Saying that marketing has changed a lot over the years would be an understatement. Brands must always stay on their toes if they wish to remain in the limelight in today’s growingly competitive environment. The shift from traditional advertising toward the digital realm created many new opportunities for brands and marketers. But one of the most significant changes was to their marketing approach — with the growing popularity of online video, many businesses found massive success with video content marketing!
In today’s fast-paced world, businesses must fight for consumer attention relentlessly. And since entertaining them and being unique has become essential to standing out from the crowd, video quickly proved to be the best medium for that!
But what is it about video that is so appealing to consumers? The answer is simple — videos are more engaging than text, more vivid than images, and contain the human element most other types of ads lack! When you combine that with the fact that videos have become one of the most popular mediums online, it’s clear why so many brands have been turning toward online video content marketing.
We don’t expect you to take our word for it. Here are some video content marketing statistics to prove it:
- 85% of U.S. internet users watch videos monthly.
- Videos on social media generate 48% more views than any other type of post.
- 60% of businesses leverage videos in their marketing strategies.
- 93% of brands got a new customer because of a video on social networks.
The above numbers are staggering, wouldn’t you agree? But how successful is video at generating leads and driving sales? According to OptinMonster, 89% of businesses using videos report having good ROI, meaning it’s unlikely your investment will fall flat!
Although it’s evident video content marketing is lucrative, getting into it can be pretty challenging. Taking up a new and complicated medium like video can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be! That is why we prepared this in-depth video content marketing guide to help you grow your business with the power of video!
Since there’s a lot to cover, let’s start with the basics.
- What Is Video Content Marketing
- Benefits of Video Content Marketing
- How to Create a Video Content Marketing Strategy
- 6 Tips to Boost Your Video Content Marketing Efforts
- Best Video Content Marketing Examples of Recent Years
- Time to Get the Camera Rolling!
What Is Video Content Marketing
Video content marketing is a form of internet marketing that entails using videos in lead generation, customer retention, and sales processes. However, there is much more to it than that.
Video marketing also entails incorporating videos into every marketing channel and stage of the marketing funnel. That means it can also play a supporting role in your marketing endeavors. Including videos in your blog posts or publishing a video version of your podcast are excellent examples of that.
Digital video content marketing can also be essential to your content distribution process. Why? Because it opens up plenty of opportunities and gives brands a means to reach massive audiences. Social media video platforms like YouTube and TikTok have skyrocketed in popularity recently, making them fertile ground for brands looking to market their products.
So when we combine all of the above, what is the best way to define video content marketing? Here’s our answer:
Video content marketing is a form of digital marketing that can be used at every step of the marketing funnel and content distribution to facilitate business growth using informative, helpful, or promotional video content.
The above versatility of video content marketing is the primary reason it became so popular. And when you combine that with all the tangible benefits it brings to the table, you get a surefire recipe for success!
Benefits of Video Content Marketing
Since we just mentioned the benefits of video content marketing, what are they? There are many, but here are some of the most notable ones:
- Videos Build Trust and Brand Credibility — Videos are an excellent medium to give your brand a face and dispel the corporate stigma surrounding it. They are also fantastic at inciting passion in your viewers, making it easier to build lasting relationships with your consumers.
- It Helps in the Consumer Decision-Making Process — A well-constructed video can play a vital role in making consumers pick your brand over your competitors. As many as 84% of people say they decided to buy a product or service after watching a branded video!
- Video Is Excellent for Building Brand Awareness — Due to the high potential reach videos have, they are a tried-and-tested medium for building brand awareness. With dozens of video-sharing websites and social media video platforms out there, a single video can easily expose your brand to millions of viewers!
- It Has the Best Viral Potential — Videos are the type of online content that most often goes viral. Although you cannot plan to make a viral video, a video can single-handedly get your brand on its feet if it goes viral.
- Videos Boost Traffic and Help Your Site’s SEO — Incorporating videos on your website is beneficial in many ways, but the most notable one is that videos can help boost your site’s SEO. Aside from having your videos appear in Google’s SERPs and video search tab, they will help keep your visitors engaged with your content longer. All of that results in higher website traffic over the long haul.
Regardless of how powerful videos are as a marketing tool, if you wish to enjoy all the benefits they can bring, you will first need to create a foolproof video content marketing strategy.
You Might Also Like: 10 Best Viral Marketing Videos of Recent Times
How to Create a Video Content Marketing Strategy
It shouldn’t be hard to figure out that having a video content marketing plan is crucial to success. An in-depth strategy should cover everything from video production to distribution and performance evaluation. Skipping the planning part altogether can doom your campaign to failure before you even start it.
So how do you create and document a large-scope video marketing strategy? The process is not too complicated, and anyone can do it as long as they stick to a few tips.
8 Crucial Steps of an Effective Video Marketing Strategy
Here are eight steps you should follow to make a video marketing strategy. All of these are essential for success, so don’t try to take the easy way out!
1. Set Clear Goals
The first step on any marketing journey should be setting goals, and the same applies when creating a video content marketing strategy. The reason is simple — putting things into perspective and setting long-term goals is crucial for success.
The best way to start is by asking yourself the following question: “What do I want to achieve with this campaign?” Is your goal to drive sales? Are you looking to improve customer retention? Or are you perhaps looking to build brand awareness? These are just some of the goals you might set for your campaign, and your choice will play a pivotal role in further planning.
Another thing you should keep in mind when setting goals is how you’re going to track your progress. If you’re going to make an awareness-building campaign, you need to think of a way to measure its success in advance. Why? Because relying on intuitive or half-baked data is a surefire way to waste money.
64% of marketing executives “strongly agree” that data-driven marketing is crucial to success.
Having a data-driven content strategy will allow you to stay informed about your campaign’s performance and let you fine-tune it on the fly. So unless you want your campaign to underperform, don’t skimp out on this step.
2. Research Your Audience
After you’ve got your goals set in stone, the next thing you should do is do audience research. This step can make or break your entire campaign, so make sure you take your time to get it right!
So how do you begin? The best way to start is to ask yourself the following questions:
- Who is my product for?
- Do these users need my product, or do I need to generate demand?
- What is the best way to market to my target audience?
These questions will cover everything you need to get from your audience research process and will help you optimize your targeting.
The best place to start is by determining your target audience demographics. Data like age, gender, occupation, and location are just some of the factors you might want to consider when deciding who to target. The best way to record and streamline this data is to create a buyer persona. That will represent your ideal customer and will serve as a template to follow when targeting consumers.
But why is knowing your target audience demographic so vital? The most notable reason is to help you select the best tone and platform for your marketing video. For instance, platforms like TikTok would be the prime choice for marketing to millennials, while you’d have to look elsewhere to reach older viewers.
Another crucial thing to consider when doing audience research is which part of the marketing funnel they belong to. Identifying whether your target consumers are sales-ready or are just beginning their buyer’s journey is essential to success.
The video type you choose to use will depend on the part of the marketing funnel you’re targeting, so getting this information right is essential to your campaign’s success.
Speaking of video types…
3. Create a Video Content Calendar
Once you’ve built the foundations for your strategy and researched your audience, it’s time to make a video content calendar.
What is a video content calendar? It’s a long-term and detailed plan of your video content marketing efforts. Content calendars help you keep track of:
- Video-Making Deadlines,
- Publishing Dates,
- Promotion Schedules,
- Review Dates,
- And more…
An all-rounded video content calendar will contain other information as well, such as the type of video you’re making and the platforms you’ll be promoting it on.
Aside from the above, a calendar will help you keep track of recurring events and your entire publishing schedule. But even if you’re a small business without extensive video marketing needs and think you don’t need a written calendar to manage, documenting your video marketing strategy is beneficial for other reasons too. One of the most notable ones is that it makes reevaluating and comparing your campaigns more manageable, so turning a blind eye to this step would be foolish.
4. Decide What Type of Video You Will Make
The third step on your video content marketing journey will be to decide which type of video you’ll make. As we’ve mentioned in the above step, your choice will depend on the part of the marketing funnel you’re targeting, so here are some excellent options for each of them:
| Stage of the Funnel | Best Video Types |
|---|---|
| Awareness |
Brand Films Explainer Videos Educational Videos Inspirational Videos |
| Consideration |
Email Videos Company Culture Videos Product Videos Case Study Videos |
| Decision |
Personalized Videos Instructional Videos FAQ Videos Testimonial Videos |
All of the above have their pros and cons, but they’re all potent tools for their respective parts of the marketing funnel. Your choice will depend entirely on your business goals and strategy, so we cannot help you decide here.
For instance, if you’re targeting the decision stage of the funnel and find out that your support team receives many similar inquiries, filming an FAQ video would likely be the best investment. Alternately, if your goal is to increase your conversion rates for sales-qualified leads, personalized video is the way to go.
5. Write a Script
The key to making a fantastic video lies in planning. And you cannot plan without writing a script!
This step will make your entire video creation process seamless if done right. Although you may think you can wing it, we wouldn’t recommend that. The best way to ensure a smooth shooting session and minimize video editing times is by planning your video out in detail. That is where a script can prove invaluable.
First, begin by making a rough outline of your video idea. Write down the key scenes and your vision of what the video should look like. Then, continue to arrange these points in a logical flow and fill in the blanks. That will help you formulate your script and better visualize what you’re trying to accomplish.
Now use that outline as a guide when writing your script! Unfortunately, we cannot give you a foolproof recipe for success here, as that will entirely depend on your imagination. However, we can offer a few valuable pieces of advice:
- Keep it simple.
- Use short words and sentences.
- Don’t make it too long or too short.
- Ensure your video is engaging.
As long as you keep the above in mind, success should be just around the corner!
6. Create a Video Storyboard
Writing a video script is just the first part of planning out your video production. A script covers the concept and the dialogue in the video. However, you also need to create a plan for the visual part of your video — a video storyboard.
A storyboard is like a script but for scenes! It is a handy way to illustrate and visualize critical scenes of your video, including frame transitions. A storyboard will make planning out your set easier and help you synchronize your dialogue with the on-screen action.
Once you get your script and storyboard handled, you can start filming your video!
7. Syndicate Your Videos
After you finish making your video, the next part of every successful video content marketing strategy is to promote it! The best way to do that is by syndicating your video to various platforms.
Video syndication entails uploading and promoting your videos on multiple channels. These can be anything from social media sites to various video-sharing platforms. Each video syndication platform has its intrinsic audience, and these differ from platform to platform. So if you want to get the most value out of video syndication, invest only in platforms your target audience frequents.
The above is part of the reason we emphasized the importance of audience research. If your videos don’t reach the right eyes, it will be detrimental to your ROI. So before you go all out and start promoting your videos everywhere, make sure the platform you’ll be syndicating to is worth your time and investment.
8. Track and Reevaluate Your Campaign’s Performance
Finally, the last step of every successful video marketing strategy is keeping track of its performance. Although this step might seem relatively intuitive, you’d be surprised how many professionals neglect it.
Tracking, analyzing, and reevaluating your campaign is the best way to get a clear picture of what works and what doesn’t. That will allow you to tweak your distribution, targeting, and even content to maximize its effectiveness.
So if you thought your job was done after launching and promoting your video, you were wrong! Tracking the success of your video is as imperative, if not more. If you notice your viewers are or engagement rates are underperforming, it might be time to make some changes.
Overall, as long as you stay up to date with your ongoing campaign, you’ll have the highest chances of success.
6 Tips to Boost Your Video Content Marketing Efforts
Now that we’ve taught you how to make a video marketing strategy, let us give you a few tips that can help you boost its effectiveness. The worst thing that can happen is for your plan to fall flat. Implementing the following six tips will minimize the odds of that happening:
1. Ensure Your Videos Are High Quality
In today’s day and age when we’re surrounded by mass media and 4K video, making a low-quality video can doom your campaign from the get-go. Video quality standards have risen over the years, and what was acceptable just a few years ago no longer is. Viewers won’t hesitate to leave early if they see a low-quality video.
But what quality renditions are deemed acceptable nowadays? What do viewers expect to get from a marketing video? They expect something they can watch without having their eyes bleed! Here’s a fine example of what you should aim for and what you should avoid:
Considering that most video content nowadays has an HD option, giving your viewers access to at least 720p quality should be enough to satisfy most. People aren’t unreasonable — they just don’t want to watch a blurry mess of a video!
2. Start With an Attention-Grabbing Hook
The sea of video content people can enjoy at a click of a button is vast, so your video must compete with billions of others. However, before it even gets an opportunity to shine, it has to catch your viewers’ eyes. That is why having a compelling hook to pique your audience’s interest is essential!
Although 90% of viewers watch the first ten seconds of a video, the number of those who stick around to the 1-minute mark drops by 50%!
These numbers are staggering, but they illustrate just how fickle an average viewer’s attention is. That is why you’ll need to start your video with a bang! Using a compelling hook in your videos to draw your users’ attention will allow your video to engage them and have them stick around.
These can be anything from a joke or an interesting fact to an intriguing question. But regardless of how you decide to approach this, you must grab your viewers’ attention within the first ten seconds. If you don’t, you’re unlikely to get much value from your video marketing campaign.
3. Tell a Story
After you grab your viewers’ attention, you will have to keep it. That is where the power of video storytelling can help you!
People have been telling stories since the dawn of time, and today’s modern technology only made that easier. Video has also proven to be one of the most effective mediums for telling captivating stories, so it would be foolish not to use that to your advantage.
Incorporating storytelling in your videos has many benefits, but here are some of the most notable ones:
- Stories keep viewers engaged longer.
- People have an easier time relating to stories.
- Story-driven videos are cheaper to produce and require fewer edits.
Aside from the above, using video storytelling is a surefire way to make your brand stand out from the crowd. It can help you make stronger connections and form long-lasting relationships with your consumers.
After all, what would you rather watch — a bland promo video or a dynamic video showcasing a brand’s vision or values? We don’t know about you, but we’d pick the latter any day!
4. Make Sure Your Videos Are Accessible
Another piece of video content marketing advice we have for you is to make your videos with accessibility in mind. What does that mean? It means you should aim to cater to all types of viewers, including those with hearing or visual impairment.
Inclusivity should be an essential part of every brand, and that goes for their marketing videos too! But don’t worry; making your videos accessible to everyone doesn’t take too much extra effort but can significantly increase your reach and brand credibility.
There are two effective ways to make your videos more accessible:
- Video Captions
- Audio Descriptions
Implementing both of these is the best way to ensure people with hearing or visual impairments can still enjoy your content. Video captions will show any dialogue in the text format at the bottom of the video, while audio descriptions will help people with weak eyesight visualize your video’s setting.
Adding these features to your videos won’t be a considerable investment but will undoubtedly pay off in the long run. By catering to all types of viewers, you will increase your potential viewer base and build a good name for your brand.
5. Include a Call to Action
Whether you are making a marketing, product, or a tutorial video, its goal is likely to draw users’ attention to your brand. However, limiting your objectives to pure exposure is a wasted opportunity. So how do you get your users to engage with your brand past your video? By asking them!
Including a call to action in your video can make a world of difference for your business goals. Asking your viewers to visit your website, share your content on social media, or even buy your products can give the viewers in the consideration part of their buyer’s journey the necessary incentive to take action. Sometimes, even a simple “Learn More” or “Check Out Our Offer At …” can end in a significant sales boost.
So make sure you include a CTA in all your videos!
6. Go Beyond YouTube
Video content marketers indeed find the most success on YouTube, but if you’re only relying on that single platform, you’re leaving money on the table! YouTube isn’t the only video-sharing website marketers can use to promote their brands. Aside from a large, mostly untapped market on various YouTube alternatives like Odysee, Dailymotion, or Storyfire, there are many social media video platforms you can use too! Social networks like Instagram and TikTok have combined audiences numbering in billions, making them an incredible opportunity for daring video marketers!
But your options don’t end there. If you’ve been considering getting into digital video advertising or have a rich content library you’d like to monetize, there are plenty of online video platforms that can help you start.
If your primary goal is video monetization, YouTube is not the best option. The platform lacks advanced monetization features and offers lackluster security and support that brands and large publishers need. Luckily, there are many YouTube monetization alternatives out there that are a much better choice for publishers.
Enterprise video platforms like Brid.TV are the perfect choice for publishers looking for a reliable and secure video platform and user-friendly video CMS to help manage and monetize their video content libraries. Brid.TV’s white-label video player helps publishers take their video monetization to the next level with our advanced advertising features like video header bidding, ad pods, and instream and outstream ads while maintaining your brand’s identity through a fully customizable HTML5 player.
Interested in learning more about how Brid.TV can help you maximize your video ad revenue? Talk to one of our representatives and get a free trial today!
Best Video Content Marketing Examples of Recent Years
Now that you’re armed with all the information you need to make a foolproof video marketing strategy, all that’s left is to begin brainstorming and get to filming your first marketing video!
That’s easier said than done, though. Unfortunately, coming up with unique video marketing ideas is one of the trickiest parts of launching a campaign. That is why we’ve prepared a few video ideas and some of the best content marketing videos to get your creative juices flowing.
Here are a few video ideas and concepts you could try for your first campaign:
Craft a Promotional Video
Promotional videos are the bread and butter of video content marketing and are excellent tools for generating leads and increasing sales. However, people don’t like having sales pitches shoved down their throats, so making a successful promo video is quite a challenge.
The best part about promotional videos, though, is that they have the power to get your brand on its feet single-handedly if crafted correctly. So how can you make your promo video stick out?
There is no tried-and-tested method to do that, but there are a few tips you could implement to maximize its effectiveness:
- Focus on your customers’ pain points.
- Don’t make the video all about yourself.
- Be funny.
If it ticks all the right boxes, even a low-budget promotional video can do wonders. That is the real beauty of it — these types of videos are a worthy investment even for smaller businesses. Your low-budget video does have to resonate with your viewers, though! It’s far from a walk in the park, but it’s possible.
Just take a look at the infamous Dollar Shave Club’s debut video!
The company managed to strike gold with a single video and explode overnight! And they did all of that with a meager $4,500 filming budget.
But what made this video so impactful? The answer is simple — its outstanding humor!
So don’t be afraid to shake things up a bit with your video. You never know what might happen!
Share Your Company Values
Do you have a company culture you’re proud of? Why not show it off to the world? Although this video idea is not exactly unique, it’s exceptionally effective at building your brand’s reputation and credibility.
We know that most businesses prefer to be known for their products and achievements rather than their company culture, but some positive PR can never hurt! Also, you’d be surprised how much people value transparency from brands nowadays. Regardless of whether that transparency comes from their products or their work culture and values, it’s marketable!
Here’s an example of how BambooHR did it with their video:
The company highlights its core values and beliefs and uses its employee happiness to market its brand in a light-hearted and entertaining video.
There’s a reason most stock footage features smiling people — happiness is contagious. And if you present it with a video, it’s much easier to transfer that emotion to your viewers. If your audience associates your brand with positive emotions, they’re going to be more likely to become paying customers down the line!
Create an Employee Onboarding Video
Another idea closely related to showcasing your company culture would be to create an employee onboarding video. Such a video will do multiple things:
- It will alleviate the pressure your new employees might be feeling on their first day of work.
- An onboarding video can highlight your company’s work environment and culture.
- It gives viewers a unique opportunity to hear employee experiences, making your brand more human and relatable.
So what’s the best approach to an onboarding marketing video? We suggest you gather testimonials from multiple new employees and let them share their experience with your company on video. Just like Google did in their onboarding video:
As you can see, they interview five of their summer interns about their experiences at the company while showcasing their workspace and company culture! Making a similar video will help you market your brand and stand out as an employer to career-seekers.
It’s a win-win scenario either way!
Make a Product Video
Video content marketing can also play a supporting role in your marketing endeavors, so it doesn’t always have to be promotional. And product videos are anything but that!
There are many businesses out there whose products are quite complex or niche-specific. If you are one of such brands, your users might have difficulty mastering or understanding what you’re selling. That is where product videos shine!
If your product is too complex for a layperson to grasp, the best way to expand your potential customer base is to educate them. And there is no better way to do that than with a product video!
A well-made product video illustrates your product’s best features in a straightforward and easily digestible manner while using plenty of visuals and demonstrations. And if you’re wondering why you need a product video if you already have a product manual, here’s the reason — as many as 69% of customers prefer watching a video to reading about a product.
Take a look at this product video example from SurveyMonkey as an inspiration:
As you can see, combining strong visual cues and demonstrations with short, scannable text prompts is a recipe for success. So keep that in mind when planning your video!
Be an Industry Thought Leader
Another excellent way to leverage the power of video content marketing is to be a thought leader in your industry. Thought leadership is all the rage in the online world now, and many brands and big names have found success with it.
But what does a thought leadership video entail? It means sharing your expertise with your viewers. Although many people do it through social media or blog posts, using video is a more attractive option. An excellent way to get started with video thought leadership would be to begin an educational series like Moz’s Whiteboard Friday:
They usually follow their video up with a blog post, but you don’t have to if you have other video distribution channels.
By displaying and sharing your expertise, you will build a name for your brand within your industry and beyond. That opens new sales opportunities and shows your competitors you are a force to be reckoned with.
Time to Get the Camera Rolling!
The recent boom of video content marketing has proven incredibly lucrative for brands that embraced this growing trend. But as an increasing number of consumers want to see branded video content, more and more businesses have been taking up video marketing daily.
Although getting started with video can be daunting for newbies, it’s more accessible than it may seem. The number of video-sharing websites and online video platforms is growing by the day, leaving businesses with plenty of options. And considering that even our phones’ cameras are constantly improving, recording a video has never been easier. Nowadays, everyone can dip their toes in the video-making industry!
There’s no reason to hesitate. Video content marketing can be an excellent addition to your business’s strategy, regardless of how much emphasis you decide to put on it. And the best part about it is that a single hit video is all it takes to propel your brand to stardom!
So what are you waiting for? It’s time to get the camera rolling!
