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If you had to choose between reading a 3 page pdf document or watching a 3 minute video, which would you pick? Are you joining the 66% of people who’d choose the video?
We love videos! It’s no wonder that video content consumption is on the up. In fact 54% of consumers want to see even more video content from brands they support. So it’s a great time to get on board while people want to consume your creative content.
The even better news? You don’t need a professional videographer to make high quality video content! We are here to help you make sure your video marketing strategy is going to drive traffic no matter what type of video you want to create.
Let’s get started!
Video marketing is a way for brands and businesses to communicate with their customers in an engaging way. Marketing teams will create video content to promote and market their products to their target audience. The beauty of video marketing is that it is easy to digest and, with the variety of video sharing platforms, video content is extremely accessible. It’s no wonder that videos are a consumer's favorite type of content!
What really are the benefits of using video for my business? Well, there are more than you can imagine!
Video Is An All-Round Sales Funnel.
Video marketing has proven to be a great lead generation, conversion and sales tool. Video content marketing can generate some serious profit for your business. In fact in 2019, 83% of video marketers say video has helped them generate leads and 80% say video has directly helped their brand increase sales.
Video Shows A Great ROI
Marketing videos have shown proven return on investment for brands. In a 2018 report, 88% of video marketers were satisfied with the ROI on their video production efforts on social media. The business model of using video marketing is not just to make money for the bottom line. It’s about improving brand awareness, customer loyalty and engagement. Luckily for businesses, videos also just happen to do a great job of driving profit too.
Video Can Build Consumers Trust
Customers want to relate to the brands they engage with. Now more than ever in the age of fake news and reviews, it’s no wonder that we are increasingly sceptical about everything we see on social media. Videos are a great way to showcase your brand in an authentic way to build customer’s trust. People trust people, especially if you are showcasing your products, services, customer reviews, or company culture in a personal way.
Google Loves Videos As Much As We Do!
By adding video to your website, you will reap the benefits it brings to your Google rankings. We talk a lot about SEO because we are industry experts, but did you know that videos can assist SEO too? Including a video on your webpage can increase the click through rate by 157%. Video content means that users spend more time on your website by up to twice as long, therefore reducing your bounce rate. This signals to Google that your website content is valuable and ranks you higher in the Search Engine Results Pages.
Video on Mobile Is Ideal For Users
Video consumption on mobile devices is rapidly increasing for the majority of video content. 90% of Twitter video views happen on a mobile device and this mobile trend is consistent across all social media channels. Mobile videos are fast and convenient and easily accessible from anywhere.
Video Marketing Can Explain Anything
Product explainer videos are extremely popular marketing tactics across many industries including technology and beauty. Explainer videos are the most common type of video content with 72% of people creating them. The percentage of people who believe that video has contributed to their consumers' understanding of their products has increased every single year from 2015 right up to 2020 from 80% to 95%.
So now you know that video marketing is a great investment for your brand… How do you do it?
Step 1: The 5W Plan
Before you jump in and stick a subject in front of a camera, make sure you create a plan. Have a think about what you want to achieve from creating your video. Every stage in this process will point back to the purpose of why you are going to use video to get your point across.
Why?
Is your goal to make money by increasing sales? Is your goal to explain a process to reduce calls to your help centre? Or maybe your goal is to get your message and products in front of more people? Whether your goal is growth, awareness, or assistance, keep it at the forefront of your mind.
Who?
Your target audience will play a large part in the rest of the campaign planning process. If you are targeting an audience similar to your usual customer base this will be to your advantage as no one knows your customers better than you. However, if you plan to create a video to increase awareness in a different segment, you may need to spend more time researching their personas.
What?
What are you going to film? Think about the format of your video and what type will be most effective in your content marketing strategy. Will you be doing a ‘talking head’ style video similar to an interview? Or will an animated video be more appropriate for your audience?
Where?
Where will you host your video? It can be tempting to take a scatter-gun approach to posting your video on every social media platform and video hosting platform you can get your hands on but this may not be the most effective solution. Each audience on these platforms will have a different goal and so your video must reflect that. Relating back to your audience, knowing where they spend most of their online time will help with this decision.
When?
What’s your timeframe? Always start with a timeline before launching into your ideas and begin producing your video. It would be disheartening to begin to create a video to launch your new product due next month when your timeline says realistically it wouldn’t be finished until the end of the following month. Good timeline planning will help prevent any financial losses by having an obsolete video that cannot be used.
Step 2: Evaluate Resources
Have you got the resources to complete a quality video? Will you be using an agency or professional videographer? 69% of marketing professionals made more videos in-house in 2018 than the year previous, so whatever resources you have available to create your content it can be done.
Not everyone will have access to a high quality video camera, or the latest editing software... and this is okay! Some of the most effective videos have been filmed on a smartphone and even edited on free software. Obviously it goes without saying that having some budget behind your video project will take it a long way, especially if you want to draft in an animator, but if you are just getting started it can be easy to test your video marketing strategy before investing thousands of pounds into it.
Step 3: Concept And Script
It’s time to get creative and get to grips with exactly what this video is going to look like and what story it is going to tell. From your Step 1 5Ws Planning Stage, you probably began to imagine what the video was going to be about, what your goal is and who you’d be delivering the message to.
A great way to draft up your concept is to create a storyboard. This can be done on your computer if you’d like, but we prefer to do it the old fashioned way and draw out frames on a plain sheet of paper to let our ideas flow. Deciding what happens at the start, middle and end of your video seems like obvious advice, but it can save huge amounts of time when it comes to the filming and editing stage.
Step 4: Film And Edit
It’s shoot time! Get ready for your close-up and get your best angles. When it comes to filming, there is a definite line between too much footage and not enough. Get a variety of shots, angles and sounds but don’t feel like you need to record the same shot 10 times ‘just in-case’ as it can make the editor's job a longer process than it needs to be.
If filming indoors at your business premises, choose a time where it tends to be quieter if you are doing interviews. You don’t want to pick up the sound of doors slamming in meeting rooms or people having loud chats during their tea break.
If filming people make sure everyone has a schedule, they know how long to expect to be there, and if possible let them know ahead of time what questions they will be answering.
If filming product shots have them all in one place (if possible) and in as good condition as can be. Quality content will feature quality products and will keep the marketing team very happy!
When it comes to editing, aim to tell a story to keep your viewers engaged. Sometimes simple is best - think ‘short and sweet’! 56% of all videos published last year were under two minutes long, and videos under 90 seconds had an average retention rate of 53% of viewers.
Understanding your audience’s viewing habits also allows you to enhance your content at the edit stage. If your audience is most likely to watch your video on Facebook, it’s worth knowing that 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound. Therefore including subtitles into your content at the edit stage could add value to your audience.
Step 5: Publish And Promote
Knowing your target audience will act as a good guide for when is the best time to share your finished video. For business related videos, 86% of views take place on desktop browsers and only 14% on mobile. Therefore if you are B2B, you’ll be targeting people who will be sitting at their desktop. Yup you guessed it, this will likely be at work. Figures show that the most popular viewing time is a Wednesday between 7AM and 11AM.
On the other hand if your audience is B2C, you’ll be targeting mobile users and therefore there is a wider variation of the ‘optimum’ time to post. There is a lot of social media research that alludes to the best time to post for your specific industry. However, for all industries it seems that Wednesdays are the clear winner for the best user engagement.
Creating videos is beneficial for your brand and can deliver some really impactful messaging that written content cannot. 47% of first-time video marketers started using video in 2019 because they believe it’s become less time-consuming to do. Trends show video content is on the rise and has no signs of slowing down so there’s never a better time to incorporate video into your marketing strategy.
