Video marketing is an effective way to engage audiences using sound, images, music, and other elements. As digital video consumption is expected to increase, it’s important to incorporate it into social media strategies. There are various options such as traditional ads or live streaming, and with editing apps, creating authentic videos is easy. So, how does it effectively work?
Marketing Goals: Charting Your Path to Success
When starting a new marketing strategy, it is important to set clear goals for your video marketing efforts. For beginners, it is recommended to start with a few specific goals rather than trying to accomplish too many things at once. For example, creating brand awareness can be a goal for video marketing. However, with a well-crafted script and creative approach, video marketing can also help guide prospects through the decision-making stage, educate customers about new purchases, and support brand advocacy.
In order to fully leverage the power of video marketing, it is important to align it with the five stages of the typical marketing funnel: reaching new customers, generating demand, driving conversions, educating customers and inspiring brand advocacy. Tailoring your social media video marketing strategy to these stages will maximize its effectiveness.
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Building Awareness: Reaching a Broader Customer Base
Many social marketers aim to increase brand awareness, and video marketing on social media platforms is an effective way to achieve this. By creating engaging and informative videos that introduce consumers to your brand, products or services, you can capture their attention and differentiate yourself from your competitors. For some brands, videos are used heavily for advertising, while others create videos specifically for social media ads. This can be particularly useful for direct-to-consumer brands, as product videos can help customers envision themselves using the product.
Additionally, highlighting your company’s culture and core values in videos can establish an emotional connection with your audience, making them more likely to choose you.
Once a customer has made a purchase, it is important to provide them with resources to fully utilize and benefit from the product or service. This can be done through various forms of educational content such as videos, webinars, and live streams. These mediums offer opportunities for customers to engage with the brand, ask questions, and gain a deeper understanding of the features and capabilities of the product or service. This can help increase customer satisfaction and confidence in their purchase.
Remember, not all advocacy videos have to be viral or come from fans. Employee advocacy can also play a role in building a positive brand image. One way to do this is by featuring your employees in videos that highlight what it’s like working at your company and why they enjoy it. This can help give potential hires and customers a glimpse of the company culture and the people behind the brand.
Generating Demand, Converting and Educating
In order to effectively utilize video marketing, it’s important to select the appropriate platforms that align with your goals and audience. This means understanding the features, capabilities and video dimensions of each platform. This will also help to maximize the use of videos by repurposing them in platforms that work well together. As social media platforms continue to evolve, it can be challenging to stay informed about the different types of video content that can be uploaded and if any additional editing is required.
For YouTube, with its 2.5 billion monthly active users, remains a popular choice among consumers and marketers for video content. However, its large user base is not the only advantage of using YouTube for marketing. As it is also one of the most popular search engines, videos on YouTube have the potential to appear in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), increasing the visibility of a brand. Marketers can leverage this by creating content that targets commonly searched topics, increasing the chances of their videos showing up in search results.
Plus, choosing the right type of video for your brand is an important step in your marketing strategy. Different types of videos serve different purposes and it’s crucial to select the one that aligns with your key goals. According to research, 51% of consumers prefer videos that highlight a brand’s product or service, 39% prefer customer testimonials or demos, and 34% want to see videos that showcase a brand’s personality and are less produced. It’s important to consider the preferences of your target audience and create videos that cater to their needs.
Furthermore, there are several types of social media videos that can help your brand achieve authenticity, such as Educational, Explainer, Behind-the-scenes, Interviews, Entertaining, Testimonials, Product, and Narrative videos. Each type serves a different purpose and can help create brand awareness, establish the brand as an expert, provide a behind the scenes look, introduce a new influencer, entertain the audience, create social proof, showcase the product or service, and tell an engaging story. Once you’ve determined which types of videos to create, you can move on to planning the actual video.
Content Production Planning
Creating a comprehensive content production plan can help save time and money in the long run. It’s important to establish how you’ll create and film videos, whether through a spreadsheet or pen and paper. Reviewing and adjusting the plan during the process is also crucial, especially for first-time efforts. Once the plan is executed, move on to post-production.
Post-production is an important step in creating videos, especially for ads or videos that require heavy editing. It includes editing, adding captions, text overlays, call-to-action screens, and more. The more footage you have and the more polished you want the video to be, the more time it will require. Some videos may only need light editing, like a Facebook Live, while others like YouTube videos will require more work to optimize and stand out. Be aware of the level of effort required before starting to ensure you have enough time allocated for post-production.
Finally, once the video is complete, it’s time to schedule its release. It’s important to remember that audiences may watch older videos as well. By incorporating relevant keywords and choosing an evergreen topic, a video that is three years old may still be relevant to your audience today.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is a library –Srinivas Narayannan-
