The Ultimate Guide To Video Marketing

With the evolution of internet content in the past few years, gaining the attention of people with just texts and images alone is almost impossible in the era of live streams, interactive 360 videos, augmented reality, and more.

The digital video marketing industry in the US itself is worth 135 Billion USD. That means brands across the world are realizing their potential and are investing in a video-based marketing plan.

Video production is now more cost-effective and easier to execute than ever. Today you can shoot a video in high-quality or 4K resolution even with your smartphone.

But between strategy, scripting, equipment, and editing software, video marketing is still one of the most complicated parts of marketing strategy.

Although the growth potential of a video-based content marketing strategy makes it worth facing all the challenges that come along with video production.

Video Marketing: A Necessity

Video Marketing is nothing but, using videos to promote and market a product or service, increase engagement on digital and social channels, educate your consumers or customers, and reach your audience using a new medium. ​​

As the technology to create quality videos became easily accessible, Video Marketing became more and more popular with marketers.

But that’s not really the reason why video is the dominant form of communication today. Here are the major facts that support why Video Marketing is a necessity:​​

• The Pandemic Boosted Online Video Consumption By Up to 300% on a daily basis
• The Most Used Social Media Platforms Are Video-Based Software
• Social Media Posts Featuring Videos Get 83% More Engagement Than Any Other Form Of Media

With such a hike in video content consumption metrics, Video Marketing doesn’t only promote a product but also generates the trust of your audience in a brand.

It’s a great tool for educating, planning, sharing stories, training, and building a brand reputation that brings up conversions.

There are endless choices available when it comes to creating a video. Onboarding Videos, Knowledge-Based Videos, Meet The Team Videos, Support Video Calls, and Customer Stories are just a few ways how a video can create a more personalized, and customer support experience.

How to Create A Video Marketing Strategy?

Before you start recording or editing anything, always plan your marketing strategy ahead of its time. Wondering why?

Because every decision made during the video creation process will be a reflection of your video's purpose which will in turn decide what action your audience completes after watching it.

A lot of factors like Timelines, Budget, Production Process, and Conversion metrics do guide your decision but it’s not at all a responsible decision to start production without a strategy.

Without a clear strategy decided upon by your team, you’ll end up wasting a lot of your time reshooting, repurposing, or re-editing your videos.

Here’s how you can create a good video marketing strategy based on your target goals:

Step 1: Choose your target audience and find out where they spend their time.

The reach, popularity, and engagement of a video or user-generated video content depend a lot on targeting a specific audience with each video.

If you haven’t built a strong target audience community for your brand, start building one right away. If you already have a community of buyer personas, make sure you keep them in mind when you plan your next video.

Step 2: Connect with stakeholders to align on a plan for the video.

There are typically a lot of players when it comes to making a video.

How can you ensure they're all aligned? By creating a form using an online form service and sharing it with all the stakeholders of the project.

This way, you can ask the same questions to everyone and record all their responses in one place. At this stage, it’s super important to have a clear set of goals aligned.

Step 3: Set a timeline and budget for your video.

Start your video planning with a clear goal in mind and start splitting your goals into small sprints. Create a well-defined timeline using a calendar app as you need to align your goals with a lot of players that participate in a video creation process with their specific goals in progress.

Now, also create a clear timeline for every player in every step of the process and plan for occasional delays. Even the simplest video production relies on the multiple skills of different people.

So make sure that even with unexpected challenges and changes along the process your video delivery process is smooth.

Step 4: Choose the best platform based on the presence of your target audience.

Before you start making your video, research the platforms your target audience relies on to consume content and create your videos based on where you’re planning to broadcast them.

Over the past few years, YouTube SEO is becoming as important as website SEO. Plan your content script based on the platform you’re broadcasting it on and keep these metrics in mind:

• Average view time
• Size and sound limitations
• Communities
• Budget
• Promotion

While videos are often used for promotional activities, a video doesn’t just work itself. Some platforms have built-in algorithms or paid engines to fulfill your target goals, while others need you to contribute time and effort to get more engagement on your video content.

Step 5: Develop engagement and choose the right video Types for your community.

The very first goal of a video should be to communicate a message. If you’re a bit confused about where to start, check out one of these examples of Animated Explainer videos by our team to help you with your video marketing strategy.

If you still are unsure of the message your video should convey, keep your community in mind and plan what best you can offer them.

Keeping your budget, skills, and resources in mind, think about the creative breakers that might arise. And choose a path where you hit less number of breakers and can achieve your goals faster.

Step 6: Decide which metrics need to be tracked and how will they measure success.

Before you dive into production, you need to define your video goals and find the best metrics to prove that you've accomplished those goals.

You can stick to using the metrics available on platforms of your choice. But this ain't really an ideal way to figure out if your video strategy is performing over time. Sticking to platform metrics makes it difficult to measure the effectiveness of multichannel video strategies.

Instead, choose all the key performance indicators that align with your video marketing goals. A well-defined list of metrics is an ideal place to start if you’re confused about where to start with tracking your video marketing.

Once you are done with a well-scripted strategy, the most common question that comes to mind is: How Am I Going To Use It To Improve My SEO Process?

Let’s Begin

How Do I Improve My SEO using Video?

Again, there are billions of tips we can share with you to implement and improve your site’s SEO, but one of the best strategies is to have high-quality content that not only informs but educates your viewers about your product.

If you’ve already created a video, never keep it to yourself for reference. Video is super informative and the boost in SEO that comes along with it could pay off big in the long run.

Here’s how you can use a well-scripted and informative video to drive traffic in the long run:

Use videos on your website

When it comes to publishing a video, the most common mistake marketers do is to neglect the website distribution of the video. Use them on all relevant pages.

If you have a product video, for instance, you should embed the video on your homepage, as well as your product or service’s landing pages.

If you publish a guest blog post about your service or product, include the video there too!

If you have a FAQ page with questions about your product, include videos there, too!

Embed your video around quality content

Posting a video on a blank page won’t do much for your SEO, It’s hard for search engines to scroll through Video Content. Make sure to embed your video on a page full of relevant and informative content.

This will help search engine crawlers to know that you not only have engaging multimedia on your site but you provide a ton of valuable and useful information. Make sure the content is related to the video and reflects relevant information available in the Video embedded.

Be consistent – post video content often!

A well-scripted video is great, but the more often you post engaging videos, the better the chances of engagement. Creating a video daily and posting consistently doesn’t really sound realistic but being consistent is the key to getting most of your video content.

Whenever it comes to celebrating a milestone or educating your audience about an upcoming project, dedicate some resources to video creation. Try overlaying text on a piece of stock footage on your website and see the engagement and visitors from organic search.

If a piece of stock content can be this engaging, imagine what effect a well-scripted video can have.

Don’t forget to add video details.

50 % of SEO is about quality content and the remaining 50% is about technical details. Product Videos are no special case.

When you post a video on your site, always remember the technical details you need to add to your site in the form of a Title, Description, Tags, and Annotations. Almost all video hosting platforms will let you edit these.

Now that you know how to create a well-planned strategy and how to use videos to improve SEO, let’s move to the Production aspect of the process.

Now that we know how to create a well-planned strategy and how to use videos to improve SEO, Let’s Move to the Production aspect of the process.

How To Create A Good Explainer Video?

With the world revolutionized by digital cameras converted into micro sensors in smartphones, creating a video for your brand is a very simple process. You can follow these 9 steps and create a good video for your brand:

• Step 1: Write an appealing Script for your video.
• Step 2: Based on your choice of video, set up your studio.
• Step 3: Prepare your talents or characters.
• Step 4: Prepare a list of your shots and get used to your equipment.
• Step 5: Animate or Shoot your video.
• Step 6: Revise Footage and Edit your video
• Step 7: Choose your background music.
• Step 8: Record the voice-over.
• Step 9: Upload your video.

Want to know read these steps in detail check out this post: Everything About Explainer Videos

Now that you are done with video production, the only challenge remaining is distribution. Let’s learn how you can distribute your videos to your targeted audience.

What Can I Do To Distribute My Videos To The Right Audience?

This is the final phase of your video marketing strategy. Distribution of a video based on your target audience is one of the most challenging tasks when it comes to sharing your content with the world.

This is the stage that decides the outcome of the entire efforts you gave into working on an entire video marketing plan.

Here are all the available channels you can distribute your video with:

Self-Owned Channels: These Channels include a Website, Blog, and E-Mail.

Paid Marketing Channels: These include paid media such as Native Ads, Video Outstreaming Ads, Display Ads, Instream Video Ads, Interstitial Video Ads, Sponsored Content, and Influencer Marketing.

Social Media Channels: These include Youtube, Meta platforms, Tik-Tok, Twitter Etc.

Distribution is the major challenge of your Video Marketing Strategy but since we’ve mentioned it's a consistent process, here are some tips you should follow while planning your content calendar and improving with time consistently.

1. Always create a distribution calendar and repurpose your content based on the platform it’s uploaded on.
2. Make sure to note analytics and improve your content regularly
3. Try to use a clear background and a good light source while shooting your content
4. Always avoid places with background noise for voice-over content

Keeping all these things in mind, start planning your video strategy and give wings to your marketing efforts to achieve your target goals.