Video Marketing Strategy: The Importance of Video in Marketing
Each week, 78% of the population watches videos online. Further, 54% of people say they want marketers to show them more video content.
If you do not currently have a video marketing strategy, you are ignoring what your target audience wants from you. Not only that, but you are hurting your profits.
The fastest-growing digital advertising segment is video, with experts projecting a CAGR of 6.5% by 2025. Video is a key part of attracting new customers and keeping them loyal to your brand.
If you haven’t started yet, it’s not too late. Here is why you need to kick off a superb video marketing strategy right away.
What Is Video Marketing?
It is when you use videos for marketing and promoting your product or service. Video marketing educates consumers and increases engagement in an organization’s digital and social channels. In fact, including a video on a marketing landing page could likely increase conversion by 86%.
Video Marketing Guide
When you begin, the first step is to define your video marketing goals. You will want to know if your video marketing is successful and to make this determination, you will want to set measurable goals.
There are two marketing goals you could measure. One is revenue, and the other is a brand. How can you distinguish between these two goals?
For revenue, you can measure leads. You should see an increase in inquiries on a lead form you have. For branding, this could be more traffic to your blog or building a high-quality email list for newsletters, specials, and more.
Establish a Mission
It can be simple, in an all-encompassing one-line statement. You want to address what type of video content you’ll produce, who you are addressing with your content, and what your target audience should take away from the video content.
Video Marketing Tips
Now that you know what your goal is, you can start working towards creation. However, you still need to keep in mind a few good video marketing tips.
First, tell a story about your video marketing. Do not just sell. Outright selling is just plain boring and will scare away the people you are trying to attract.
You want your video content to add value to your customer’s life. It should include actionable advice.
Video is the perfect digital marketing medium to use the power of storytelling. Ignite the viewer’s emotions, pulling them toward your brand with your video’s message.
You could include real-life testimonials or examples that show how your product or service added value and helped a customer in real life. A genuine person can tell a story that others can relate to.
Hook Them at the Very Beginning
The first ten seconds are critical. As you can imagine, people these days have short attention spans. Consider what it is like for you when you scroll through your social media feed.
If a video plays and the first ten seconds are boring, or confusing, you will move on. It is the same for your audience. You need a hook!
Include Closed Captioning
Recent statistics suggest that on Facebook, 85% of short videos posted are viewed without sound. Although, a viewer cannot comprehend approximately 41% of the video without sound.
Based on these findings, experts highly recommend that even if your video has sound, you should still add closed captioning. It will improve your ROI and increase click-throughs.
Search Engine Optimization
Closed captioning not only improves a viewer’s understanding of your video content, but it also helps the SEO of your video marketing. A good digital marketing strategy often includes search engine marketing. SEM is often in the form of both paid and organic searches.
YouTube SEO
Google may be the largest search engine, but YouTube comes in at number two. It pays to have good SEO on YouTube, making it easier for someone to find your video marketing content.
How can you rank well on YouTube? Follow these important tips.
- Incorporate relevant keywords in your title
- Write a video description similar to other videos in your niche market that are performing well
- Add a keyword-rich transcript
- Add all relevant tags
- Add closed captioning
Funny how all these items revolve around the text. Yes, video marketing is powerful, but going the extra mile to include keywords surrounding the video will make it easier for a prospective customer to find your video.
A Strong Call-to-Action
If you follow these tips, and if you keep your video marketing brief (under one minute), you will keep your viewer to the end. Once it is over, and your message came across, what do you want them to do next?
You could entice the viewer to subscribe, watch more content, sign up for a newsletter, check out your online catalog, begin a free trial, etc. No matter what action you want the viewer to take, make sure you always end your video marketing with a clear call-to-action and a button or link to complete that action.
Video Marketing Benefits
What can a superior video marketing strategy do for you? While the possibilities are endless, here are some top benefits you will enjoy.
Grow Revenue
Marketing teams are always looking for innovative solutions to attract more customers and fill sales pipelines. Video marketing invites prospects to learn more about your business. More exposure will lead to more sales.
Influence of the Buyer’s Decision
Perhaps a prospective customer is looking at your product, but not sure they are ready to buy it. A video demonstration can be the difference between putting their purchase on hold for all eternity, versus saying pulling the trigger to buy it.
A good product video will make someone say, “Look at that, how cool! Alright, I am ready to buy it now. How do I add it to my cart?”
In fact, a recent survey found that video helps 95% of B2B buyers convert to sales.
Increase Traffic to Your Website
While you want to gain profits as quickly as possible, even just getting more traffic to your site is an amazing result. This is exactly what video marketing can do for your business.
As more people hit your website, you gain more brand exposure. More exposure will lead to more referrals and business from word-of-mouth. Not to mention, more traffic makes your website an authority, and Google likes to rank websites with high traffic at the top of their results.
More Backlinks
When you can embed your video on another website, this creates backlinks. Backlinks also boost SEO rankings.
Easy to Share
Social media is an enormous piece of any good digital marketing strategy. It’s about more than posting to your profiles and hoping for likes and comments. What you want is for other people to share your videos.
When someone genuinely likes your video and shares it on their profile because it is fun and entertaining, this makes your brand authentic. Real, everyday people like sharing your content.
An easy way to share your video marketing is by uploading your videos to your YouTube channel. According to recent statistics, 87% of marketers believe that an effective channel for them is YouTube.
Reach Decision Makers
Because video is easy to share, and people like to share them, it means that you can reach a decision-maker quicker. It is much more effective than cold calling, where someone can screen your calls and hit delete on the voicemail you leave.
Increase Open Rates With Your Email Marketing
If you mention in the subject line of your email blasts that you have a video in the email, your open and click-through rates will bump up. People are more willing to click on a video in a marketing email than to click on a link to a long text article or special promotion.
When there is entertainment involved, and it doesn’t take much time to get the message, people will invest their attention span into your marketing video.
Crush Sales This Year With Your Video Marketing Strategy
Now that you know how important your video marketing strategy is to your overall sales and marketing objectives, it is time to act. In fact, every day you wait, you are losing potential says.
The experts at 46Mile want you to succeed. They want you to love the video marketing you produce and make money sharing it.
Backed by their partnership with Hearst Communications, you will have all the technology, data, and tools you need to grow your business.
Contact 46Mile today to learn more and kick off your video marketing strategy.
