You can get overwhelmed with the number of brands competing with each other on the internet. But one thing you will notice is that video is the dominant mode for marketing products online. It is the most powerful medium that you can find.With the vital role that video plays in brand promotion, you need to jump onto the video marketing bandwagon to promote your brand. But first, let’s try to understand the meaning of video marketing.
Video Marketing Explained
Video marketing is the means used through video for promoting brand awareness within a target audience. Videos are produced to create a demand for a particular brand and to convince viewers to buy the featured product or service.
Video marketing is a vital aspect of digital marketing that contains a blend of content marketing and social media marketing. Video marketing is often neglected by companies because they do not realize how critical it can be to help a business grow.
Building the Perfect Video Marketing Strategy
Now that you know the basics of what video marketing is, you can proceed with planning a video marketing strategy for your brand. Here are some essential tips that can get you started:
Define your Goals
You can’t achieve your goals if you haven’t defined them in the first place. Before you start making videos, you need to decide what goals you want to achieve through your video marketing project.
You need to target the buyer’s journey through your videos and incorporate them into your videos. A buyer goes through three stages in their journey to buy a product – awareness, consideration, and decision.
Firstly, awareness introduces the potential buyer to your brand. Next, you need to show them the benefits of your product and finally, make them consider buying the product.
Target Audience
It’s important to consider who your viewers are. Young viewers between 18 and 20 are not likely to be interested in buying property. Today, unlike television where the target audience cannot be defined, social media allows you to target specific groups.
Tell a Story
The way we go through life is one big story. People identify themselves with stories. They are an important part of our development and have a heavy influence on the decisions we take in life.
Video is a powerful medium for telling stories. You need to make your video follow a story format. But then, you need to be clear on your story. Make your videos tell a story of how your product or service helped a customer. You can add some live testimonials to validate the claims about your brand.
Consider the Timeline
You need to understand that a video marketing campaign cannot rely on a single or even a few limited videos. We talked about three stages of a buyer’s journey – awareness, consideration, and decision.
An effective video marketing campaign needs to target these three stages gradually. It looks at the long-term rather than the short-term effect it may have over a few days or weeks.
You can start by creating several videos aimed at the awareness stage of a buyer. Then you can target the consideration stage. Ultimately, you can move on to the decision stage, with slightly more aggressive videos that nudge the viewer into taking the plunge and deciding to go in for your product or service. Such a strategy could take up to a year or more, to show some positive results.
Budget Considerations
Video marketing can be an expensive proposition. You can plan an elaborate video campaign with mind-boggling special effects and hi-tech visuals. But be realistic with regards to your budget.
Instead of buying expensive software or hiring a third-party specialist to produce your videos you can use a video editor. There are numerous free video editing apps available on the internet that enable you to create pro-looking videos that you can use for your video marketing campaign.
Decide on the Video Type
There are different types of videos you can use to suit every type of scenario and audience. Choose a suitable type of video to match the type of product or service you are promoting and your audience. The categories of videos are:
Demo Videos
Demo videos are quick and easy to produce. You can make one with only a good mic, a screen recorder and a well-written script.
Brand Videos
A brand video is less about the product and more about your company, your brand and what it stands for. It may also show the people (you and your associates), and who they are.
You can insert a bit of a storytelling flavor to such videos, when you speak about yourselves and how you created your brand.
Event Videos
Here you can record a live video stream of a company event, or a highlight reel, where you cover the event in a series of takes.
Expert Interview Videos
These videos are those that share knowledge. You can feature experts in the field. They will provide useful information and also vouch for your product or service that provides benefits related to what they are talking about.
Explainer Videos
An explainer video goes into the intricacies of how a product works. It differs from a demo video in that you may not have the product at the forefront
Animated Videos
Very similar to explainer videos, animated videos also feature explanations about a product or service. But an animated video can also come in formats like expert interview videos but in animated form.
Animated videos can be fun and engaging, and can project your brand in an informal but convincing way.
Optimize Your Video
Make your written and visual content more visible to search engines. Once you complete making a video, there is a lot you can do to optimize it. Use appropriate keywords, video titles, video descriptions, captions and attractive thumbnails.
Restrict the video length to three and five minutes and make your videos intuitive (mobile-friendly). Create suitable intros and outros and add a Call to Action (CTA) to your videos. All these techniques contribute to optimizing your videos.
Conclusion
You need to adopt a powerful video marketing campaign to promote your brand this year. Follow the tips provided here, and watch your business grow, as more and more people become aware of your brand in 2022 and what it stands for.