Video Marketing Strategy: The Ultimate Guide
Using video marketing strategies is an innovative way to help set your business apart from the competition and enhance your overall success. Over the last few years, videos have made giant strides toward global domination. Having invaded our lives and conquered the digital landscape, they're becoming an indispensable part of any client-winning marketing portfolio. These changes mean businesses are excited to start a new chapter of efficient video marketing.
Indeed, video has the power to delight the eye, induce solid emotions, and provoke certain thoughts or actions in no time. If you want to create a perfect video to boost your business and make it stand out from the crowd, first and foremost, you need a well-thought-out content marketing video strategy. This comprehensive guide will dig deep into all the crucial things you should know to become a video marketing guru.
So what is video marketing?
Loosely defined, video marketing is a distinct marketing approach that encompasses planning, producing, and distributing videos to promote brands, products, messages, or services. To stay competitive, you should be able to measure your audience's reaction to each video marketing campaign strategy and, if needed, improve your approach to achieve a greater effect.
When looking to create video content for your marketing strategy, follow a tactical plan and use your creativity to the fullest. Choose wisely when deciding what types of videos correspond to your specific needs, and think through ways to implement them. Most importantly, if you want to make your business thrive, be ready to enable your video content to integrate smoothly into your entire marketing plan.
In some ways, a digital video marketing strategy echoes business blogging activities. Before you start creating videos, you need to research, analyze and conceptualize what ideas each video will convey and how it'll engage with your target audience.
Make sure you arm yourself with:
• List of increasingly popular and catchy topics related to your specific business
• Clear video scripts
• Distribution plan to extend your reach
With all that in mind, let's delve into the reasons behind the increasing popularity of video content in marketing.
Why is video so crucial in marketing?
Because video content has become king, unlike long, tedious paragraphs, it is super easy to consume. It entertains viewers and allows them to take a relaxing break from boring textual information. Among other benefits that videos offer is helping users make purchasing decisions. One of the latest Think with Google reports proves that the majority of customers find it helpful to watch video ads before buying something.
Videos are also making their way to conquer businesses. According to the Renderforest Survey, video content has helped companies boost their brand recognition by 70%, sales by 34 %, and traffic by 51 %. Recent HubSpot's research shows that videos have taken the lead in content marketing, leaving behind blog posts and infographics. You can significantly enhance conversion and audience engagement by using all kinds of video formats. According to the latest data, videos will likely be shared 1200 percent more often than image and text posts taken together. Thus, you need to incorporate videos into your marketing campaign if you want to skyrocket your organic reach.
A video marketing strategy: how can you boost your business?
A solid social media video marketing strategy can bring multiple benefits to your business. It helps to:
• Increase revenue
According to some studies from Aberdeen Group, videos help businesses grow their revenue 49% faster year by year than other types of content. How does this happen? By uploading videos on different platforms, you can reach a large audience. This can help boost your sales, as 84% of customers say they've been persuaded to buy a product or service after watching a brand's video.
Attention span is the time people can focus on something before they get distracted or need a break. Global attention spans are getting shorter with each passing year. Video content can help you grab audience' attention and sustain it in a world with short attention spans. Using videos in your marketing strategy adds an enthralling touch to your brand, piques viewers' curiosity, and engages them more efficiently.
• Establish credibility and trust
Videos allow telling captivating stories that can trigger emotional responses in your audience. By communicating a genuine message in your video content, you add a personal and human touch to your brand, making it more trustworthy and increasing its authenticity.
• Boost conversions & drive sales
High-quality video content paired with a robust b2b video marketing strategy can significantly increase conversion rates and maximize your ROI. A study by HubSpot claims that adding a video to your landing page can boost conversion by 80%. Use video formats on your landing page to put a face on your brand, generate leads and drive sales. In fact, 84% of customers admit they've been urged to buy some goods or services by watching a company's video.
• Help you rank higher on SERPs
Google uses a number of ranking factors when assessing pages to establish the most appropriate order of relevant results to return for a search query. One of them is dwell time that corresponds to the amount of time a user spends looking at a page. Videos tend to capture viewers' attention and make them stay longer on your site. Your potential customers might not want to read big and complicated articles - they would rather consume the same content in just one visit if it's presented in video format. So, integrating videos into your marketing strategy may notably boost your SERP rankings.
Due to the fact that Google owns YouTube, videos have an increasing impact on your search engine rank. According to Moovly, you're 53 times more apt to appear first on Google if there's a video on your website. Now you can promote not only your websites but videos themselves, thus driving traffic and boosting conversion rates.
• Impact buying decisions
A recent consumer survey from Forbes says that videos help 90% of customers make buying decisions. Over 64% of respondents report being more inclined to buy a product after watching a video.
On top of that, 97% of businesses are convinced that video content has a great impact on user perception of their goods or services.
• Give people what they want
According to Hubspot's data, consumers lean toward video content over blog posts, social images, emails, newsletters,etc.
When it comes to making purchases, people often use a number of different ways to make a decision. The most popular methods include searching info on the internet, delving into a company or particular product's official page, studying reviews, and of course, watching videos. You can easily add some top-notch video content to any of these places, thus making your brand more appealing and giving people what they really want.
• Increase traffic
Apart from increasing the time people spend on your website, videos serve for boosting traffic to your site. Recent research shows that brands using videos can boast 41% more web traffic from search than those who don't. In fact, hosting your videos on such platforms as YouTube, Vimeo, and Google Plus can help you drive huge amounts of traffic to your business.
• Reach decision-makers
Reaching leaders and decision-makers isn't always easy, but it's crucial for your sales process. The record shows that the majority of decision-makers tend to watch videos. Thus, according to HighIQ, around 75% of business executives check out job-related videos on a weekly basis. What is more, 54% of senior officials tend to share such videos with co-workers at least once a week. And 59% say that if given a choice to read some textual information or watch a video on the same subject on the same website, they would choose feasting their eyes on the video.
• Get more backlinks
If you want to increase the number of linking domains, incorporating a video into your page can take you closer to achieving this goal. According to some recent research from Moz, video content can raise backlinks nearly threefold.
Benefits of building backlinks:
- they increase traffic to your website and boost sales;
- they improve your search position in Google and have positive effects on SEO.
How to create a video marketing strategy
Video is a magic wand for marketers. It helps popularize brands, generate leads, increase traffic, and many more. But to achieve success, you shouldn't just randomly use this marketing tool. What you really need is to develop a good video marketing campaign strategy. Let's go into the nitty-gritty of how to do this most efficiently.
1. Choose your video platforms
Before you start pouring all your efforts into everything else, think wisely about the platforms you are going to use. With a great variety of video social media platforms, marketers often decide to make videos for all of them. Don't make this mistake. Remember that you should prioritize quality over quantity.
There are some social media platforms for which video content is a truly winning solution that can bring a lot of benefits. These platforms include Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and many others.
Try to remain neutral when choosing the right platforms for your video content, don't drift toward the ones you personally enjoy. Study your audience and its preferred social media channels.
Plus, mind your goals. Each social media platform uses different algorithms and thus, has certain advantages and disadvantages that may influence the results of your video production marketing strategy. Some networks can be used for entertaining and engaging your audience, while others may serve for conversions.
When sharing videos on other social media platforms, including Youtube, remember that you need to optimize your video content.
2. Select the most appropriate video format for your business
When developing a video marketing strategy, aside from the content itself, try to carefully analyze what video format will drive results for your business. Choosing the best video format can provide your prospects with a great experience, and using high-quality video assets ensures your audience enjoys the video without any disruptions. Luckily, nowadays, there are tools that can convert videos into various formats.
Some dimensions that work well for one platform, can be wishy-washy for another. While the landscape mode is a perfect choice for YouTube, Facebook and Instagram require the vertical mode.
Why does this happen? Because these days, nearly 75% of the total number of video views originate from mobile phones.
Quite a widespread method to save the budget invested into video production is to create videos in the standard landscape mode and then readjust them to other social media networks.
3. Analyze your competitors
Once you've completed the first two steps, it's time to move further and start analyzing your competitors. Take a deep dive into your competitors' products and services, explore their strengths and weaknesses, identify how they differ from your brand, etc. Take into account every single piece of information.
However, one very important thing you need to consider is if you want to create an efficient digital video marketing strategy that will help scale your business. You should scrutinize your competitors' marketing campaigns and how they use video content to deliver their messages.
Inspect all channels they use to communicate with customers. Keep your eyes out for different types of content they present (emails, pictures, blog posts, etc.) to understand how everything is woven together. In this way, you can unravel some recipes for marketing success and stay updated about market trends. Also, you may uncover your competitors' pain points and try to avoid them in your video strategy.
Here's a list of questions that you can use while conducting your research:
• What are the goals of their social media video marketing strategies?
• What types of video content do they produce?
• How often do they create and share videos?
• What topics do they mention?
• What channels do they use?
• What tone of voice have they developed for their video content?
• Is their content carefully thought out?
• Are their audiences engaged?
Put on your thinking cap and find the answers to all of the questions above. Carry out a comprehensive review of your findings and apply this knowledge to upgrade your video game marketing strategy.
4. Set the goals of your video digital marketing strategy
What do you want to achieve with your video content? Single out the most important goals that have the potential to enhance your business. It's a good idea to keep in mind the customer journey. If you want to present your brand to a new audience, you'd better stick to awareness stage videos. If you wish to promote your product or engage with users, the best option for you is to produce consideration stage video content. Finally, if you need to stimulate the sale's closing, you might want to choose decision stage videos.
5. Define your video strategy concept
Analyze how videos can help your business prosper and clear the goals you want to prioritize. Base your video marketing strategy primarily on your business objectives. Then, define a concept that will put all your content under a general umbrella. Think about some creative methods to make your videos work well together and let your audience understand that they belong to the same campaign. In particular, pay special attention to layout design, typography, and color schemes. Also, try to use a consistent tone of voice and develop an appealing animated character that will regularly appear in all your videos.
6. Take into consideration your audience
In creating a video marketing strategy, you must be on the same wave as your prospective audience and clearly understand their wants and needs. Knowing your target audience is an indispensable part of each and every marketing strategy, as all kinds of content should be aimed at a particular group of customers.
So, at this stage, you should thoroughly analyze your potential buyers. Consider such factors as location, nationality, gender, age, occupation, income level, lifestyle, hobbies and interests, religion, personal preferences, and of course, their demands and problem issues. This will provide you with a clear sense of direction for your video marketing strategy. Such profound research will help you define what kind of story to tell your prospects and how to present yourself in such a way as to give them a solid reason to trust your brand.
7. Set deadlines
Scheduling is of paramount importance for any b2b video marketing strategy.
It must be remembered that video production is an extremely time-devouring process, especially when you strive to deliver top-grade video content. Thus, you need to assign certain time frames for every single step of your video production procedure. Try to be realistic when setting a deadline; once you've set it, strictly adhere to it.
8. Use organization & communication tools
At this stage, it seems quite obvious that developing a video marketing strategy requires a monumental effort. Before you even start the video production itself, you have to make many practical arrangements: create things-to-do lists, establish schedules, manage different teams, check and approve various tasks, give feedback, deal with unexpected circumstances, etc. To avoid burnout and make your work less stressful, you should organize your workflow and establish effective communication with all members of your teams. For this, don't underestimate the power of such project management tools as Zoom, Slack, and many others. They will help you organize the whole process in the most efficient way and keep all your teammates informed about project updates, delays, and any other important changes.
And here's one more important thing to consider: though the idea of hiring freelancers can be enticing, partnering with a qualified video production agency is almost always preferable. That's because video production requires profound experience, professional equipment, and high-quality resources to deliver a well-honed result. Freelancers often fail to meet the standards that a robust video production needs. So, contemplate the possibility of choosing an agency partner that will help you scale your business and create the most comprehensive strategy and top-notch video content.
9. Find the right partner
Once you approach the process of video production, you'll inevitably face a dilemma of how to craft videos. There're different options to choose from: for example, you can employ freelance specialists or do everything by yourself and develop your own corporate production. However, there is a smarter way to go about it. You can give a boost to your digital video marketing strategy by cooperating with true professionals in the field of video production. In other words, you can apply to a qualified video marketing studio. Rest assured, their highly competent staff will help you magically convert your ideas into some compelling and performant video content.
Still, you should painstakingly select the right agency for your business. Consider the following things:
• Customer feedback and reviews.
• Online portfolios.
• How they follow the production process. It's crucial to find professionals that will stay in touch with you throughout the journey and will keep you informed about what they are doing. You should be able to submit your comments and discuss changes to be made.
• Ability to create custom-made and unique videos.
• Affordable price. Choose a video agency that can offer first-class quality at the amount of money that will be acceptable for your company.
10. Decide what story you want to tell.
This stage is very interesting and challenging at the same time. You need to wrap your mind around every detail to ensure your business succeeds through it and your sales increase.
There are four key elements that should be outlined:
• Main character with motivation. They should be in sync with your target audience.
• Conflict. Describe your buyer's problem.
• Search for a solution. Here you should present your goods or services.
• Troubleshooting. Show how your products or services can settle the issue.
Note that all of these elements should tally with your brand mission.
Think over what emotions your video should trigger and how to communicate your message through the props, the costumes, the background, the color palette, etc.
11. Put a bridle on creative feedback.
While developing your narrative, be mindful that many people will review and approve your video (for instance, your company's founder, managers, marketers, etc.). There are risks that unexpected changes can compromise or even ruin your entire video production process. Learn some essential strategies to manage creative comments from your teammates.
12. Stick to your time limits.
A lot goes into creating a successful video content marketing strategy. One of the key success factors is the ability to establish strict time limits and stick to them. In fact, you should set time limits for each stage including conceptualization, production, distribution, and more. This way, you'll know what's already been done and how much work is left.
All team members should stick to timelines and be informed about any schedule changes.
In fact, the overall process of producing a high-quality video is quite time-consuming. From start to finish, it can take up to 8-10 weeks.
13. Plan a realistic budget.
Consider the sum of money you have at your disposal and set a spending limit on your video production process. Decide what you want to apply huge resources and what you would like to cut corners on.
Above that, never stop shopping around. Compare the price and quality of services in different agencies before you decide to buy a particular service.
Carry out a full-scale study of the market and prices before you decide what type of video content you want to create and what specific features you need to implement. Have regard to the fact that some of them might be more expensive than others.
Though freelancers often offer cheaper services, video production agencies provide more impactful results as they are recognized experts in their area of activity. They know exactly what to do, what things should be avoided, and how to find the fastest way to success. The resulting benefits are sure to outweigh the costs.
Types of video marketing strategies
Now it's time to decide on the type of your video marketing strategy. Here's an overview of the most popular ones.
Funnel Focused
It's no secret that every person goes through three stages before making a purchasing decision. This process is often referred to as the customer journey.
• Awareness Stage. Here prospective customers admit they are facing some problem and try to investigate it.
• Consideration Stage. Buyers formulate their problems and start searching for ways to sort them out.
• Decision Stage. Here prospects have created a list of possible solutions and need to make a choice.
Having decided to follow a funnel-focused video marketing strategy, you'll have to deliver different messages about your product or services depending on the stage of the customer journey your potential buyers find themselves in. To wit, you'll need to create special videos for each stage to influence your prospects' purchasing decisions. Thus, you can help them proceed in their journey and inspire them to select your product.
Customer Delight Focused
This strategy is aimed to improve your current clients' experience and make lucrative offers to first-time buyers.
Let your imagination run free while creating videos to boost customer satisfaction. For example, you can share a super useful instructional video or a cute happy birthday video message.
Above all, try to establish and maintain strong connections with your customers as well as build trust.
Social Media Focused
Social media videos help brands to connect and interact with their customers quickly and efficiently. For greater effect, you need to tell captivating stories that can bring out strong emotions and sentiments in your potential buyers. When making videos, remember that most people use social media networks primarily for fun and entertainment.
This is a winning strategy if you want to boost your brand awareness, increase customer engagement, and drive sales!
Customer Trust Focused
This video marketing strategy is intended for those prospects that have studied all the options and are on the way to decide between your product and several others. So, your task is to surpass your opponents and make customers choose you.
Your videos should increase trust and give convincing reasons to buy your product or service. Consider using testimonials or culture videos to make your company stand out from the crowd and seem more empathetic and reliable.
Tutorial Focused
Sharing tutorials about your products or services offer many advantages for your business. This type of video content provides your audience with all the necessary information, responds to their questions, and thus, conquers their hearts.
People do value brands that spare no pains to make them feel at ease and explain complicated things.
Education Focused
That's a given, people enjoy learning new things on the internet. You can reap benefits from this tendency by creating and sharing educational videos that will teach your customers particular topics or raise their interest in specific areas.
Note that these videos can shoot the moon only if they convey useful, high-quality, and always relevant content.
Explanatory Focused
Some businesses (especially high-tech and financial ones) are based on concepts and processes that are really hard to grasp for ordinary people. Explainer videos help to clarify incomprehensible data and turn intricate issues into simple and digestible information.
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Types of marketing videos
Animated videos
This type of video is quite entertaining and easy on the head. What is more, 2D and 3D animated videos are much cheaper to produce which is great for small businesses that have limited marketing budgets.
In fact, there are a number of free video creation tools or paid ones with free options. They can help you craft 2D animated video content in case you are resource-constrained.
Benefits of creating animated videos for your business:
- they can increase conversions,
- these videos can trigger emotional responses in your audience, and boost engagement,
- Google's algorithms like animated videos. If you embed them on your site, they'll improve your SEO.
Explainer videos
They are brief animated videos that last no more than 2 minutes and are aimed to explain complicated things in an easy and amusing way.
Explainer videos clearly show why a product or service exists and how it helps resolve customers' problem issues. Combining enthralling storytelling and eye-catching design, they can help you:
- generate more leads,
- boost conversions,
- up the average dwell time on your page.
Educational videos
As stated above, educational videos are designed to teach people some issues or topics and dish up your company as the one that takes their pain points seriously and is eager to help.
These videos can easily transform complicated things into interesting and intelligible concepts. Nevertheless, remember that you should explore only those topics or issues that are relevant to your audience.
These videos help build a knowledge base your prospects can rely on to better understand your business and solutions. Your service and sales teams can use such video content when they work with customers. Educational videos may help you:
- boost your brand recognition,
- improve search engine ranking position,
- establish authority,
- build trust.
How-to videos
How-to videos help teach your audience how to do new things in a meaningful and dynamic way (for example, how to cook a particular dish or use a device). To some extent, these videos can also be considered educational, but they boast their peculiar language and form. They cover all the steps that your prospects need to take when completing a certain task.
These videos are great for:
- boosting your online presence,
- promoting trust.
Customer testimonial videos
These videos are an excellent way to show your prospects they can trust you. So never miss out on the opportunity to speak to any of your current happy customers and let them share their feedback.
Benefits of video testimonials:
- they can augment credibility and earn the trust of your prospects;
- they help build long-lasting relationships with your current customers,
- video testimonials give a face to your brand.
Product Videos
These are helpful pieces that are aimed to explain how a particular product or service works and demonstrate its specific features and advantages. Businesses tend to make these videos available on their websites to help people get familiar with their products in a quick and entertaining way. Product videos:
- enhance credibility,
- accelerate purchasing decisions.
FAQ Videos
These are videos where you answer the most frequently asked questions about your brand, products, or services from your audience. FAQ videos usually convey relevant, concise, and useful facts while making the process of answering questions dynamic and engaging. This type of videos can help you:
- enhance conversions,
- establish and reinforce relationships with customers,
- motivate users to make buying decisions.
Social Media Videos
Tailored to social media platforms, these videos can be of any type, from testimonials to video ads.
First and foremost, note that you don't have to create videos for every social media channel. Identify your target audience's preferred networks and design your social media videos correspondingly.
Also, try to make your videos as compelling and creative as possible to distinguish them from other content.
Moreover, keep in mind that your pieces should be dynamic, brief, and generate value at once.
Social media videos serve for:
- enhancing brand awareness,
- leveraging engagement.
Video ads
Video ads are exciting pieces of content that are designed to openly promote and sell goods or services. These videos allow you to showcase your product's advantages and unique features through attention-grabbing pictures and a distinct call to action.
Keep in mind that they should be short (no more than 30 seconds).
Top-notch video ads are a perfect marketing tool for:
- augmenting brand awareness,
- getting new buyers.
Corporate videos
These videos aim to highlight your brand's culture and unique characteristics.
Corporate videos should be in line with your company's tone of voice, key features, and values. Use these pieces if you want to:
- add a human element to your brand,
- establish deeper connections with your audience.
What are the three stages of video production?
The moment of truth has arrived. You've set the goals, decided on your video marketing campaign strategy, and chosen the type of video content you want to produce. Well, it's time to get started!
Pre-Production
This stage is all about video planning. You need to analyze what benefits you want your video to bring to your business. On this basis, you should determine the content of your video. After that, you can discuss your teammate's feedback and schedule shooting.
Here's what you need to do at this point.
• Brainstorming
Whether you work with a video production agency or create your peace on your own, gathering your creative team members and brainstorming key components of your video's storyline is of utmost importance.
• Scripting your video
This step is about transforming your initial concept into a compelling script. It encompasses dialogues, music, sound effects, imagery, and many more.
While writing your script, consider that an average person reads two words per second. So, a one-minute video should consist of 120 words, a two-minute - 240 words, etc.
Please remember that you don't always need to overload your video with dialogues. Sometimes, silent pictures can produce a greater effect than a narrative.
• Storyboarding
Storyboards serve as a visual description of your video's plot all the way through. These elements are optional as they just help design the look and feel of your content. Also, storyboards help identify and prevent some possible mistakes and provide your operators and project managers with a clear vision on how to arrange shooting.
• Booking and preparation
At this point, you'll need to start booking talents, setting time limits, employing specialists, buying all the necessary items, etc. This step might be quite stressful you'll have to make a lot of arrangements and stay in touch with all your employees, including actors, production assistants, and many others. So consider partnering with a good video production agency to maintain hold of these activities.
Production
The long-awaited production day will allow you to watch your video for the first time. That's going to be a thrilling experience, but you should remain on edge and make every effort to take your video content to a higher level.
Make sure that you accomplish the following:
• Check your video's audio and visuals
You might want to test your sound and camera equipment as well as consult a qualified producer to achieve the best quality.
• Ensure good lighting
The proper lighting is crucial as it sets the tone, mood, and the whole appearance of your video.
• Pay attention to physical styling
This includes clothing, makeup, props, etc. Polish your stylistic elements to make them match the storyline you want to convey and your marketing objectives.
• Do extras
Extras can be a great source of inspiration for your future projects. So don't miss a minute and create all kinds of exclusive additional content during your production process. You can craft behind-the-scenes videos, arrange quick photo sessions, and so on.
Post-Production
It's time to add a finishing touch to your video production process. The post-production stage deals mainly with video editing and graphic creation. Of course, this work must be done by experienced editors and creative directors. Keep track of time limits and make sure the following steps are completed:
• Adjust visual effects.
• Pay special attention to sound effects.
• Add some graphic effects.
• Think through how to present your call to action in the most appropriate way for your target audience.
How much does a marketing video cost?
It depends on many parameters. First of all, the price might vary if you decide to develop videos on your own, employ freelancers, or join forces with a video production agency.
Plus, when collaborating with an agency, you should take into consideration a number of things that might impact a video's cost: the level of complexity of your video marketing strategy, video length, its type, and time limits.
On average, the price ranges from $5,000 to $25,000. It's going to be cheaper if you employ freelancers or team up with a small video production studio. And thus, you are going to pay a lot more if you decide to start a partnership with a highly professional agency.
In case you want to produce live-action videos, you should be ready to spend from $5,000 to $200,000. Of course, the ultimate price is likely to depend on the type of videos you've chosen, their length, deadlines, and if you co-operate with a video marketing studio or not.
SEO video marketing
The fact is that just placing a video on your website isn't enough. You need to use some SEO tools to optimize your video content. So let's discuss the key strategies.
• Analyze your keywords
You need to find out what words or phrases your prospects tend to use when searching for something related to your goods or services. There are many ways to accomplish this important mission. One of them is to analyze your competitors. Take a closer look at the keywords they use in video titles and on their website. Besides, you can take advantage of some tools that are designed to deal with this task. They include Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and many more. When using these tools, try to carefully analyze each keyword and wisely use the words you've chosen to leverage your SEO video digital marketing strategy.
• Use long-tail keywords
It is not infrequent that users type specific phrases or questions into search engines.
Long-tail keywords can efficiently boost conversions because when potential customers use highly peculiar word combinations, they have a clear vision of what they need. Thus, if they find an appropriate result, the chances are high that they'll visit your website and buy your product or service.
Above all, long-tail keywords can be effectively used to rank higher in YouTube, Google, Amazon, and other platforms.
• Think through your video title
Your keywords (especially long-tail ones) will work wonders when placed in your videos' headlines. A good title should be crafted for both the potential buyers and the search engine.
Primarily, bear in mind that you need to place your keywords at the beginning of your headline to make it rank higher.
Moreover, you should make your title as clear and succinct as possible to help your prospects understand if your content is exactly what they need.
Avoid blunt use of keywords. Strive to use your imagination and creativity to develop an intriguing title that will appeal to your audience. And of course, remember that brevity is the soul of wit. Make your headline short and easy to perceive (do not exceed 70 characters).
• Add an effective video thumbnail
Thumbnails are of great importance to your SEO video marketing strategy.
Since they are the first elements of your content that people see and interact with, you should make your thumbnails attractive, tempting, and informative. Use high-resolution images (1280×720), and don't forget to check how they look on different devices.
• Learn how to incorporate your keywords into your video
In addition to your videos' headlines, there are three other places where you can add your keywords:
• Video description. Keep it short and to the point. When writing your descriptions, include relevant keywords and add some crucial links.
• Transcript is the text version of everything that is said in your video. Placing a full transcript under your video description allows you to use a great number of keywords.
• Tags. If you want to boost your video's ranking, use your target keyword in the first tag and include its variations in the remaining tags.
Promoting your content video marketing strategy
Once you've created your strategy and developed some top-grade video content, it's time to step into the next stage and start thinking about how to distribute your videos.
There are three key communication channels that allow promoting your video content. They include owned media, paid media, and earned media. When used correctly, these channels can significantly augment brand recognition and increase conversions.
Owned media
They include all communication channels owned by your company.
Go through the list of the most widespread types of owned media.
Website
No doubt, it's the first thing people take a look at when they strive to find some information about your brand. There's a large variety of spots where you can place your videos. Namely, if you've crafted a number of product videos, don't hesitate to share them on your products' pages.
Email marketing
It's one of the greatest ways to distribute your videos. Note that you should send them only to your subscribers who provided you with their personal information and are interested in your content. Feel free to add your videos to automated emails, newsletters, etc.
Social media networks
Social media is a perfect tool to connect with prospective customers and reach a wider audience. Carefully analyze which networks your target audience prefers and design your content for these platforms.
Blog
When it comes to publishing your blog posts, adding some videos can make the information you want to share more interesting, appealing, and easy to digest. Also, video content can back your thoughts and provide colorful examples.
Paid media
This refers to paying for advertising and promoting your video content.
To guarantee your audience growth, enhanced conversions and better brand recognition, your videos should be advertised in proper places.
Check out the following list of the most efficient paid promotion channels that you should keep in mind when developing your video marketing strategy.
Search Ads
Search ads help your brand compare favorably with competitors by showing your video content above non-paid search results.
Social Media Ads
Social media ads are probably one of the most hard-hitting methods to distribute your content. They work well for targeting specific groups of potential customers.
Advertising
This channel deals with showing your content on some third-party websites without being obtrusive or bothering customers.
Sponsored content
This type of content doesn't differ much from traditional blog posts except that it's been paid by a company to advertise some products or services.
Influencer outreach
Actually, this is teaming up with an influencer or an account that has a big number of followers that might turn out to be your target audience. In some cases, influencers agree to promote your brand for free or in exchange for your products or services.
Earned media
Earned promotion happens when some people distribute your content for you at no charge. Just because they want to or you have made some kind of agreement.
No doubt, this type of distribution is unforeseeable and difficult to manage.
Social media shares
To put it in a nutshell, this is when people share your videos on their social media pages. And while such cases usually take place naturally, you can try to increase the number of shares by strengthening your advertising efforts.
Product reviews
Customer reviews involve a person telling about their impressions of your product, and describing its advantages and disadvantages. Reviews serve as an awesome tool for building trust and improving online presence.
Traditional PR
This channel deals with all kinds of time-proven public relations distribution. Once you've given birth to a new product, you can write a press release and send it to any relevant sites or publications. In their turn, they'll publish your video, share it on social media accounts, or write reviews.
How to measure your B2B video strategy performance?
Hooray! With all the previous stages completed, the time has come to see if your video marketing strategy has produced any results.
In general, there are two things you can check – video content placed on your website and pieces shared on YouTube.
Analyze videos on your website with data integration
Data integration means using different platforms and digital tools to get important information about the performance of video content shared on your website.
To figure out how your audience perceives and reacts to your content, you may use such measuring website platform as Google Analytics, a data collection instrument like HubSpot; and Wistia - a private video hosting. Armed with these helpers, you can discover which of your videos are watched till the end and which ones are skipped. Or even gather precious pieces of information about your leads.
Key performance indicators (KPIs)
You can access many different metrics once you've started promoting your videos. All numbers are important as they show particular information about your video marketing strategy's performance.
Take a look at the list of the most crucial metrics and what messages they convey about your content.
• View count. It displays the number of times your video has been watched. This metric can help you assess your content promotion.
• Play rate. This metric shows how many website visitors clicked on your video and started watching it. In a word, play rate helps you understand if your video is placed in the right spot and how engaging it is for your potential customers.
• Engagement. This metric is the king as it discloses the effectiveness of your video production marketing strategy. It reveals what percentage of each video your website visitors have consumed.
• Click-through rate. It shows the number of users that have clicked on your video's call to action and how good your video is at inspiring leads to take action.
• Comments & interactions. Don't underestimate this metric because it can help you realize how much your video has influenced your audience. In addition, it's a wonderful tool that might help you craft more targeted video content for each of your social media platforms.
• Conversion rate. It's one of the most significant metrics you should check to find out how many leads or customers your videos helped to convert.
YouTube Analytics
Considering that YouTube has become the most popular video-sharing platform and the second biggest search engine, you need to include it in your social media video marketing strategy.
YouTube offers a solid analytics panel with various metrics, reports, and indicators. All of these numbers showcase crucial information that can help you scale your b2b video marketing strategy and achieve greater results on this platform.
Analyze your content promotion with the help of such reports as impressions, click-through rates, etc. Specifically, you can gather valuable information about your prospects, such as age, gender, device type, etc. You can also check the average view duration, watch time, and earnings.
Your Video Marketing Strategy's ROI
There is a number of different ways to calculate a content marketing video strategy's ROI. Let us concentrate on income.
As soon as you finish your video marketing, you can transform some KPIs into meaningful and credible figures to make it clear how much income your video content has produced. You can evaluate how video views have impacted purchasing decisions and which videos have been most popular among leads that convert. That's to say, you can identify which content has been the most efficient in generating revenue.
Top 5 Examples
Your business can create compelling marketing videos that will reveal your company's values and objectives. Check out this short list of top five video examples to get your creative juices flowing.
Google Ads Success Story: Chuckling Goat
This piece is a fine example of a testimonial video. Google UK opted to show one of their customers' feedback in the form of a video. And it turned out to be one of the best decisions they've ever made as the main way they generate income is through search ads.
Such content can be very quick and easy to create. Don't hesitate to shoot these videos if you have happy customers eager to share their experiences with your business. They can be placed on your sales pages and homepages and shared on social media.
Founder Brewing Co.: The Story
This corporate video features the employees of Founders Brewing Co. talking about their brand and how things work in their cool company.
If you decide to make a corporate video, try to add an amusing element to your story. Show fun and pleasant things about your company culture to inform your potential team members about your key advantages and show them what their experience of working for you might be like. Use this type of video content to explain what distinguishes your business from your competitors.
How does Miscroft Azure work?
Microsoft created this short explainer video for B2B businesses that strive to repeat their success. This well-crafted piece is aimed at educating the audience on Microsoft's enterprise cloud solution. Smooth animations and a top-grade voiceover while clarifying what cloud hosting services offer make the video shine.
Mental Health Course for The Trevor Project
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The Trevor Project received a grant from New York City and asked Lemons Animation Studio to create a series of 6 videos to provide users with the knowledge and tools to take care of their mental well-being and help people with mental issues.
Lemons' team added animated patterns and text on live footage to make the video easier to perceive for youngsters who are known to have a short attention span and an eye for non-genuine things.
Next School: 6 prbolems with our School System
This 7-minute educational video's primary goal was to transform the school system. To complete this task, Lemons Animation Studio decided to use an isometric style with phrases from famous people. The video produced an immense effect on the target audience.
Bottom line
A well-thought-out video content marketing strategy at your disposal increases your chances of establishing deep emotional connections with your prospects, boosting your online presence, improving your brand awareness, nurturing trust, and enhancing conversions. You get a competitive advantage over other businesses by implementing some innovative features and tools into your strategy.
However, building a solid video marketing strategy from scratch is extremely time-consuming as you need to think through many aspects. Use this ultimate guide to take the first steps in this direction. Alternatively, consult video marketing experts to help bring your ideas to life and effectively support your business growth by developing a robust video marketing strategy tailored to your specific needs and wants.
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