If you’ve yet to take advantage of video to market your business, it may be past time that you started. Not only do 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, 88% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a company’s video.
Before you invest valuable time and resources in video production, however, there are 5 basic rules you should understand about achieving video marketing success.
1. Nail down your video’s “why”
It’s important to determine the key purpose for creating your video (or series of videos) so you can ensure it supports your digital marketing strategy as a whole.
Many businesses, for example, use video to:
- Visually demonstrate their unique selling point in a way that resonates with their audience
- Show prospects how to successfully use their products
- Answer their customers’ frequently asked questions
Whatever topic you’re planning to address, make sure your video delivers value to viewers and leads them to the next step you’d like them to take with a clear call-to-action.
2. Pick a type of video to create
One of the easiest ways to break into video marketing is by producing explainer, tutorial, or educational videos for your products.
From there, many companies move on to publishing:
- Video-based customer reviews
- Employee “spotlight” reels
- Behind-the-scene videos of their brand
It’s also a good idea to keep tabs on what your competitors are doing—and then try to do something completely different (like incorporating humour or unique insights into your videos) to help your business stand out.
3. Spread your messaging across multiple videos
Your marketing communications will be cleaner and clearer if you devote separate videos to each of the topics—or customer messages—you want to deliver.
This is especially important if your business:
- Has multiple branches or sells across different marketing channels
- Offers a range of B2C products or services that cater to various customer types
- Needs to highlight specific selling points as part of your B2B sales proposals
You’ll find it easier to engage and keep your viewers’ interest if you produce each video with a dedicated audience in mind.
4. Choose the right video marketing platforms
Although 88% of people would like to see more video from brands in 2022, you should decide in advance the best way to distribute your videos.
Make sure you:
Define your audience. Video marketers can target a variety of social media viewers, for example, on platforms ranging from YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook to Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and Snapchat.
Discover where they spend their time. Knowing which platforms you intend to use lets you build a video audience, pre-launch—and form an appropriate plan for engaging them, post-launch.
Determine how they prefer to engage. Nearly half (46%) of video marketers plan to include webinars in their 2022 video marketing strategy, for example—a promotional device which lends itself handily to email campaigns.
5. Decide how you’ll measure the success of your videos
Make sure you have your marketing goals clearly laid out so you can track and measure the success of your video strategy once it’s in motion.
In addition to increasing sales, for example, common objectives include:
- Video views and engagement (think metrics like shares, likes, and comments)
- Customer interaction and retention (think email open and click-through rates)
- Brand awareness and PR (think website follow-up visits and contact form leads)
Whatever your goals, you’ll be happy to know that 87% of marketers agree video generates good ROI.
That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that you need to invest a lot of money to succeed with your video marketing. With the help of video editing software like Vimeo, HitFilm, or OpenShot, in fact, you can get started creating professional marketing videos for free.
