2023 has seen all marketing experts agree on one thing — if you want to boost engagement and drive traffic to your site, you need to start making videos.
Accounting for nearly 65% of all traffic on the internet, videos are clearly a powerful marketing tool. And with 86% of businesses using video marketing already, your brand cannot afford to fall behind in the competition.
In this guide, we’re breaking down the basics of video marketing — from what it is to the steps of an effective video marketing strategy.
Let’s get started!
Video marketing is a way to communicate important information about your product, services, or brand to prospective customers using videos. It can be of many types, from product videos to explainer videos, “About Us” content, customer testimonials, and more.
Video marketing started in 1941 when the watch company Bulova ran the first-ever video commercial on the NY TV station during a Yankees game. By the 1950s, video ad spending had skyrocketed up to a whopping $128 million. By 1995, the Spirit of Christmas became the first viral video. YouTube was founded ten years later and bought by Google for $1.65 billion. Since then, video marketing has evolved to an enormous extent — Australia alone spent $712 million on digital video ads in 2020.
It’s clear — video marketing is the future. But how does it help your business? Here are eight ways to know.
Video content tends to attract more attention and engagement compared to static images or walls of text. It can increase the time users spend interacting with your brand, inform and entertain the viewer, and improve the likelihood of conversion.
Incorporating videos into your brand’s content strategy is a sure way to level up your search engine optimisation efforts. Search engines like Google consider content with videos more valuable and engaging for users and are more likely to rank your website higher in result pages. Videos also double the time users spend on your website.
Earning customer trust is one of the key marketing goals for any brand. Video marketing provides an opportunity to not only deliver information but also humanise your brand, which can go a long way in building trust and credibility.
Testimonials, behind-the-scenes, reveals, and interviews can all give viewers an intimate look at your company, strengthening the trust and credibility your brand commands.
Directing traffic to your site won’t do you any good if you can’t convert it. If you want to influence a customer’s decision to purchase, a compelling product reveal video or a detailed how-to guide can make all the difference.
A whopping 82% of marketers report an increased ROI because of video content. Not only that, but articles with videos get over 83% more traffic than those without.
Your audience is diverse and catering to this diversity is important.
While some people may prefer reading blog posts or infographics, others may find video content more accessible.
Research shows that 73% of consumers prefer watching short videos to learn about products as opposed to webinars or reading.
This means ignoring videos in your promotion will make you lose out on a large number of potential customers.
Vision is responsible for 80% of everything humans learn. We are intrinsically wired to remember visual information better than written content — so if you have a particularly important message or value proposition, convey it through video to make it more memorable.
While video production can require an initial investment, strategically using video enhances engagement and accomplishes more of your marketing goals with fewer dollars spent. When done right, video marketing allows you to derive more value from your existing budget, freeing up money to spend on other business initiatives.
While most Australian businesses have blogs, email marketing, or social media presence, many of them are still not using videos.
This means investing in a video marketing strategy is an easy way to gain a competitive edge. And there’s demand for it too — 88% of consumers have reported they’d like to see more video content from brands and around 88% of marketers plan to include YouTube videos in their marketing efforts.
Here are the nine essential steps to an effective video marketing strategy, from the drawing board to production, execution, and beyond.
The first step in a video marketing strategy is defining your video’s objectives. This comes in two parts — outlining video goals and identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Ideally, you should create a video for every stage of the marketing funnel. But first, identify which stage is the most important for you and determine whether the main purpose of your video will be:
If you’re trying to attract new customers, you’ll create an awareness stage video. If you’re targeting the bottom of the funnel, you’ll want to create a conversion-stage video and so on.
Measuring your campaign’s success is an essential step to improvement and it can help to identify your KPIs early on. Once you’ve finalised your video’s goal, define how you will measure your goal’s success.
Here are some standard KPIs you can refer to:
Now that you know your target marketing stage, it’s time to determine your intended audience.
The key to figuring out your target audience is developing a buyer’s persona. This is based on the idea that the people you want to buy your product are also the people you want to reach with your video.
To narrow down your target audience, answer these three questions:
Once you’ve narrowed down your target audience, you should focus on identifying their:
Your video will have to stand out among the competition to be memorable for your audience.
One way to ensure you perform well is by examining competitor content. Study their content and determine what type of videos they are creating and which ones have the most engagement. Also, look for gaps you can fill in — what are some topics or formats your competitors are missing out on that you can capitalise on?
Conducting competitor analysis helps you learn from the best performers and avoid common mistakes that can hinder your campaign’s success early on.
Next, start planning your content. Firstly, identify the type of marketing video you want to make — explainers, how-to’s, product showcases, customer testimonials, and webinars are just a few examples. This will depend on your target audience and the stage in the marketing funnel you are working with.
It’s also important to come up with a content calendar. Plan the best times and platforms where each video will be published. This timeline will be your guiding light throughout the production process, letting you know what’s done and how much you have to cover.
While your campaign story is important, the quality of your video is even more crucial. Poor audio, bad lighting, and amateurish graphics can distract from your message. Instead, you want to focus on creating professional-looking videos with seamless transitions, crisp audio, captions, and music to match the video’s mood.
You should also decide whether you wish to use an in-house team or outsource production. Wyzowl reports that 55% of marketers create all their marketing videos in-house, while 12% outsource video production, and 32% use both in-house and outsourced talent. Determine which option is best for your campaign depending on the demands of the video and the resources available.
Keep in mind that achieving a high-quality finish can be difficult for in-house teams, particularly if you’re working with a small budget. In these cases, collaborating with a video production partner can be life-saving.
If you want help with your video, reach out to Ivory Media. We have a combined experience of over 40 years in this industry and are always willing to help.
Once production is complete, optimization can take your video to the next level. Optimise your video for search engines using titles, descriptions, and tags that rank higher.
Transcriptions are another way to improve your video’s search engine rankings. Video transcriptions make your video accessible to wider audiences and are boosted by search engines, so make sure to include them wherever possible.
Once your video is ready, it’s time to show it to the world. Here are some video promotion tactics to follow.
Your work isn’t over once your video is published. It’s now time to monitor and analyse your video’s performance. Employ analytics tools to track engagement, conversions, and views, and use the KPIs you had identified earlier to see how your video is performing.
Use the insights you gain to refine your video marketing approach — notice which videos, platforms, or strategies perform the best, and incorporate lessons from your mistakes into your campaigns going forward.
As customers continue to prefer video over other forms of content, the world of video marketing is going nowhere. And there has been no better time to take full advantage of its potential. The longer you wait, the more you’ll lose out on.
Don’t know where to get started? Don’t worry. Ivory Media is backed by 40 years of combined experience in video creation. Reach out to us today and let us help you bring your video marketing goals to life.
