Every type of content has an important role to play in your marketing strategy. Articles are great for a deep dive on a topic, infographics are perfect for expressing a number of facts or statistics in an easy-to-digest way, and images allow you to communicate a message in mere milliseconds. However, if video is missing from the mix, you’re missing out.
You may have avoided video marketing up to this point because videos are difficult and time-consuming to produce. Alternatively, you may make the occasional video but video marketing doesn’t form a major part of your strategy. In 2021, it’s time to change that.
Does Your Brand Need Videos?
Whatever you sell, your brand definitely needs video — for three main reasons.
1. Users Love Video
Of course, there are times when users want to become engrossed in a long text-based article, but the fact is that video is often the more appealing option. Users can watch short videos on the go, during breaks at work, or whenever they just want some entertainment.
2. Create the Brand Image You Want
All types of marketing content shape how users perceive your brand, but video paints a complete picture in just a few seconds. Videos are your chance to create the exact brand image you want. This is particularly true when you use video to tell a story about who you are.
3. Improve Social Engagement
There’s a reason why your social media feeds are dominated by video: it’s what users want. Video on social media leads to greater engagement in terms of views, reactions, and shares than any other type of content.
How Effective Is Video Marketing?
To help you understand just how effective video can be, let’s take a look at some video marketing statistics:
- More marketers than ever before say that video is an important element of marketing. In 2020, 92 percent of marketers said video was important — up from just 78 percent in 2015.
- The trend toward watching more online video continues to increase. Forecasts for this year put the average at 100 minutes per day — an increase of 16 minutes compared to last year.
- Video ads were the top way users discovered a brand and later made a purchase.
Creating Your Videos
Before you jump in and start creating your marketing videos, you need to have a strategy. These video marketing tips will keep you on the right track.
Make Various Kinds of Videos
Get creative with your videos. In particular, experiment with different types. Tutorials and demos are useful if you want to show your products and services in action (this can help customers come to a decision to purchase). Customer testimonials are great for giving users confidence in your brand. Employee portraits and company culture videos are ideal for expressing your values.
Tell Stories
One type of video you do want to keep to a minimum is the sales pitch. Users want to be entertained and informed. Purely promotional videos go mostly ignored. You can still use your videos to increase sales, but a better approach is to tell a story with the content — about your offerings, your brand as a whole, or even your customers.
Grab Viewers’ Attention from the Beginning
Users come to a decision whether to keep watching a video after just a few seconds. When you start strong, viewers are more likely to stay and watch the entire video. One tactic is to begin with a hook that explains what the rest of the video will be about.
Infuse Your Videos with Personality
During the production process, think about how your video will reflect the unique qualities of your brand. Just like when you write content with your brand voice in mind, you should create videos thinking about your brand personality.
End with a Call to Action
Make sure users know what to do right after they’ve finished watching a video by ending with a call to action. You may want them to follow you on social media or you may have more information about the topic you covered on your website. Depending on where you’ll be posting the video, you may be able to include a link within the video itself or you can add more information in the description.
Promoting Your Videos
Once you come to the promotion stage, you’ve already invested a large amount of time and effort to create your videos. The last thing you want is for all your efforts to go to waste when hardly anyone views them. To make your investment worthwhile, as many people as possible need to view and (ideally) share your videos.
In fact, there are many ways you can promote your videos that will also enhance your other marketing efforts.
SEO Video Marketing
The first place to use your videos is on your website. This is important because video can improve your SEO. When you have videos, users spend more time on your site and share your pages more (giving you backlinks). Google uses these as indicators that your site is high quality and is providing users with the information they want. This leads to higher rankings in search results.
Social Media
Another top place for video marketing is social media. You can use most, if not all, of the platforms where your brand is active. However, each is suitable for different types of videos:
- YouTube — The main place on the internet for video is YouTube. The platform is ideal for all types of videos. However, you’ll need to optimize videos for the platform with titles, descriptions, and clickable thumbnails to see the best results.
- Instagram — There are multiple ways to use Instagram for video marketing. Videos can be long or short, vertical or horizontal, pre-recorded or live. Since users come to the platform specifically looking for visual content, it’s easy to attract them with an engaging video.
- Snapchat — One of the first platforms to understand the appeal of very short videos was Snapchat. You should definitely be posting here if you have a young audience and you’re creating snappy videos.
- TikTok — Another platform dominated by short videos is TikTok. As it is still a relatively new platform, uploading content here could be your chance to stand out from competitors.
- Facebook — The vast majority of users watch Facebook videos with the sound off. Videos that you can subtitle or that feature text and background music are ideal.
- LinkedIn — If you’re a B2B company or you’re posting an industry-related video, you’ll find LinkedIn perfect for your content.
- Twitter — Since Twitter is all about what’s trending, it’s the ideal place to post when you want to talk about a new release or you have a video that relates to something in the news.
Landing Pages
A top way to capture leads is to offer premium content in exchange for an email address. Take this a step further by using a video to push for a conversion. When users reach the landing page, they’ll have the option to watch the video before submitting a form to download the premium content. The video will tell users more about your brand and encourage them to share the landing page.
Email Newsletters
By adding a video to your email newsletters, you increase the odds that subscribers open your emails and you increase views for your video. It’s a win-win situation. In fact, it is more than just a win-win: just adding the word “video” to an email subject line leads to 19 percent more opens, 65 percent more click-throughs, and 26 percent less unsubscribes.
Events
At an event, you already have the attention of up to hundreds of people. Maintain their interest and gain more viewers by playing your video as part of your presentation. This is more interesting than just speaking and it allows you to take advantage of some ready-made material.
Finding Support for Your Video Marketing
Now you’re aware of the benefits of video marketing and you’ve seen some compelling video marketing stats, you should be convinced that online video marketing is the way to go. However, you’ve probably realized by now that producing professional videos is no simple feat.
Whereas some of your videos can have a homemade quality (such as behind-the-scenes looks and live coverage), you want the majority of your videos to be high quality. After all, they’re a direct reflection of your brand. Your best option is to work with someone who can create videos for you.
The virtual assistants from MYVA360 can support you with the entire process — from script writing and production to posting videos on social media and using the content in other marketing. They’ll even use their experience in small business video marketing to help you develop your video marketing strategy.
Experience what it’s like to have the support of a virtual assistant for yourself — at no cost. Request your free trial and receive a VA for one whole workday.
