How to Create a Video Marketing Strategy

With the popularity of YouTube and TikTok, the rise of social media, and an increase in mobile usage, the conditions for video marketing success are just right.

Not only that, but an increase in free or affordable online tools has made this marketing channel accessible to smaller businesses as well as their larger competitors. This means everyone can get a piece of the pie!

But is it worth your time and investment? The answer to this is a resounding yes. Take a look at the top reasons for including video in your content marketing plan:

1. Video Marketing Boosts Conversions

When you boil it down, we’re all in this business to make money, right? Which is why video marketing should be high up on your priority list. A study carried out by Wyzowl found that 78% of marketers attributed a rise in sales directly to video marketing, whilst 86% said it had increased traffic to their website.

The numbers don’t lie – including video in your marketing strategy isn’t just about making things look pretty.

In addition to this, videos encourage customers to spend longer on your pages and also help them to better understand your services and products. Both of these things give you an increased chance of scoring a conversion. Plus, a greater understanding of what you can offer reduces the risk of dissatisfied customers in the long run!

2. Helps With Brand Building and Storytelling

Customers love a brand that has a good story behind it. A compelling narrative helps to build a stronger connection with your users, as well as increase trust and legitimacy.

Part of this comes from the fact that you can inject more of your personality into videos. Sure, you can write a bunch of witty copy, but it’s not quite the same as seeing the face behind the brand and hearing them talk with enthusiasm about what they offer.

In this way, video can humanize your business. You’d be surprised by how many people value the sight of a real person, and the impact that has on their interactions with your brand.

3. Video Appeals to Different Types of Visitors

As the world around us has changed and developed, so, too, has the way we consume information. We’re living in a time of instant gratification, where our attention span lasts for mere seconds and you can bet your bottom dollar that your potential customers aren’t going to be hanging onto your every written word.

As well as being visually more appealing, absorbing information via video requires minimal effort, so even the most casual of visitors are likely to engage with your content.

It also targets those customers who digest details better through watching rather than reading, allowing you to appeal to a wider audience.

The increased use of mobile devices means that most people expect to watch videos as part of their purchasing journey. This is also partly due to the prevalence of video across social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok.

These trends have bred a generation that wants to see your brand and products in action before they commit and make any buying decisions.

4. Video Has Great SEO Benefits

Once again, video proves that it has more to offer than just its aesthetic advantages – this time in the form of great SEO benefits. Not only does it increase the amount of time your visitors spend on your pages, but it also helps to enhance your authority in the eyes of Google.

This is because video increases the quality of your content and adds relevance, which is something that search engines are also looking out for when deciding their rankings.

Plus, people are more likely to share videos than written media. This results in more backlinks to your website, which boosts your credibility. If lots of people are looking to you as an expert on a certain topic, Google is more likely to sit up and take notice, too.

If you need any further evidence of this, just take a look at the search engine results pages. Google often displays videos above page links.

That means that your potential customers are going to be seeing videos way before they get to your carefully curated meta titles and descriptions. It’s worth having a video up there to counter this, and to get your website as close to the top as possible!

Advice From the Experts

Maria Shriver

Maria Shriver is a mother of four, an Emmy and Peabody award-winning journalist, a seven-time New York Times bestselling author, an NBC News special anchor, and founder of the nonprofit The Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement and the new brain wellness company Mosh Life.

Video marketing plays an essential part in your brand storytelling. It's an excellent way to demonstrate the personality of your brand while creating a personal connection with your audience. People love getting to know the people and story behind their favorite products. And regularly posting short-format videos to your social media feed highlighting your brand's inception, mission, values, products, CSR initiatives, and everyday gains weaves a compelling narrative that takes your audience along on the journey.

Before you begin building your video marketing plan, it’s a good idea to think about what type of videos you want to produce. You might think that all videos are effectively the same, but they all have different styles and purposes, and one type might be better for your business over another.

Advice From the Experts

Randy VanderVaate

Randy VanderVaate is the CEO and founder of Funeral Funds of America, a nationwide life insurance provider.

Think about what kind of videos will be most engaging and informative for your target audience, and produce content that is genuinely worth watching. Once you have a few strong pieces in your portfolio, you can then begin to expand your scope and produce more videos regularly. Quality should always be your main priority in video marketing - so make sure not to sacrifice it in the pursuit of quantity!

Take a look below at some of the types of videos you can use in your video marketing strategy:

• Commercials – Television commercials have been around since the 1950s and they’re still going strong today. Nowadays, however, they’re not just restricted to television, and you’re likely to see lots of them popping up on social media platforms, too.
• Social Videos – In addition to commercials, social media platforms often have their own video-sharing capabilities. Both Instagram and Facebook use Stories and host live recordings, while TikTok is built entirely around sharing videos.
• Explainer and Demo Videos – Explainer and demo videos are ideal for educating customers as well as showing your products or services in action. They’re suited to both your website and your social pages and will go a long way to secure those extra sales.
• Product Videos – Online shopping has long been the norm, but increasingly, consumers aren’t happy to commit to a purchase just based on a few photos. They want to see products being used and modeled so they can decide if they want to invest.
• Testimonials – There’s nothing quite like a bit of social proof. Reviews go a long way to convincing potential customers to take a chance on your products. Using video to show these testimonials makes them more engaging and easier to digest.
• Brand Videos – These videos are all about storytelling. They do the very important job of helping your visitors connect and build trust. Plus, they’re great for adding some extra personality to your business.

Of course, this list isn’t exhaustive – there are tons of other ways you can use video in your content strategy. Plus, as the marketing landscape changes, so does the way businesses are using video to promote their brands and products.

Have fun with the videos you’re planning to create, and don’t be scared to get creative. Innovation often leads to the best kind of success! 

Find Out More

• How To Start a Vlog: Learn vlogging tips and tricks in our full guide!
• TikTok Ideas for Businesses: Get inspiration for making TikToks

Before you actually start your video marketing creation, you’ll need to build your strategy first.

Why? Well, you wouldn’t set off on a long, unfamiliar journey without a map, would you? It’s the same when you begin a new digital marketing tactic. Your strategy will determine your course and keep you on track to reaching your goals.

Below, we’ll take you through the six key steps to creating your own strategy and help you on your way to video marketing success.

1. Identify Your Audience

Like with anything, you’re more likely to see success if you have a clear idea of who and what you’re targeting with the videos you’re creating. As much as we’d love to tell you that you can appeal to everyone, there’s going to be a particular group that your product will resonate with more.

Once you’ve identified what this group is, you’ll also find it much easier to decide on which kinds of videos you need to create. This is because certain types of people will spend their time in different places. There’s no point creating a ton of videos for TikTok if your audience prefers Facebook!

By having a clear idea of your audience and their preferences from the beginning, you can keep a much narrower focus during video production. This means the whole process will be much more streamlined.

2. Determine the Goals of Your Videos

It might sound obvious, but make sure you know why you’re making these videos.

As we mentioned above, there are a ton of different video types out there, all of which are designed for a specific purpose. It’s key that you know what you want to achieve with your videos, so you pick the right types to focus on.

It’s easy to make the mistake of trying to do too much, which is a risk you run if you don’t set out your ultimate aims at the beginning.

That’s not to say that you only have to choose one type of video! In fact, different parts of your funnel will call for different forms of video. However, it’s best to know this in advance, so that when you get to the planning stage, later on, you’ve got a good idea of how you’re going to split your budget and resources.

Advice From the Experts

Ankur Goyal

Ankur Goyal is the Head of Growth at Coterie, a modern baby care brand for the uncompromising parent.

Target every stage of the marketing funnel with your video content. Some brands treat video like it only serves one purpose, or they cram all of their marketing goals into a single video. Maximizing video potential means developing a strategy that highlights three steps in the customer journey: awareness, engagement, and purchase.

When it comes to deciding on your goals, it’s also a good idea to split them into long-term and short-term aims. Not only will this make it easier for you to structure your strategy, but it’ll also help the task to feel less overwhelming. If you’ve planned in lots of little steps, you’ll feel like you’re making more progress towards achieving your ultimate long-term goal.

Once your strategy gets underway, this approach will also help you keep your videos cohesive. This is because you’ll have plenty of points at which you can check in to make sure your tone and messaging are on brand and working towards their desired purpose.

3. Decide a Timeline and Budget

This is a big one! If you’re a practical planner, it’s likely that the very first thing you thought about was how long your video strategy might take and how much it’s going to cost you.

Budget

The good news is that, nowadays, making videos isn’t as costly as you might imagine. Don’t get us wrong – you’ll have to make some kind of investment if you want to produce quality videos – but you won’t have to ship in state-of-the-art cameras and expensive film crews to get going!

Advice From the Experts

Paige Arnof-Fenn

Paige Arnof-Fenn is the founder & CEO of global marketing and branding firm, Mavens & Moguls. Her clients include Microsoft, Virgin, The New York Times Company, Colgate, venture-backed startups as well as non-profit organizations.

In a mobile-first world, you have less time to grab people. Attention spans are shorter than ever, but video is great for showing vs telling for maximum impact. Video does not have to be expensive, it just needs to educate, inform or entertain in a way that is timely and relevant so that people find it useful and ideally pass it along. The key is to connect with your audience on an emotional level. Sometimes the cheapest ideas have the most impact.

There are plenty of ways to get recording nowadays, whether you want to use an affordable online software like Loom, or just shoot directly from your smartphone.

However, it does pay to spend a chunk of time in the editing room, polishing up your videos so they have that professional sheen. Make sure that when you’re outlining your total spend, you factor this in.

Timeline

Once you’ve established your budget, it’s time to decide your timeline. This should cover two things: how long it will take to get your video marketing up and running, and how long you want your video marketing campaign to run.

The latter is somewhat determined by your budget because you can only keep going as long as you have the cash to produce and edit new videos. The first is a bit more difficult to pin down. We’d recommend using your short and long-term aims to decide how much time you have to get things off the ground.

4. Choose the Platforms You’re Going to Broadcast On

There are plenty of video-friendly platforms out there, and there’s a good chance you won’t be able to broadcast on all of them. It’s time to choose which ones you’re going to target.

As we mentioned earlier, this will largely depend on your audience and where they prefer to spend their time. But there’s more to it than that – you’ll also need to make sure that each video is specifically optimized for that specific platform.

This is because every platform has its own algorithms and preferences that will determine your video’s success:

• YouTube: You’ll need to buff up your SEO – integrate keywords into your descriptions and titles to increase your views.
• Facebook: prefers a shorter video, formatted within a square.
• Twitter: isn’t known for lengthy clips, so focus on keeping things well under a minute, and make sure you get popular hashtags involved.
• Instagram: Spend time on your thumbnail image. Make it as attractive as possible, because this is what you’ll want people to pick out from a sea of reels.

There are a ton of video marketing tips we could reel off here, but the bottom line is that it’s important to do your research. Make sure you know what your target platform wants, and then deliver it.

5. Develop Video Content Ideas

Now we get to the fun bit: deciding on your video messaging and planning your videos. This is where you can get creative. Write those witty scripts, create those colorful storyboards – do anything that’s going to help you create visually compelling videos that your customers are going to love!

Hey, you might be thinking, isn’t it a bit late in the day to be thinking of what you want your videos to do and say?

Actually, although it’s good to have a vague idea of what you want your messaging to do, we think that leaving this until the end is a good idea. That’s because all of the hefty planning has been done and you know what your creative constraints are.

As exciting as this part is, you still need to be realistic. For example, how do you know you’ve got the cash to hire Tom Cruise if you haven’t done your budget? It’s best to work out all of the details before your big ideas get away from you.

This also applies to the platforms you’re planning to use. It’s important to know which formats they like best before you whip your camera out and start recording reams of film that you’ll most likely never use.

Plus, just because this might be one of the last things you do doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind further down the line. As with all digital marketing strategies, flexibility is key. If something isn’t working, change it.

Sure, you might need to make some tweaks to your budget and timeline, but being reactive to the wider context is important if you want to see long-term success.

Advice From the Experts

Gary Warner

Gary Warner is the Marketing Manager at Joloda Hydraroll, the global partner for loading and unloading systems.

A top tip for an effective marketing strategy is to speak to other departments when planning. Ask your sales team, for example, what questions customers have or what misunderstandings they encounter when talking to people about your products. You can then produce videos that specifically demonstrate these things to people pre-empting their questions and providing precisely the information they want.

6. Identify Metrics to Track Performance

This is it – you’re almost there! All of the hard work is done and the only thing that’s left is to launch.

Before you get too carried away, though, there’s one small but important job to complete: choosing which metrics you’re going to use to track your videos’ performance.

Whether that be clicks, viewing time, social shares, or comments, the data you gather from these metrics will help you to understand the effectiveness of your campaign and the overall return on investment (ROI). It’ll also most likely determine whether you continue with video marketing in the future.

Let's recap

Summary

Video is taking the digital world by storm, and with your new shiny video marketing strategy, you can now be part of this dynamic marketing wave!</p> <p>To recap, here’s a quick roundup of the key steps you’ll need to take in order to create your video marketing strategy:

1

Identify Your Audience

Decide Who You’re Going To Target

This will help to keep your strategy streamlined. Use personas to put yourself in your customers’ shoes.

2

Determine the Goals of Your Videos

Decide What You Want Your Videos To Achieve

What is their purpose? What kinds of videos do you need to create for each part of your customer funnel? Why?

3

Decide a Timeline and Budget

Determine How Much Money and Time You Have To Spend

Knowing your budget and timeline helps you to keep things realistic.

4

Choose Your Platforms

Select the Platforms You’re Planning To Create Videos For

Each platform has different formats and formulas which work better than others. Once you’ve decided where you’re going to broadcast your videos, make sure you know what works best on that particular channel.

5

Develop Video Content Ideas

Decide What Your Videos Are Going To Say and Look Like

Get creative! Use all your previous planning to decide what your videos are going to say and look like once you get to the creation stage.

6

Identify Metrics to Track Performance

Choose Your Success Metrics

Selecting your success metrics will help you measure your videos’ performance further down the line. It’ll also allow you to work out your return on investment, as well as identifying areas for improvement when you start your next video marketing campaign.

And that’s it! Once you’ve created your video marketing strategy, don’t forget to tell us all about your experiences in the comments below.