When we tell you that each year individuals are spending more and more time consuming digital video, it’s probably not a surprise to you. So if you’ve been avoiding the video marketing revolution, it’s rapidly turning out to be something that you can’t ignore.
Video marketing is more than just throwing up a video you took with your smartphone and waiting for the views to roll in. As you’d expect, you’ll need to put in a little bit more forethought and work than that.
To that end, I’m going to provide you with some essential tips for crafting your video marketing strategy. That way, you can successfully grab your share of the hours of digital video that the average person watches every day.
So, let’s do this.
Start with a Clear Goal in Mind
Imagine investing a large amount of time, energy, and money into creating a video marketing strategy, only to end up asking, “was that a success? Is that what we wanted?”
It may sound incredibly obvious. But it’s also a very real scenario you might find yourself in, as others already have, if you don’t have clearly thought out success metrics before you begin your video marketing strategy.
So, before you even shoot your first video, define what success “is” means to you by asking questions like:
- Is my goal to increase brand awareness? If so, you may want high view counts and engagement numbers.
- Do I want to generate leads? If so, tracking opt-ins might be your focus.
- Do I want to increase customer retention? If so, churn rate is a metric to look at.
You may have other areas you wish to focus on but the goal here is to get you to think about what those goals are before you go any further.
Discover Your Voice
When you’ve sorted out your overall goal, it’s time to discover your voice. Video marketing is just as much about how you say as well what you say. Try to develop a consistent style that you can use across all your videos. Here are some questions to help you discover your presentation style:
- What is my tone? Are you straight-laced, reliable, and professional? Or are you an irreverent, upstart, brand seeking to rock the industry boat?
- What is my visual aesthetic? Do you want to use crisp, modern graphics? Or will you go for hand-drawn sketches and fun animations? Your aesthetic should be something that would be instantly recognizable to your audience.
- What sound effects, if any, do I want? What audio vibe do you want to create and what music and effects can you use to do so in your video.
Less Is More
Remember, you’re creating a video marketing strategy here. You’re not working on ‘The Godfather’ trilogy. You don’t need to spend the time producing hours of B-roll, nor will your audience want to view it.
When in doubt, as the phrase goes, less is more. Various studies have compared video length and audience engagement and found that as length increased, engagement decreased.
There’s abundant data to advocate creating shorter videos. In one study, LocoWise analyzed 1,000 Facebook pages and found the average length of a video view on Facebook is 18.2 seconds. And the average length was only 55.3 seconds.
That’s not to say that longer videos won’t be the exception. But as a rule of thumb, you want to incorporate shorter creations into your video marketing strategy.
You Need to Invest More to Succeed More
When video platforms were a new thing, you could get away with a production value that was practically next to zero. Shaky, blurred video, with abysmal audio got hits many content creators dream of getting today.
Today however, even the most modest of content creators on platforms such as YouTube, invest in studio-level production values. So to make your videos competitive, you need to invest enough resources to actually create a quality video.
You don’t need to rent out a Hollywood studio or soundstage, but you will need to ensure your audio and video quality are excellent, and, ideally, will need a mid- to high-end camera to get good results. You may want to consider investing some money in good lighting and a tripod. However, there are starting points for all budgets, so don’t feel you’re being priced out of pursuing video marketing.
Platform, Platform, Platform
Video is booming right now. There are multiple networks generating billions of views every day per platform, so you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to where to upload your video.
Too much choice, however, is not always a good thing. You want to focus your efforts on the channels that maximize the metrics that you’ve deemed a success.
If you’re going for a goal such as brand awareness, you might consider pushing your content to Facebook, as well as maybe Snapchat or Instagram.
If you’re focussing on generating leads and customer retention, you might want to keep your video on your site. Maybe think about writing a post on your site where the video can be a focal point and you can guide viewers to your opt-in channels.
With Easy Web Video you can get the best of every world. We provide ways for you to embed your videos on your website, social media, and even in emails. So we help you cover all bases when it come to distributing your videos.
There’s More to Video than View Counts
Marketers have a tendency to obsess over view counts, believing them to be the most important indicator of the success of a video.
While there is something to be said for tracking the raw data of video views that your videos get, it’s not the only metric that can be measured and not the only metric that matters either.
You’re most likely going to want people to actually pay attention to, and be engaged by, your videos. To find that out you’ll want to measure:
- Drop-off rates. How many people watched the entirety of your video? At what points do viewers stop watching?
- Social shares. Shares are a good metric to show how valuable viewers found your content.
You can definitely keep an eye on view counts. But pay attention to the other stuff, too.
Get Your Viewer To Do Something
You should never let your video end without displaying a call-to-action. Remember this is not ‘The Godfather’. There should be no fades to black or rolling credits. If you’ve done a good job engaging your viewer, now is the time to guide them further to your end goal.
So what call-to-action do you use? That depends on the goals you set out at the beginning (remember – you should have specific success metrics!).
If you’re all about boosting brand engagement, you might guide them to related videos by inviting them to subscribe and suggesting some videos to watch next.
Of course, if you want more email leads, the end of your video is a great time to push them towards your squeeze page or your sales team.
With Easy Web Video you can do both! Get their email details and then show them related videos all from within the video itself.
Actually Promote Your Videos
Successful content marketing works along the lines of the 80/20 rule. As a general guideline you should spend 20% of your time creating content, and 80% of your time promoting it.
The same principle works with successful video marketing strategies. Creating an amazing video is cool! But people have to find and watch the video.
Uploading your video is the start of your marketing strategy, not the end of it. Follow these promotion tips to give your videos the best opportunities to get the most views:
- Share them on all of your social channels
- Write blog posts around them
- Send out a newsletter promoting them
So, Remember
Don’t try winging it with your video marketing strategy. Compared to simple text, video is a sizeable investment. You want to make sure that you have all of your ducks in a row before you jump into creating content.
Remember to think about:
- What your goals are
- Your aesthetic
- Your distribution channels
And always look at the video metrics which matter and end with a CTA!
