Monique Rivers
Video marketing continues to prove its value as part of a company’s marketing strategy, impacting brand awareness and lead generation for companies both large and small. They are easier to consume, more engaging, often less promotional, and don’t require a lot of reading to get a message across. This can make video marketing an ideal way to reach consumers who are constantly on-the-go and don’t have the time to read detailed content. However, marketers have only begun to scratch the surface when it comes to exploring all the possibilities.
While technology has made it affordable and easy to create quality videos, embarking on a marketing campaign without a clear, strong strategy in place could lead to many missed opportunities. The following are a few tips for what you should take into account to develop a successful video marketing strategy.
Build your videos as a series
Videos and marketing are a match made in heaven. When posting them on your social media channels, make sure to treat them as you would any of your other social media updates by establishing a consistent posting schedule. Since consumers live such a fast-paced lifestyle, they’re unlikely to be willing to watch videos that are more than a few minutes long. It is also much easier to tell a cohesive, engaging story over a series of short videos than it is to try to cram everything you want to say into one long video. Stories sell.
Treating your marketing videos as a series is also a great way to spark the kind of interest that will build a loyal following. People naturally want to see what’s next, just as they do when watching their favorite television series.
If you are leading up to a product launch, each installment of your video series should build on the one before, leading to an inevitable conclusion: your big event or the launch of your new product.
There’s no need to end your video campaign once the new product is launched or exciting news announced. Be prepared with new campaigns to follow once the excitement of the event or launch has died down. You will want to stay top-of-mind with new customers and those who didn’t purchase this time around.
Social media loves short videos
When it comes to social media, if you want your videos to potentially go viral, you should utilize shorter videos. Just consider this: the average length of the top 10 most shared global video ads is 4 minutes and 11 seconds.
Naturally, the length of your video will depend on the platform you’re posting to. For instance, videos posted on Instagram or Vine will most of the time last just a few seconds – such short video is something the audience simply expects. In the world of online marketing, there’s no ideal length of a video – one good suggestion is to focus on the content and adapt video length to the message you aim to communicate.
It may seem like a daunting task to tackle marketing your product in as little as six to ten seconds, but it can be done. It takes a commitment to a single brief message and a firm editing hand. You can convey a surprising amount of information in that time frame, and once you realize that you don’t have to fit your entire business plan into a single video message, the possibilities are endless.
Tell them how it’s done
Sharing tutorials and tips are simple ways to create a natural connection with an audience interested in your products and services. At first, it could feel like you’re giving away the farm by letting people in on all of your secrets. The truth is that you’ll transform yourself into a subject matter expert, which inevitably attracts a wider audience. More interest, more sales.
The good thing is that tutorials lend themselves easily to a video series format. The more steps in the tutorial that are filled with useful, actionable information, the more likely viewers will keep returning to your content.
Tutorials can easily become your piece of evergreen content that users will return to years after they were published. Establishing yourself as an expert in your industry has an additional perk – your brand will be associated with professionalism, boosting your performance in areas ranging from sales to recruitment.
Make it a contest
Sometimes it’s a good idea to ask users to create content for you. Sharing user-generated content can have the dual effect of promoting higher audience interaction while lightening the load on your content creation team. Not to mention the fact that it will boost your online search rankings.
Naturally, you should provide an incentive. Hosting a contest or offering prizes for the most creative or engaging customer-submitted video can create a buzz around your business. The end result is an expanding customer base, lots of new email addresses added to your mailing list, and a boost in brand awareness across the platform.
Differentiating your business by marketing with video can be an advantage in a world dominated by text-based marketing. Set up your campaign properly and video could be the pathway to new customers finding your business.
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