art equipment and investing in a lot of production time.
In some cases, you may be able to achieve the same quality with good lighting and a smartphone.
An extreme example is Emmy winner Modern Family filming an entire episode using Apple products.
That probably still took a lot of work, but for recording a five-minute product explainer video, it’s almost as simple as point and clicks.
What matters is that you’re giving your potential customers something interesting to view.
2) Repurpose Your Video To Adapt To All Social Media Channels
Going viral isn’t necessarily the goal of marketing, but it’s also an OK side-effect of having great visual content.
You should know that forcing your content out there onto people’s feeds isn’t always effective. Sometimes you have to let your viewers be your distribution channel, so adapt your video for it. Use the Omnichannel approach.
When something goes viral, it’s hard to slow down.
Facebook, for instance, has developed its native video content to promote video use further. Facebook has now taken over YouTube for video content.
Organic reach for shared videos is 11.9% compared to 6.1% for standard status updates. Social media managers work hard to build their communities, and video content marketing is the best way to continue reaching them.
3) Optimize Your Video for SEO
YouTube is a video powerhouse.
Not only because of its ability to suck users into rabbit holes of content but because it’s a dominant player in search marketing.
YouTube is the third most visited site online, and the second most used for online searches.
That’s above Bing, Yahoo!, and any site that’s not named Google. Google even emphasizes YouTube videos in its search results — often showing featured video results for queries.
Whether it’s tutorial videos or entertainment, YouTube has solidified itself as the source for quenching all of our inquiries.
So make your video seen. Optimize it for SEO.
YouTube gives you about 800 words to describe what is all about. Unfortunately, search engines still haven’t developed the ability to understand your video, so you need to use plain text for it. My suggestion, use every bit of it. Transcribe it if you lack inspiration.
The prize behind YouTube is exposure, which is predominantly driven by online marketing. With quality video content, you’ll increase visibility and direct traffic that ultimately leads to conversions.
4) Use Creativity and Original Content
Text is text. You can add some flourishes — new fonts, unusual formatting — but in the end, it’s still just text. You need something to complement its meaning and drive home your message.
Video content provides a huge opportunity to customize your messaging and add genuinely unique value for your audience. It gives your brand an actual voice and personality, rather than a manufactured one.
Video allows you to do cool things that can embellish your brand with the right aesthetics.
As already established, video content marketing doesn’t have limitations. Horses might fly, Dogs may speak, if you’re successfully driving your point home, it all works.
Apart from the bizarre flights of creativity, though, there are specific necessities of efficient video content marketing.
A local small business? You can get a Google virtual tour to show off your space. Need creative ways to earn extra money from your content?
How about automatic native ad placement in your already completed video. Or if you’re forward-thinking, there’s always 3-D and virtual reality.
There are no limits to what you can convey through video — it’s a truly innovative medium. Show yourself off in an authentic, transparent, and engaging way with video.
5) Apply Different Video Content Marketing Types
There’s no single type of video that can suit all marketing campaigns. Different businesses have a diverse target audience, and they require altered approaches to video content marketing. Here’s a list of some of these types:
Explainer videos
These videos are all about telling the viewer why a particular person chose your service and how he ended up with the solution. It tells them exactly what makes your business solution a want, or necessary still, a need.
An animated explainer video for DocuSign
This would mean that your consumer base, through these explainer communication videos, will have a much better understanding of what to expect from you. This would mean that they will not harbor any expectations which your business does not claim to fulfill and would be very clear about what you provide.
Educational videos
Similarly, an Educational Video shows the potential consumer the “how-to” of your product or service.
How to use Instagram Stories Educational Video
These videos are planned with precision and tend to take every single bit of information, break it down, and serve it to the audience in the simplest ways possible. It makes things easy for them and ease, as we all know, is the ultimate attraction in today’s time.
360-degree and Augmented Reality videos
Another innovative video content marketing strategy is the 360-degree videos. The realism felt by the viewer in these videos makes them feel as if they are inside the content.
A 360-degree video on swimming with wild dolphins
Being able to look at the content with many angles gives them an experience that stays with them. Similarly, there are augmented reality videos. In these videos, a digital layer is added over the reality, but it looks real, as real as it can get in the virtual.
Event and Branding Video Campaigns
Apart from these striking innovations, there are basic events and branding video campaigns.
should be need-specific and audience-specific.
Live Videos
Another major revolution in the consumer-company interaction has been Live videos, which include several types of lives.
- Behind the scenes snaps A tour of your office’s working, for example. You can introduce to your consumer base the best among your employees. It also makes them feel more involved and gives meaning to the phrase “we’re a family,” which is commonly used by firms.
- Webinars: Training videos, explanatory demonstrations of your online platform, debates, interviews, among many other ideas.
- Speeches: If in case you’re going to a marketing seminar, and you will show your abilities to an audience, why not put it live on Facebook or Youtube?
- Events: SpaceX used live webcast of rockets being launched, making these viral, as these inherently are viral
SpaceX Live Webcast of BULGARIA SAT-1 being launched
With Social Media giants starting their “going live features,” this has become quite a trend of late. So, you might want to give it a try to give your video content marketing the much-needed boost.
Your consumers get to comment on what they see, and given that you’re active with the replies, you’re sure to build a bond that goes beyond orders and transactions.
6) Optimize Your Headline
The very first and probably the most important is the headline.
Imagine you are scrolling down search results on YouTube. What does it take to make you stop at a video? It is either the template or the title.
When it comes to framing titles for your video, it is better to go with simplicity and avoid complex titles. A title can be catchy yet simple at the same time. It is about representing your video as a solution, an entertaining one at that.
Aren’t you curious to know how Neil Patel got over 25 thousand subscribers this year?
Another commonly used and effective strategy to enhance your video content strategy is providing video testimonials or reviews from other customers.
No matter how old this strategy gets, there’s nothing more reassuring than watching someone from among ourselves vouch for a product or service.
When the viewer listens to another customer explaining about their journey with fondness, he can’t help but get a little more involved. That’s how powerful the medium is.
7) Create Your Video Content Marketing Plan
Now that you know about the efficiency of video content as a marketing strategy, there are some important factors to consider before starting it, your marketing plan is certainly one of them.
Being crisp and specific about the purpose of the video is by far the most important. No matter how creative you are with your content, if you are unsure about the objectives, it turns redundant. Create specific and measurable KPIs. Use the SMART methodology.
After watching the video, if the audience has to think twice about what exactly you want them to do, well, your purpose isn’t served.
A thorough brainstorming session can ensure this. Sit with your colleagues and point out the one primary purpose behind creating that particular content.
Similarly, knowing your target audience and the course of action you wish to inspire in them should be clear. You’re not creating a movie for a film festival. Hence, creativity shouldn’t hinder the primary purpose.
The video must entertain, but a smooth transmission of information is paramount. To start with, know the reason why you are making the video.
Whatever you want to tell in the video, do it by keeping your target audience in mind. Given that you follow these necessities, your video content marketing strategy is destined to be successful.
In Conclusion
Videos are not the future anymore. It’s a type of content vastly used nowadays. Last year statistics about Facebook show that users accumulate 8 billion daily views watching videos.
This amount is an example of what videos represent today and what they will be for the future of marketing. If you’re not into videos, you should start thinking about entering right away.
Most of the newbies on videos forget about the basics when producing their own. Here we listed to you seven main points you have to think before starting your video campaign.
They are quality of video, repurposing, optimization, creativity, and originality, planing the type of video (including lives), headlines, and planning. Do you have any other advice for those starting video campaigns? If so, feel free to leave your comment below.
