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Top 7 Steps to an Excellent Video Marketing Strategy
The amount of videos watched online has significantly increased at a rate of 32% between 2013 and 2018. In fact, 92% of video marketers believe that video is an important part of their video marketing strategy. In the United States, people spend an average of 323 minutes per week watching videos online, especially on mobile devices.
Therefore, marketers must ensure to develop an effective & long term video marketing strategy so that they put forth their brand or business in the best possible way. Digital marketing is all about videos these days. Consumers prefer watching videos about a brand or product they support.
Fortunately, there are a plethora of ways marketers can use video content for an impactful social media video marketing strategy for their brand or business. Nowadays, companies are not limited to just television advertising or banner ads. With the introduction of live videos, much greater interest in brand authenticity and accessibility to different editing software or apps, it has become easier for companies to indulge in the video marketing space.
So, here is a 7-step guide that you can follow to create a successful video marketing strategy in 2022.
Top 7 Steps for an Excellent Video Marketing Strategy
1. Define Goals for Video Marketing
At the start of developing a video marketing strategy, the first step is to set goals. What would you like to achieve through your videos? At what stage of the marketing funnel, will these videos be placed?
We suggest that you set only a few goals in the beginning so you don’t get intimidated. One such example of a video marketing goal is to build brand awareness.
There are brands that make videos only for advertising purposes. They upload videos on the product page of their website, and later branch out to find themselves in a social ad. Other brands produce videos only for social media advertising. This is highly beneficial for direct-to-consumer brands, where product videos allow consumers to picture themselves with the product.
The three main stages of a marketing funnel are - Awareness, Consideration and Conversion. The videos can fall easily into each of these if you create your marketing strategy bearing these stages in mind.
Determining your goals and the marketing funnel stages will greatly help you create effective CTA in your videos.
3. Pick Your Platforms
Every social media platform has its own preferred video format. Whereas platforms like Facebook allow different types of video formats while TikTok & Snapchat focus on a single format.
If you’ve never used any social platform, start with the one where you already have a significant audience. As per a few statistics, people on Facebook, Instagram & Snapchat spend most of their time watching videos on these platforms. So, picking any one of these platforms will be a good step at the start of your video marketing strategy.
Picking the social media platform also determines how each one differs from other and the video dimensions it offers. This is necessary for reusing your video content on different platforms.
Video Format & Features of Various Social Media Platforms
Social platforms are constantly adding more features, which is why it can be difficult to know sometimes what type of video must be uploaded where or when it might need some extra editing. So, below mentioned are the video formats supported by each platform:
- Livestreaming (Facebook Live)
- Landscape and portrait feed video
- Facebook Stories
- Landscape and Portrait feed video
- Instagram Stories
- Instagram Live
- IGTV or Instagram TV
- Instagram Reels (short-form videos)
- Live Streaming
- Landscape feed video
- Live Streaming
- Landscape & Portrait Feed Video
- Livestream
YouTube
- Landscape Video
- Live Streaming
- Portrait Video
- Short Video
TikTok
- Portrait feed video
- Portrait feed video
Apart from this, you can also categorize your videos into Playlists on platforms like YouTube and Facebook.
3. Choose the Video Types
There are a variety of video styles for you to choose from. Social media videos can be used in a plethora of ways to support your entire content marketing strategy. Determining the video type that will work best for your brand or company is a crucial step in any video marketing strategy. Not all videos are produced in the same manner, however they should support key objectives of your brand.
Following are the different types of videos along with their benefits. There are various types of social media videos that you can try.
- Educational - These videos are informative and created with an aim to create brand awareness among new or potential customers. They have a more polished tone and are less casual, and portray the brand as an expert in the industry. Educational videos can also be produced as guides about a product for the current customers.
- Interviews - Interviews work really well for introducing new influencers to your audience or vice versa. It can be fun to talk about a product or brand to a guest speaker while building more authenticity.
- Testimonials - Testimonials are customer reviews or highlights that create social proof for a product or brand. Testimonials showcase how a customer uses a product or service and the way they’re satisfied with it. This compels a potential customer to try and purchase that product.
- Behind-the-scenes -These videos give a sneak peek into the operations and employees of a company. These can either entertain the audience or give a behind-the-scenes look of a brand.
- Entertaining - Such videos involve pranks or even jokes to entertain the audience. Their sole purpose is to entertain the customers but they can also emphasize on the brand voice while building a sense of community.
As per studies, 88% of consumers claimed that they were convinced to purchase a product or service after watching a brand’s video.
4. Plan the Production Process
A thoughtful video production plan will save both your time and money for the long term. Whether you draw a rough draft on paper or create a flowchart of all the processes involved, it’s imperative that you must know how your video will be produced right from the start.
You can definitely hire a professional video production agency for the production and post-production process for your video. This will remove a lot of stress as they’ll deal with all the planning & filming, and all you’ve to do is guide them through.
However, if you’re planning to produce a video in-house, you’ll have to put in efforts in executing few main steps like:
- Arranging all the equipment & props
- Writing the script
- Storyboarding the script
- Planning the shoot
- Gathering the right actors & other crew for shooting the video
- Deciding the shoot location and trying to film in daylight
- Picking the video editors
- Determining the personnel to approve the script, shoot, etc
- Verifying the music you wish to choose is licensed for your video
While you plan for the video, you’ll be required to tweak or add a few things you missed earlier. Once you’ve developed a solid plan for it, you can move towards post-production.
5. Steps That Are Involved in Post-Production
Post-production process is quite time-consuming, especially when you’re creating marketing videos or videos that require too much editing. Post-production is a lot more than just trimming & clubbing clips together while adding music to it. It also involves adding overlays, text, subtitles, effects, call-to-action, etc. You’ll need more time to create a more polished video.
Few videos may not require heavy post-production. Before you begin, it's important to know what kind of videos you’re trying to create. Videos that are more formal may require a little more work than a basic live-action video.
6. Schedule & Promote Your Videos
Once your video is ready, it’s time to schedule and promote your content. There are a lot of platforms where you can upload your videos.
You can post your videos on different social media platforms during an entire month, depending on the schedule you choose. For example, on Twitter, a video can be promoted multiple times. In order to promote a livestream, you’ll have to do it at the right time when a large number of people can join.
Additionally, you can combine multiple clips and promote as a single video. Think out of the box when it comes to Explainer video production company.
7. Analyze the Metrics Thoroughly
The last step is the most important of all. You won’t know how your video is performing, unless you analyze its metrics. The number of views. What is the watch-time? The number of likes, comments and shares on a video. Each platform offers different types of metrics so it's ideal to understand them before starting the production.
The last step is the most important of all. You won’t know how your explainer video is performing, unless you analyze its metrics. The number of views. What is the watch-time? The number of likes, comments and shares on a video. Each platform offers different types of metrics so it's ideal to understand them before starting the production.
The statistics that you use measure your video’s performance should match the goals you define in the beginning. If you want to create brand awareness for your video, you need to add a CTA that includes a website link for your audience to know more about the product or service.
You must also bear in mind that even old videos will be watched by your viewers. A combination of an evergreen topic and relevant keywords may even work today for the right audience.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are the examples of video marketing?
Video is leading the digital marketing space these days. Some of the best examples of video marketing are explainer videos, 2D animation, landing page videos, vlogs and social media campaigns.
2. What are the essential elements of a video?
The top essential elements of a video are:
- Video script
- The length of the video
- Video content
- Format
- Sound effects
- Lighting
- Editing of a video
- Captions/Subtitles & Title of the video
3. How does video marketing work?
As we already discussed, video content is the most effective form of approach one can use to promote or market a brand or product. Video marketing compels the target audience to try and purchase the product or service it promotes. Video is more convincing than text as the viewers can see how a particular product or idea will address their pain points in the long run.
Conclusion
So, there you are with the top steps that must be followed to formulate a successful video marketing strategy. Each step is valuable in itself, and can’t be ignored. Therefore, it’s necessary to provide utmost attention to each one of them in order to get the maximum benefit of your video marketing strategy.
