Have you ever had a pop-up ad while visiting a website and cringed immediately? Have you ever had an advertising mail sent to your inbox and followed the unsubscribe link without blinking? Now, have you ever watched a video and went past it without hating the world if you didn’t like it much? Why do we hate other advertising and marketing efforts so much and not the same thing when done in the form of videos? Simple! Because they don’t feel like they are selling something hard.
87% of all consumers want to watch more videos from their favourite brands in 2019. It is no surprise then that 2019 saw a huge rise in the number of businesses that used video marketing. Most of you must have started working on a video marketing strategy for maximising engagement, educating the audience, lead qualification and conversion, and initially, all of this may feel overwhelming. You might even be asking yourself if it really works. Well, we’re here to solve that puzzle for you. Let’s take a look at how video marketing works and how you can optimise it.
Is video marketing worth implementing in your strategy?
One of the major concerns that marketers have is whether their video will reach people or not. YouTube ranks second in the list of the world’s largest search engines and the most commonly visited social media channels as well. With 1.3 billion users and upload of 300 hours of video per minute, video marketing via YouTube is a great opportunity that you shouldn’t miss.
You can also add a video to your existing blogs, new campaigns, landing pages, and much more. A video that attracts potential customers will not only be viewed multiple times but will also be shared with others, automatically building your customer base. This will also help generate more marketing ROI. 73% of B2B marketers vouch for the positive impact of video marketing on ROI. So, how does one go about optimising video marketing for the company’s growth? Let’s find out.
Video Marketing Strategy
First of all, you need to align video marketing with your existing content strategy. For the best video marketing strategy, follow the 3Cs rule, which means that your videos should be - captivating, consistent, and creative. Read on to know how one should use the 3Cs rule.
Set Realistic Goals (Not Idealistic)
You must know what the video is intended to do. If your goal is not specific, it will not deliver the desired results. For example, to attract prospects, create introductory and awareness or educational videos, to get more conversions and increase sales, share videos of product launch, product review, and testimonials, and to foster your relationship with your customers, produce videos of product events, product explainers, maybe in the form of webinars, vlogs, and so on.
You can also be creative and show behind-the-scenes shots to tell your audience what makes you different from your competitors and how extensive your approach is towards meeting their needs. Give your video a direction to the desired call to action that you want your audience to take, whether it is a sign-up, a purchase or a registration.
Be consistent
Remember how desperately Game of Thrones fans used to wait for a year or two for the next season? Although your video marketing is not a TV show, people who enjoy your video will wait for the next one curiously. A positive impact by a video will gradually broaden the audience’s interest towards your next video and your website, and make them fond of your brand.
If you are making podcasts, keep them rolling. If you are making live videos, don’t stop. Benefit Cosmetics is doing a great job at producing live video series, where they leave room for viewers to ask questions and their real-time hosts respond to them. It is a great way fo fostering user engagement as well.
Share and Flare
An impactful video should reach the right audience. Facebook and Instagram allow you to go live. 82% of people prefer to watch live videos from brands over their social posts on Facebook. As per the latest Twitter study, Tweets with video ads are remembered twice as much as when found somewhere else and bring more inbound links. You can also automate sending introductory or personalised videos through emails to your new and existing customers.
SEO Optimise Your Videos
SEO plays an important role in ranking your video higher in YouTube and Google search results. Using title, tags, and video description works wonders for video optimisation. Introducing videos on your website makes your brand to be found 53 times more on the first SERP page than a website without one. It not only lets you analyse where your business is going but also helps your target audience to find you easily.
Coca-Cola optimised their SEO during the holiday season pretty well when they created this beautiful and highly uplifting video (it actually made us cry!). Showing their commitment to the holiday spirit by giving more than 15,000 people a holiday surprise gift, their video won hearts all across the world.
Produce What They Want To See
83% of marketers agree to the fact that video marketing has shot up their ROI above 78% in last one year. However, little things can impact the likelihood of your video being watched until the end. Taking care of the display really impacts a viewer’s attention. Make sure your video doesn’t have a permanent control bar that doesn’t disappear, is optimised for watching horizontally or vertically, and for mobile phones because 34% of people watch most videos on mobiles. You will be surprised but 82% of people find it annoying when the videos are not optimised horizontally or vertically.
Chase Down the Analytics
Once you’re done launching your video, keep a track on the number of likes and shares and run a content analysis of the comments for various platforms where you have shared them. Find the loopholes and introduce necessary tweaks that might improve their performance. Repeat the analysis for the tweaks you have made and check which videos are working better, which audience is liking them the most, which videos are giving the highest conversions and lead generation, etc. You can combine email marketing and video marketing together and see whether it has improved the number of clicks, email views, and completion of the desired call to action. According to Hyperfine Media, emails with a personalised video result in a 500% increase in conversion rates. And 65% of the executives say that they visit a marketer’s website after watching a video.
Quick Refresher
Adding video marketing to your marketing strategy will make it even more interesting for people to connect with your brand. As per the Cisco Video Networking Index, 80% of global internet traffic will be video in 2019. Also, 74% of marketers who have not begun video marketing yet are expecting to set sail in 2019. Are you?
