What if the secret to marketing success was hiding in the palm of your hand? Between YouTube, social media, and various streaming networks, users are consuming more video content than ever before. If you want your business to engage with your customers, you must include video marketing in your strategy. Unfortunately, some companies don’t know the first thing about video marketing. However, our guide will provide everything you need to know to take your business to the next level!
Why Learn About Video Marketing?
Our guide is designed to help you learn all about video marketing. Before we dive into that, let’s explore why video marketing is so important.
The primary reason is that consumers crave engaging videos. They are much likelier to click on a video that looks interesting instead of reading a few stale paragraphs covering the same topic.
When someone finds an engaging video, they are likely to share it with their friends, family, and colleagues. With the right video content, you can transform consumers into brand ambassadors that provide a kind of digital “word of mouth” marketing.
Video is also a kind of “secret sauce” you can add to other marketing methods. For example, a captivating video on your landing page is certain to boost conversions. Additionally, mentioning a video in a subject line makes users much likelier to click on that e-mail you sent.
It’s also important to build up a steady library of evergreen video content. You can benefit from these videos for many years, even if your overall marketing approach or demographic changes. Video is certain to boost conversions and improve your branding.
The Power of Narrative
Now that you know the importance of video marketing, we need to understand what your customers want from a video. It all starts with a good story.
Now, “story” is the keyword here. Your audience is naturally wary of hearing a sales pitch. If your video is simply a sales pitch in a different format, they are likely to tune you out.
Instead, consumers crave a narrative that resonates with their own particular needs and desires. Before you try to craft a video, it’s important to explore the demographic and psychographic information you have about your audience. As always, analytics is a great way to flesh this information out.
Once you have that info, you can build a video around an engaging story. Maybe your video is about two people falling in love at first sight, or you can make a video about a hapless man who navigates an increasingly hilarious day.
As for your company and product, try to stay in the background of these scenes. Placing your logos or slogans too prominently in the video can distract from the narrative and veer it right back into “sales pitch” territory.
When it’s done well, video marketing lets you have the best of both worlds. An emotional video can instantly capture the hearts of consumers, and afterward, they will associate your business with the video that brought them so much joy.
The Right Length
Video length is tricky to master. For example, platforms like Netflix and Youtube help illustrate the public’s love for streaming video. At the same time, most of the video content on those platforms is far too long for an official marketing video.
How long should your videos be? We recommend no shorter than 30 seconds and no longer than two minutes. This is usually enough time to get the customer’s attention, tell a convincing narrative, and then leave on a memorable note.
In some cases, the ideal length for a video is determined by where your consumers will watch it. Many Youtube advertisements, for example, are as short as 15 seconds. That is also the same length of time that Facebook recommends for marketing videos on their platform, though they can accommodate videos as long as four hours.
It may sound daunting to create a captivating story in only 15 seconds. Keep in mind you can always work with a video marketing professional to bring your vision to life, no matter how short or how long the video will be.
Product Demonstrations
One of the best things about video marketing is also one of the worst things about it. What are we talking about? The sheer number of video possibilities at your disposal!
Aside from the need to tell a story, there are countless different ways to approach video marketing. This can be daunting at first, so we’re going to focus on a handful of proven video types.
The first type is a product demonstration. Video provides an easy and intuitive way to explain the different features and benefits of a product in a way that is much more exciting than standard web copy.
Product demonstrations are a great way to help customers visualize the product. Once they know what the product looks like, it is that much easier for the consumer to imagine owning such a product.
You can also scale product demonstrations up or down to suit any video length. Whether it’s an in-depth video or a short overview, these videos will make a world of difference in explaining your products and boosting your conversions.
“How-To” Videos
“How-to” videos are a close cousin to product demonstration videos. In these videos, you provide customers with step-by-step visual instructions for completing a complex task.
In some cases, a “how-to” video may focus on assembling or operating a complex product. As an example, just look at the high-quality videos IKEA has created to help customers assemble and install their various products.
In other cases, you can create how-to videos that enhance how customers use your products. For example, a business that sells furniture may create videos about interior decorating. This bolsters customer loyalty because it provides relevant information, and that loyalty translates to continued sales over time.
Ultimately, it’s important to create how-to videos because customers actively seek them. When someone’s refrigerator or stove breaks down, they are far likelier to find a repair video online rather than dust off their old instructions.
By creating your how-to videos, you can get ahead of the curve regarding the content your customers crave.
SEO and Video Marketing
As we said before, one of the strengths of video marketing is that it integrates so well with your other methods of marketing. Perhaps the best example of this is that you can use video marketing to boost your SEO.
To do this, incorporate keywords into video titles and descriptions. This naturally helps customers find your content even as it helps your content get closer to the first page on user searches. To maximize the video SEO, try to incorporate a link to a high-authority site on the first line of your video description.
Fortunately, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to SEO and video marketing. Just take the SEO that you are currently targeting, incorporate it into titles and descriptions, and enjoy the boost to your traffic!
Engaging Interviews
Anything But Boring
Our final advice about video marketing is nice and simple. It’s three little words that should guide all of your video content: “anything but boring.”
Your videos might be funny, emotional, or even provocative. The goal is to elicit an emotional response from your consumers, which causes them to share your content.
Ultimately, you don’t have to overthink this philosophy. Just think about the kind of online video content you enjoy the most and then brainstorm ways to channel that same energy into your content.
What Comes Next?
Now you know all about video marketing, but do you know who can bring the videos of your dreams to life?
We specialize in corporate videography along with, Analytics, CRO SEO, web design, and much more. To see how we can make your video marketing dreams into a reality, contact us today
When it comes to content writing, one of the best things you can do is engage in guest posting. This helps you leverage the popularity of another person or business and effectively grow your audience.
The video version of that technique involves teaming up with popular influencers. While things like sponsorships can help build your brand, users also love interviews with famous and interesting people.
These videos can be pretty simple as they involve asking the other person questions, preferably about your business or products. The person’s honest answers may be enough to convert customers who were otherwise on the fence.
You can also interview members of your team. Audiences love to get a “behind the scenes” glimpse of the businesses they love, and interviewing employees helps to humanize those businesses in a big way.
Hooks: More Important Than Ever
With blogs, the hook is very important. It’s difficult to get someone invested in reading hundreds or even thousands of words if you don’t get their attention right away.
This philosophy is even more important when it comes to video marketing. If you can’t seriously grab your viewers’ attention in 10 seconds, then you’ve already lost them.
Remember, you are competing for audience attention in a field that is crowded with funny, engaging, and captivating videos. You need to grab their attention right away with a combination of interesting information and innovative presentation.
Once you have their attention, you can keep it by addressing audience needs and concerns as well as how your products and services can make things better. Remember, a product is a solution, and customers won’t buy this solution until you fully explain the problems they need to solve.
Exploring Different Video Formats
What do you think of when you think about watching online videos? Most people imagine holding their smartphones horizontally and watching a widescreen presentation.
However, that doesn’t line up with user experiences. Most of your consumers prefer to hold their phones vertically. By shooting vertical videos, you can reach more customers (just look at the success of vertical videos on TikTok.)
You can also create things like interactive videos and even 360-degree videos. This kind of content instantly helps your videos stand out from the pack and impress consumers with your innovation and imagination.
Branding Videos
We’ve focused on branding here and there. But would you believe that creating branding videos is a winning move for your company?
These videos are a great opportunity to discuss your company’s core values and overall mission. And this goes a surprisingly long way towards winning over different audiences.
That’s because many audiences (Millennials and “Zoomers” chief among them) prefer to buy from companies they share values with. By putting your mission and values front and center, you can tap into the growing customer desire for more ethical consumer experiences.
Quality Over Technology
Why do you think more companies don’t explore video marketing? In many cases, companies hold back because they imagine that it takes a small mountain of expensive equipment to create high-quality videos.
However, that is simply not true. It’s possible to create an engaging video with little more than a smartphone and a script. In fact, that’s the exact combination that has propelled countless influencers to fortune and fame.
If you want to have it both ways, you can work with a professional video marketing company. Such companies can help script, shoot, and produce every video you need. This lets you create high-quality videos without buying, mastering, and storing lots of video equipment and software.
Generating Momentum
One rookie mistake many companies make about video marketing is that they think it should only be an occasional thing. For example, a manager may imagine that his business will only create a handful of videos throughout the year.
In reality, successful video marketing is tied to your marketing momentum. Think about the most successful streamers and online influencers. In most cases, they are creating new content each week and releasing it on a reliable schedule.
That’s why you need a robust video marketing plan that includes content for the entire year. That may sound intimidating, but it is the key to building an online audience, boosting your brand, and increasing conversions.
Anything But Boring
Our final advice about video marketing is nice and simple. It’s three little words that should guide all of your video content: “anything but boring.”
Your videos might be funny, emotional, or even provocative. The goal is to elicit an emotional response from your consumers, which causes them to share your content.
Ultimately, you don’t have to overthink this philosophy. Just think about the kind of online video content you enjoy the most and then brainstorm ways to channel that same energy into your content.
What Comes Next?
Now you know all about video marketing, but do you know who can bring the videos of your dreams to life?
We specialize in corporate videography along with, Analytics, CRO SEO, web design, and much more. To see how we can make your video marketing dreams into a reality, contact us today
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