Welcome to the 21st century, when marketing has about as many forms and shapes as possible. And one type of content that has grown in appeal in the past couple of years is video content. Although its existence is older than a couple of years, video marketing has grown in importance tremendously, especially when it comes to content marketing.
Video marketing now plays a central role in brands’ marketing efforts. Social networks have become dominated by video content and this is because of a solid reason: people respond better to this type of content. It helps your business to engage with your audience and allows you to get your message across more efficiently. Today, if you don’t integrate video content in your marketing efforts, you’re falling behind. But let’s see what you should pay attention to when developing your video marketing strategy.
Start With Rock-Solid Research
Just like any other business decision you make, you should always start by researching. This will help you determine what type of video content you want to approach. It will also help you find out what your competitors are using, to avoid having the same type of video as them. Overall, your company should stand out, and make sure you articulate your video marketing strategy in a way that works for your company.
Just like in written content’s case, what works for others might fail to show results for you. In your research, try to figure out what do you want to achieve with the video you’ll create: do you want to educate, entertain, both?
Professional video marketers advise businesses to avoid purely promotional content. Viewers today are bombarded with promotional videos. Plus, they prefer watching content that can be useful to them: in most cases, they respond better to video content that teaches them something. Start from this, and try to include as much emotion as possible. This will help you connect better with your audience and will turn your marketing campaign into a successful one.
Find Out What Your Audience Wants
To learn which of the marketing videos out there fits your company best, you can always ask your audience for insight. Apart from offering a great starting point with your marketing content, a similar move will also boost consumer engagement. When you decide what type of video to use, you will create something that deeply resonates with your consumers.
Go For Animated Videos
Video content for marketing purposes is sometimes expensive to create. So, the best rule we can offer to help you save money in the process is to cut back on actors or stand-ins. Instead, try out animated videos. The production costs for these are much lower than those of traditional video content. Plus, this type of video offers you more control over the imagery and storyline than any other type of video. These types of videos have also shown higher conversion rates, too.
Make It Short and Sweet
To maximize potential and cut back on production costs, keep your videos short and sweet. If viewers see from the beginning that your videos are too long, they’re unlikely to keep watching them until the end. Shorter videos boost engagement rates and will help you increase retention rates as well. With the attention span of today’s consumer, anything that passes the 2-minute mark suddenly becomes boring. If you wonder why this happens, it has been proven on multiple occasions that people’s attention span is situated somewhere near the 2-minute mark. So, use this insightful advice to your advantage.
Use The Right Music
Music can make or break your video marketing strategy. With that in mind, make sure you use these when they’re appropriate and that you choose the appropriate music. Only think: your viewers are forced to watch a 2-minute animated explainer video in complete silence. The horror!
Now, of course, you can’t use whatever music you want in your marketing content because of legal and copyright matters. In fact, as a business, you can’t use whatever type of music you like, no matter the scope: whether it’s on-hold music for business purposes, or an explainer video background music, you have to ensure you use royalty-free pieces.
But why would you want to use music after all? Aren’t your videos enough? Actually, they aren’t! and this happens for a series of reasons.
- It helps you grab the viewer’s attention even before something happens in the video.
- It influences perceptions. Whether you want to make your brand or products look reliable or comfort-bringing, you can achieve this by using the right music.
- It will help you bond with your audience at a more personal level. Depending on the music you choose you can make your audience feel excited, motivated, emotional, and so on.
See, we told you music is a huge aid you can use to bring your marketing videos to the brink of perfection.
Get Aggressive with Video Promotion
Knowing how and when to aggressively promote your video content will make all the difference between a hit or a miss. Or between viral content and complete failure. Either way, YouTube is a powerful tool you can use in your promotion attempts. After Google, YouTube is the second-largest search engine by volume. When it comes to opportunities of growing your traffic, turn your attention to this gem right here.
Do your best to optimize your video’s title so viewers can access it easier. For instance, “how-to” and “tutorial” are two of the most search keywords and phrases within the platform. By adapting your videos to make them SEO-friendly, you will also boost your chances to make them appear in the top searches of search engines like YouTube.
Once you create your marketing videos, share them around the web! If you still remember from our introduction, the best outlets for this type of company content are social media platforms. From Facebook to Instagram, Twitter, and even Reddit, everybody loves great videos. Especially if they have something to learn from them! So, next time when you motivate your lack of video marketing efforts, try to remember all the perks it has and follow our advice!