Have you been trying your luck with video marketing and do not yet know the secret to it? Well, here’s some good news for you- We are going to discuss the ten best practices for video marketing, and explain all that it takes for a successful video marketing strategy.
For starters, we're going to learn the basic meaning of the term "Video marketing”. Video marketing is a whole new world of digital marketing that has made its way into the marketing world super fast and it's become as impactful just as fast.
Let’s learn more about video marketing and discover the best practices to get to the most effective video marketing strategy.
What Is Video Marketing?
Video marketing is a great way to build an emotional connection with your potential customers. For any brand to build an image of its brand in the eye of its customers, communication is the key.
Videos give more liberty of expression to brands and hence create a huge impact on the market. The tools used in videos, the storyline, the message, and most of all the idea behind it, all make video marketing much more impactful than any other form of marketing.
In literal words, video marketing is a way of promoting your products and services using videos that explain them well.
Video marketing is not only more expressive but also engages the customers more in what the brand is trying to communicate through an ad. Many brands use the communicative way of creating videos for promotional purposes, these videos appear like they are directly talking to the person watching and so it is very much possible that the viewers are going to want to know more about your brand.
With all the possibilities video marketing has to offer, it becomes extremely important for you to know more about it if you want to sustain yourself in the market.
Why Is Video Marketing Important For Brands?
We’re living in the world of social media. If you think you’re late to the “video marketing world” then don’t worry, you’re not! A recent report suggests about 76% of marketers were not into video marketing up until the beginning of 2022. So it is definitely not late for you to know about it.
But why is it important for you to know about video marketing? In simplest words- video marketing is the future of marketing. And so, if you plan on growing your business successfully, we suggest you dig in to know as much about it as you can.
With the increasing use of smartphones and tabs, video marketing has become an important tool for marketers to help spread brand awareness and promote new products.
Video marketing is a powerful tool that brands can use to create an image in the market.
Brands these days start with video marketing even before launching in the market. This creates brand awareness before the brand actually hits the market and is a great way to gain a quicker turnout than post-launch promos.
With the growing competition in marketing techniques, where brands are using high-end tools to make it to the top of the market, video marketing is literally the least you should be thinking about!
Think ahead and think big. Marketing techniques are evolving over time and if one doesn't go by the changing technology, your brand may have to face the consequences.
All in all, we cannot deny the fact that video marketing is vital these days and as a business owner, you must know all that it takes to make a smart workable, and appealing video marketing strategy.
How Does Video Marketing Help Reach Bigger Audiences?
Video marketing works on different platforms, brands that promote their products on these social media platforms allow the viewers to re-share the video as many times as they want.
Re-sharing is one thing that helps reach more and more number of people through the same platform. Re-sharing does not cost you, it in fact is free promotion of your product that is done by your existing users or the audiences that find your video useful.
When a video is re-shared on any of the social media platforms, people either tag the brand or they use the repost app that allows the customers to post the brand's video on their profile if they like it too much. Or if they want to share the video for any other reason, nonetheless re-sharing is a big source of publicity and getting more views for the brands and this is probably one thing that you’d want to keep going for as long as the campaign is going.
Brands use influencer marketing also known as affiliate marketing to get more re-shares of their ad and reach out to massive audiences. Influencer marketing not only involves macro bloggers but also the micro-influencers that do not have a massive audience but their content quality is what makes them reach out and shine.
Using Video For Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is when brands affiliate their products to certain individuals (influencers) on social media to promote the products. This is commonly known as influencer marketing and is massively used these days.
Influencer marketing has opened doors for brands to reach out to active social media users. This also helps improved engagement on the video and instant feedback from the audience.
It all comes down to having a good video marketing strategy that will allow your brand to make a certain image in the eye of your potential customer.
Having influencers on board creates a great impact on the audiences and makes an image of your brand that you otherwise might not be able to.
So it is very important to get the right influencers on board for your video marketing campaign.
Re-shares and Post Engagement
When we talk about affiliate marketing, social media comes in place, and along with that come the concepts of re-sharing and post engagement.
When brands invest in influencer marketing or what we call affiliate marketing, they expect good engagement on the post. Engagement is the statistical view of the post that is posted by an influencer, it basically tells about the exact numbers of how many people have seen the ad, how many people have "clicked" on the link, and how many people have liked and commented on it. The more the engagement the more accounts the post reaches out to.
Now if we talk about re-shares- that depends on a few factors, people share a certain piece of content for several reasons. ie- When they find it relatable. The message in your video ad must be aligned with societal happenings. People will share your video if they can relate to the subject.
Re-shares are also possible if the video is informative and gives a meaningful message.
People might also re-share your video if it is fun and humorous.
For a video marketer, these statics are quite important. Numbers do matter when it comes to video marketing, you want to see how good your video marketing campaign is doing and what impact it created among the viewers.
A good video ad always comes from a good video marketing strategy for which you need to understand the concept well and keep a few points in consideration while making your video marketing strategy.
Creating a Solid Video Marketing Strategy
Like any other form of marketing, video marketing needs thorough research and planning. Creating a good video marketing strategy is vital for successful execution. There are a few things that you need to be mindful of while making a video marketing strategy for your brand.
With having a good video marketing strategy, other factors that count are also to be noted:
- Having the proper equipment for video marketing
- Having a team to work on your video marketing campaign
- Owning a professional editing software (no watermarks)
With these few things in hand and a good marketing strategy, you will be certain about your brand’s success in just about time. Although the video marketing strategy you decide to go on with might require you to follow these steps in a certain order but we are going to talk about each step one by one in the order which is most commonly used by marketers.
This step-by-step description of tips to make an effective marketing strategy will help you have enough knowledge on video marketing and guide you through the top ten practices for making a good video marketing strategy.
Here are the top ten practices that are going to help you have a better knowledge of how to create your video marketing strategy and where to begin.
So let’s dig into it!
Choosing Your Target Audience
It does not come as a surprise for a marketer to know this is where you start. To make a successful video marketing strategy, you need to choose the right audience for it. Your target audience is your potential customer, people who are going to buy the product.
Knowing your audience helps you make a more apt image of your brand and also helps convey your message at the right time.
By the right time, we mean using your audience’s demographic here and knowing more about what time they’re most active on the social media apps. Using the right kind of content in your video ad for the right kind of customers is vital for any marketing campaign to be successful.
You need to learn about your target audience’s interests, likes, dislikes, and preferences. Some brands even go ahead with surveys from their potential customers about their preferences.
Likewise, brands are also investing in buyer personas these days, you can use the video search history to help create your buyer personas. Buyer personas help build a stronger connection with your audiences by knowing their interests and grouping them accordingly. A buyer persona is basically a way of grouping people according to their likes and interests, these groups help marketers promote relevant products to the right audience.
Have A Clear Set of Goals For Your Video Marketing Strategy
Video marketing comes with a lot of options for the marketers to direct the audiences towards a certain goal. Conveying your message clearly to your audience is what will make your ultimate goal achievable.
For instance- One person may set a goal for the video marketing campaign to create more brand awareness amongst the audiences, while for another marketer the goal may be to get more orders and sell more products.
Launching a new product is also when marketers invest in video marketing. The main purpose of your entire marketing campaign is going to drive it to the right audiences and the probability of it becoming more successful is higher then.
There are different stakeholders involved in any marketing campaign, and so is the case with video marketing. You want to make sure all your stakeholders know the main objective of your campaign and agree with it completely.
The objective/goal of your campaign is the action that you expect your customer to make after watching your video commercial. Here are some of the usual goals that marketers have behind each video marketing campaign:
- Create brand awareness and have more clicks on the link for people to visit your website/official page.
- Sell more products, these campaigns will usually direct the customer straight to the product page on the website or to your inbox where they can order the product.
- When launching a new product, the goal is to create awareness about this new product and have people make the desired image you want them to make up.
While every marketer has a clear set of goals for their marketing strategy, it is very important to communicate these goals to all the stakeholders clearly.
When you’re making a video marketing strategy with a group or team of people that are involved in it, who are actually responsible for executing the plan successfully and are there for your ups and downs throughout the marketing campaign, it comes to you as a duty to convey the ultimate goal of the video marketing campaign to your team, to your stakeholders.
Stakeholders are just as concerned about knowing more about the marketing campaign as you are since their money is also at stake. Keeping them in the loop will help you avoid any inconvenience in the future if the marketing campaign does not go successfully.
Marketing is like a gamble. You are never one hundred percent sure of what will work and what won’t. Customers are becoming smart shoppers and this has made a huge difference in the way products are advertised these days.
Unlike conventional advertisements, customers are more into knowing the brand's story, how it started, and more! The more you make your audience feel connected to your brand, the more you keep them involved in your brand the more they'll likely take interest in your brand and will actually watch the video ad to know more about your brand.
Deciding A Budget For Your Campaign
Once you know your audience and have your objectives communicated with the stakeholders, you need to set a budget for your campaign. Different social media apps have different packages for video marketing that you can choose from.
Deciding budget comes in alignment with your objective, for instance, if your aim is to create brand awareness you might need to have a bigger budget while an existing brand launching a new product may need to spend lesser for promoting the newly launched product.
With video marketing, the budget depends on a few more factors that you might want to keep in mind while you’re creating your video marketing strategy. These include-
The shorter the video the lesser budget it may take to publicize it online.
Creating an impactful video for marketing purposes needs proper resources and expertise. This will also affect your budget.
The Video marketing budget also depends on the real-time tools used in creating the video. Hence the budget can go up and down for different video marketing campaigns.
For a video marketing campaign, the platform you choose to run it on also plays a big part in deciding your budget so be mindful of that too.
While it may seem from the above-mentioned points that video marketing is a heavy budgeted deal, and only for big brands- No, It's not. Anyone with a creative mind and a smartphone that allows HD video recording can do it except the fact that it requires a lot of research and dedication is one thing that will decide if your video marketing strategy goes well or not.
Going ahead with self-reliance for your video marketing strategy can have both a positive and a negative point.
The Positive
The positive side to a self-relied video marketing campaign is that it gives you the freedom to execute your ideas just as they are because you do not have to explain them to anybody and you’re relying on yourself.
You are the boss and you are the team. This liberty itself makes things a lot more fun and easier to do.
The Negative
Well having to do it all by yourself may give you the liberty to get everything done your way, but it is just as tiring as it sounds.
Yep, having to do everything by yourself will not only be practically draining but also take you more time than it would if you took help from someone else to go ahead with your video marketing campaign.
Duration Of The Video
Now here comes the part where most marketers go wrong and fail to get the video marketing campaign successful. About 10 years ago, when video marketing was a naïve concept, marketers would make long descriptive videos to "say it all in one" and get the most out of one piece of content.
This did not work back then, and would certainly be a big fail in today’s swipe-down world where people literally don’t want to spend more than ten seconds on an ad. Or even less.
We suggest going with shorter videos and keep in mind that the most attention you'll get from your audiences will probably be for the first three seconds. Yep! That short!
With the increasing use of smartphones and social media apps, people have gone real short on their attention span. Grabbing the audience's attention was never a piece of cake but in today's world of digital marketing, it seems to have become 10x harder.
So, the shorter the video, the more views.
With the decreased length of the video for your marketing campaign, it becomes more challenging to grab your audience's attention as soon as they watch the video. So how do you make sure your video will not be “skipped” and people are actually going to watch it?
Well, with audiences having more liberty of choice, it is without a doubt becoming hard for marketers to make ads that people will not skip.
Here are a few tips that can help you go on with video starters that are appealing enough for people to continue watching your ad.
- Start your video with a statement that your potential customers will find relatable. They’ll most certainly watch the video if they think this is for me. You can choose the question strategy and start your video with a question that would grab your audience’s attention.
- Use your strongest point right in the beginning and then continue with details.
- Comparative strategy, the this or that format videos, people get hooked to such videos easily.
Though these points work well with most marketers, honestly, when it comes to video marketing, there's no 100% guarantee that people will watch your video or not. So just try your best and go with the best practices that will help you achieve the best outcome.
Video Quality And Format
When you’re going for a video marketing campaign, you want to make sure the format of your video is good enough for the audiences to find it engaging and communicative.
The best way to make an engaging video for video marketing is by telling a story. This is not just us saying, it has been proven by many successful marketing campaigns and marketers now consider it the best choice for the video format.
Another extremely important thing is the quality of your video campaign. Some marketers will save a few bucks by not hiring a professional for the job and lose all the potential audiences only because the video quality seems extremely poor.
We are living in the world of smartphones, where everyone has access to HD videos, people are no more into watching poor-quality ads, and this can be a red flag for many people to just go and skip the video rather than watch further.
If you are to spend so much time and effort on making a good video marketing campaign, you might not want to risk video quality and get a professional to do the job. Video making and video editing are a whole lot of work that only professionals can do finely.
The video format is one thing that not many people pay heed to, use a video format that can run on all sorts of devices easily. This will make your video ad accessible to more people.
These things might sound small in general but if you’re talking about a good video marketing strategy you really want to think critically about every detail.
Choosing The Best Platform For Your Video
Once your video is finalized and ready to be put up, this is a major decision that you’ll have to make.
Choosing the platform for your video is crucial as it decides the visibility of your video to the masses. The good part is, that you can choose multiple platforms at the same time and make your video appear to audiences from different social media apps.
With a wide variety of social media platforms available these days, you really want your ad to go on the platform that is "trending" and has the most number of users on an everyday basis.
Here are a few platforms that you can pick from based on their popularity and usage.
- YouTube
- Tiktok
- Snapchat
These are all the main social media apps that allow ads in between user activities.
Choosing the right platform also depends on the kind of products and business you have. For instance, a furniture business might not want to sell on TikTok and likewise, a clothing business might not want to sell on a certain platform.
So how do you decide what platform you need to post your ad on to make sure it runs successfully?
Here are a few points that you can go by, to make sure your video is going to the right platform.
- View time associated with the platform
- Video size and sound restrictions
- Budget for promotions
- The communities that particular platform supports
Keeping all these above-mentioned factors in consideration you can decide on which platform you want to go with.
Choosing the right platform also depends on your budget. Your budget is going to be massively affected by the platform you run your ad on. It all comes down to how much you’re willing to invest and what your goals from this particular video marketing campaign are.
Be Smart With Your Selling Point
When you choose to go with video marketing for your brand, know that the audience watching your ad is smart and so you need to be smarter!
People these days get easily pissed with brands that straight up come and ask them to “buy” the product. As a seller your job is definitely to sell your products but how you do it is important.
People do not like to be directed to “buy” the product and you definitely don’t want to go with this strategy.
So how do you sell your product with video marketing? The answer is kind of obvious and very simple- By creating a need for it!
Yes, your video must emphasize the fact that your audiences need this product. The story that your video tells, and the message that your ad gives should be such so people feel a need to buy your product.
And this is where your creative block comes! Think smart and be even smarter with communicating your selling points to the audience. A typically sale-focused video will not do good for your video marketing campaign. So be mindful of that.
Add Subtitles And Use Descriptive Gestures
Your video ad is for everyone and anyone who watches it! When you’re making your video for the video marketing campaign make sure to include all specially abled people (def and blind).
Using subtitles is a great way to help people watch a video even without sound and still be able to understand it.
Another way to work it is by using descriptive gestures and allowing audiences to even watch the video without the sound and understand the message given in the video.
You'll be surprised to know that some people watch videos on social media on mute, and prefer only the videos that have subtitles While it may seem like your audio is being overlooked, the fact that subtitles help to grab the audience's attention, even more, is a plus!
People are more attentive while watching a video without audio and so the message can easily be conveyed.
Brands that focus on people's sensitive requirements and think critically about how to accommodate everyone under one video ad are prone to have more successful marketing campaigns than a brand with a negligent strategy would do.
Putting up audio subtitles and gestures also allow people from different languages to understand the message that is being conveyed in your video. Brands are even going into making the same ad run in different languages to fulfill the requirements of certain demographics.
When we talk about making a video for marketing purposes, we're not just talking about an ad but a whole vision that is behind our brand. You want to make sure the video that is being watched by hundreds and thousands of people is not only easy to understand but allows people to grasp the message even if they're unable to listen to the message.
A tiny addition to your video ad can go a long way and help you get a better outcome for the video marketing campaign.
Create Viral Content
Easier said than done, but this is one thing that most marketers are aiming for these days.
Viral content! Anything that creates a buzz on social media goes viral and becomes the talk of the town.
Isn't this all we want as brands? Everyone talking about us! In a good way though.
Creating viral content takes a lot of thinking and thorough research of people's likes and interests.
Brands sometimes even use already viral stuff from social media and incorporate it into their ads, this makes it easier for the brands to be talked about and people "re-share” the videos more frequently as it contains the trending stuff.
The trending/viral content on social media can give amazing marketing ideas to you if you have the eye for it. People like to watch promotional ads that are up to date with the trending stuff and have fun content.
Aiming for viral content is a great way to get maximum views on your video. One of the ways that marketers have been using to create viral content is making emotional ads. These emotional ads are relatable to the audiences and they keep sharing them for being relatable and close to them.
While it is a great technique for marketers to use this strategy, it comes with a lot of risks too. Having your video go viral comes with a lot of criticism too. People will find a way to point out flaws in it and so you must be prepared for everything probable to come your way.
Nonetheless, a viral video is any marketer’s dream and takes a lot of effort and a little bit of luck!
Add Live Videos To Your Marketing Strategy
If you're a newbie to the video marketing world and do not know about what live videos are, here’s a quick guide.
Live videos are basically when brands do online promotions and display their products with descriptive details. Many brands are shifting to live videos as they’re more interactive and can give you instant buyers.
For the audiences, live videos create a level of trust for the brand as it seems like a behind-the-scenes sort of experience for them.
Promoted videos/video ads are staged and everyone knows they’re recorded as per planning. Whereas in a live video, the products seem raw, and people build up a stronger level of trust with the brand after watching the live video.
Live videos are great in several ways for your brand's video marketing, here are a few points that might convince you more about live videos.
Live videos are raw; people feel more comfortable watching the product one on one rather than visiting the website or finding the product in an ad.
Live videos are not edited like ads so this builds a stronger trust level between customers and the brand.
Live videos allow instant communication between the brand and potential buyers.
In recent research, google says 87% of the people rely more on live sessions than they do on ads now. The reason is quite certain- live videos allow open communication and audiences can question all they want.
While it is quite evident that live videos will do better for your business, it puts more weight on the fact that you need to learn about how to run a successful live stream video. Doing some pre-work and knowing more about what you're going into will not only help you do better at it but also keep your audience's hopes high from your upcoming live streams.
Start Using These Video Marketing Best Practices Today!
If you’re a brand owner in today’s digital marketing world, you will have to get into video marketing and learn about how to make a good video marketing strategy.
It’s a combination of many small steps that lead you to the top of the ladder and help make your business successful. While video marketing was considered a big budget promotional campaign in the past, you can shoot a 4k quality video from your smartphone these days which makes it very cost-effective.
Video marketing is a great way to communicate with your audiences and build a sense of connection between you and your potential buyers. Video marketing allows marketers to use different techniques that help customers know more about the brand.
Live streaming is one of the mainly used ways of doing video marketing. Even small businesses that are home-based can go on with live streaming from the comfort of their homes and showcase their products to mass audiences through social media platforms.
Making your video understandable for all the audiences is very important. If someone is watching your video and may feel not talked to, this may come in as something offensive to them.
As video marketing continues to make marketing techniques more attractive and fun for people to watch, we suggest you do thorough research on the ongoing trends in video marketing and go on with what people are liking at that particular time.
While it may work out for you to be unique and play differently from all the other marketers, it is always good to play safe and go with the market trends as a beginner. So, if it is your first time going into video marketing with your brand, try to keep it simple, easy to understand but most of the all- fun!
We hope you find these tips helpful. Have fun creating your masterpiece!
