Table of Contents
- Why Shift to Video
- 9 Video Marketing Strategies and Techniques For Better Results
- Make Compelling and Diverse Video Content
- Integrate Video Platform Site with Official Website
- Engage the Community
- Make Sure Your Video Platform is Branded
- Extend Reach of Your Video
- Amplification for Best Search Engine Results
- Be Sure to Put Annotations on the Video
- Do Not Forget Calls-to-Action
- Study Analytics
- Final Thoughts
We are seeing a big shift now in marketing.
Once, companies were vying for top billboard spots to get their products the exposure it needs; now, marketers see the potential of online marketing.
The future of marketing and advertising has gone digital, and as a business, we can reap rewards that are more than we can imagine.
Digital marketing is not just the articles you are publishing or the posts on social media.
It has become an increasingly important factor in marketing strategies. Big platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and even Twitter have seen the rise of video virality.
When people share a link to a video, they are not just sharing because they think others might be interested in it, they are sharing it because it hit something.
Now this can be a question that a video has been able to answer, a poignant lesson everyone needs to learn, or something hilarious to take the stress away.
For businesses to capitalize on the potential of video marketing, you need to be able to figure out what your customer needs at the moment, and then hit it.
Do you think it is time to answer a frequently asked question? Make a creative, emotional, and memorable advertising video to increase brand awareness in a unique way?
You can answer all of these with video, and in this article, we are going to looking into marketing techniques that will help you hit what your target market needs.
Why Shift to Video
Why is it such a big deal? Here are some of the reasons why video is so hot now.
The Numbers Says it All
In a study, in the year 2017, video traffic will have increased by 74%. Not only that, but studies have also said that just mentioning the word “video” on the email line increased open rates by 19%, and click-through rates by 65%.
B2B and B2C marketers have named video as one of the top 3 most effective social media marketing tactics. And as far as ROI is concerned, 52% of marketing professionals have said that video content has the best ROI.
These numbers show that video yields great results for businesses who have started using them. Not only is video a fast rising star, but the rewards of investing in it are far larger than sticking to your average marketing strategy.
Smart marketing decisions are based on evidence and not just gut feeling, and this is proof that it works.
Social Media are Boosting Their Video Strategy
When Facebook saw that its video viewership doubled from 4 billion views to 8 billion views in just seven months, they started to think about creating a video infrastructure so that users can easily watch videos while browsing through their feed.
This growth in viewership, not just on Facebook but also on other social media sites who are working to improve their video strategies, shows the potential of video ads that are shared countless times on social media.
Now, marketers can take advantage of how easy it can be to distribute their content through shares on social media, getting access to a massive number of potential customers, and keeping them engaged and interested with just a minute of video content.
Remember that users are most likely to share video than any other kind of content, and so using it as a marketing tool is the best opportunity for businesses to show their vision, expertise, product/services, creativity and more at the highest online reach.
Helps with SEO
Video affects the search results greatly. Rich media, like photos and videos, is favored by search engine algorithms.
In fact, Google, which is the number one search engine in the world, owns YouTube, which is the second most used search engine in the world.
So you can see that the popularity of video is not just because of a few viral videos that have taken over social media, but because search engines constantly adjust their algorithms to show meaningful results, and videos are among those at the top of the list.
Easy to Digest Content
In a time when we can access all kinds of information, people will not be able to process all that we are throwing at them.
Indeed, overloading them with text might turn them away. It is easier for us to process visual content, and is honestly a breath of fresh air when all we have viewed are countless text. This means that video is the easiest way to create a significant impact on viewers.
One Video can Achieve Countless Things
The best thing about a video is it can hit any stage of the customer funnel. Videos can educate, entertain, increase brand awareness and so on.
A lot of customers today would consult reviews before deciding to buy a product. According to Animoto, 96% of customers find video reviews more helpful. Additionally, 58% think that companies which produce videos are more trustworthy.
9 Video Marketing Strategies and Techniques For Better Results
Now that you know why shifting to video marketing is a wise decision, we are going to talk about video marketing strategies and techniques that will surely help you with your marketing campaign.
Make Compelling and Diverse Video Content
Obviously, the first thing you need to do is to create the content. But it is not just a minute video talking about your company or product, it is more than that.
Remember that the goal is to be able to form strong relationships with existing customers and entice a potential audience. So the content needs to be compelling, and it needs to be diverse. This means creating How-to videos, emotional advertisements, animations, and so on.
It is also about churning out videos of different lengths, 30 seconds, one minute, or even 30 minutes. According to a content marketing website, the top quartile of YouTube marketers had an average of 181 videos, while the bottom had 29.
This means you will need to keep making different types and kinds of videos to appease different types and kinds of audiences.
Integrate Video Platform Site with Official Website
One of the best ways to increase brand awareness is to use your media platforms and your website together.
Facebook and Twitter encourage you to put your account badges on your website, and put your website link on your social media accounts.
The same is true for video. Customizing your YouTube for channel branding can only do so much, all your company content and information can still be found on your personal website. Put a link to your website on video description boxes, in the same way, embed videos on your website.
Keep in mind that YouTube is device adaptive, so putting them on your website does not just help put you on top of Google’s page, but also makes your content accessible to anyone, anytime, anywhere.
Engage the Community
Remember that YouTube is not just a video platform; it is a social platform where people can directly discuss a video’s content. Even on other social media platforms, engaging with your customers is a must, and the same is true for your videos.
In fact, they are more likely to share and comment on video content, so make use of this opportunity to build a relationship with your customers and talk to them about what they have seen, join their discussions, and address their concerns.
Old Spice is a good example of engaging customers through their videos. What they did was to deliver video responses to customer feedback, and not only did video shares significantly increase, but their sales also increased by 107%!
Make Sure Your Video Platform is Branded
Treat your YouTube channel like a website; it needs to look like your brand.
Use your company logo as your icon, create a creative header that perfectly sums up your company and what it is all about, customize the colors so that it matches your branding, and so forth.
YouTube can also feature company trailers that will automatically play for new visitors and lets you create featured videos and playlists so you can organize your videos properly.
Extend Reach of Your Video
You can reach a wider audience if you share your videos to different social media platforms and make it shareable for other people.
You can create a blog post around the video you have created and embed on your website, share it on Facebook and promote it using Facebook video ads or pinning the link on your profile, and you can Tweet it and then use appropriate hashtags.
If you are not yet savvy with this amplification strategy, you can always opt to ask help from other parties whose expertise is video distribution.
Amplification for Best Search Engine Results
Obviously, it needs to be optimized. There are a lot of ways to optimize your video channel.
You can do this by using target keywords in your titles, use many keywords and be as descriptive as you can when writing on video description boxes, and putting tags.
Be Sure to Put Annotations on the Video
YouTube allows users to put annotations on their videos. These are links which viewers can click on, and they appear for a specific length of time, on a specific part of the video that you will choose.
These links can be links to other videos, to your channel, or the subscribe option.
Do Not Forget Calls-to-Action
In every description box and after every video, do not forget to encourage your viewers to check out more of your stuff.
Include calls-to-action like “Check out our website”, “Watch more videos,” “Subscribe now”, and so on. This is like a gentle nudge to get a response from your audience.
Study Analytics
Analytics tell the story. They tell you the response on different individual videos, how many shares it got, and the videos that got the most community feedback.
By studying the trend insights, you will be able to tailor your content to what your market wants to see.
Final Thoughts
Video has allowed marketers to create content that impacts the audience more. It has given marketers an opportunity to touch their curiosity or appeal to their emotions.
Indeed, it is becoming a tool that companies must learn how to use and take advantage of.
Over to You –
How about you, what do you think of video marketing?
Hey Blake!
Thanks for an article! It was a great reminder to find out that I missed some points from your check list in my video marketing…
1. Make Compelling and Diverse Video Content { Remember that the goal is to be able to form strong relationships with existing customers and entice a potential audience. }
7. Be Sure to Put Annotations on the Video
8. Do Not Forget Calls-to-Action
thanks for it 🙂
Hi there, completely agree with Louis, Video is the key and easy communication form. 🙂
Great post and lovely information. Keep up the good work.
NO doubt that video marketing going to be the future. Things going viral attains more importance in such way, video is playing a dominant role. And the above strategies shared was really awesome and I highly appreciate.
Hi Vino,
Viral Video Marketing is definitely different than Video Ranking or getting eyes on your video and the key for virality is definitely the content. Funny or dangerous, super inspiring so people will share and start posting all over the web. It’s tough to do that with business video though it is possible. Thanks for note about some of the marketing tips shared, we put a lot of thought into it.
Hi Blake you wrote a thoughtful well researched post. I like how you reminded people that you can’t go on pure gut instinct you have to have statistical or anecdotal evidence that something has worked or will work. In my opinion I fell in love with video when it allowed me to sell a carousel that a much larger amusement equipment brokerage agency had had for sale for over a year before I got on the case. I had it for three months without any real progress. Then I got the idea to ask for a video. I posted it to youtube and wrote a blog post sharing it. I had the ride sold within a month. Man did that tick off my competitor. I eventually started recording my own videos. I want to someday visit my clients and record video on location with ride videos, family or key employee interviews, and visits to local attractions and places of interest. However, logistics currently prevent this from happening. So in the mean time I have my clients send in their video and record my own comments around them. I can’t do this as often as I like because so few of my clients will take the time to record video. And often the video they record isn’t good enough to sell their items. I need to record a video series on how to take good photos and videos to prepare for selling an item. Thanks for sharing this post, Max The Blind Blogger
Hi Maxwell,
Great points. Yes, definitely there is a science to video marketing. After 10 years of figuring it out we’ve come up with some amazing ways to leverage the power of video. When you mentioned creating a video and then a blog post and embedding that video into a post this is a major key. I wrote a post with 50 video marketing strategies that will surely leave your competition wondering what happened to their page 1 ranking that is now you! Check it out here: vidcredible.com/the-advanced-guide-to-youtube-video-seo/ As far your point about making videos for clients along with ride videos nowadays you can have them shoot even with an iphone a clip take that clip and create an awesome video surrounded by slides and voice over and you will have a compelling homerun video made from anywhere in the country. I’ve made over 500 videos for clients without ever visiting their location, sometimes I actually send out a videographer and coordinate this if they dont have the ability to shoot or want to get involved with that aspect. I think that is a great idea for creating a series on how to prep them for selling an item. Blake
Hi Blake
It is no wonder that Video marketing is trending. It is appealing to people and it is sticks to our brain than content.
You have shared some cool video marketing tips that will enable content creators to take advantage of Video.
Thanks Ikechi,
Yes, video marketing is trending and then some. It’s over 70% of all internet content now and growing. The key is how do we make a quick video that is engaging and not so complicated to create. That is why I set out on a mission to create vidcredible.com This way without being a videographer or having no video experience at all someone can jump in and create, do their market research and then distibute their video across the web and grab rankings for their niche.
Hi Blake,
Very useful tips on video marketing. As you have shown, it is truly an awesome way to drive traffic.
For bloggers & content marketers, video is an effective method of repurposing an old blog post. We can convert a whole blog post into a single video or make multiple videos from one post, divided each step/ tip into one short clip. Thank you for sharing.
Hi Manidipa,
Thanks for the comments. Great point about repurposing content via a blog post or article and converting it into a video. It’s great cause you have the hard part done; The Content. I’ve already used the new software vidcredible.com to convert several blog posts into videos, super easy to do too.
First class post, Blake,
I’m an active video marketer and love the fact that YouTUbe sends me leads regularly. People do love watching videos. Even mega-companies like Facebook have recognised that reality, hence, the increase in video content on our FB news feeds recently.
As you say one of the keys to successful video marketing is to keep creating new videos with different styles, duration etc.
Finally, despite all the advantages with video, there will always be a place for text-based content. Personally, I prefer reading a good blog post than watching a video with one exception – tutorials. Good quality video tutorials rock.
Thanks a lot, Blake (and Harleena too)
Kim
Thanks Kim,
Yeah I too get a ton of leads from Youtube, it really rocks. I find the tutorial type videos deliver a lot of sales for example I made one to help people with their challenge of recording audio on Google slides. Solving people’s problems at the moment they are searching for a solution will always convert people normally take action on a “pain” over “pleasure” scenario I find. Even if you look at T.V. commercials is the #1 advertising spend in the world, there is a reason for that… It works. Now with video marketing at our own fingertips and the ability to create our own t.v. station so to say (youtube channel) we can market ourselves for free with a little learning curve.
Well literally if there is a video and an article, I bet people love to watch the video first, especially the l a z y like me. Video helps a lot and reader can just relax and listen to the content instead of reading using the precious eyes energy. But compare to written form of communication, written content able to dominate video by allow producer to go deeper into the content. Love this post, thanks.
Yes, good point. People are 3-4x more likely to retain the content too, via video over the written word. It’s because with a video you get the picture and the visual and still can have the writing as well. You know the old adage, “A picture is worth a 1000 words.” In that case, how many is a video worth?