Did you know that by the time you’ve read this blog post on video marketing, over 1 million videos will have been watched on YouTube globally?
How about that landing pages that feature video increase conversion by up to 80%?
Yep – 2020 has been the year of video. In fact, we’d go as far as to say we’ve been enjoying the decade of digital video, with the rise multi-faceted, omnichannel content marketing campaigns taking the place of traditional ad space and column inches.
In this blog post, we explore the 5 best-kept marketing secrets to mastering the art of video, and how it can help grow your business.
1. VIDEO MARKETING 101: MAKE SURE YOUR VIDEO IS ABOUT THE STORY AND NOT THE SALE
This is especially important if you’re targeting a younger, more tech-savvy audience.
Millennials have spent their entire lives being marketed to, which means that businesses need to be one step ahead to get cut-through in an extremely competitive market.
Just like content marketing, your branded video content will need to focus on the value it’s providing for your customers, not just the sales pitch.
Take it one step further by tapping into your audiences’ emotions, needs and desires. Video gives you the opportunity to tell your story in a completely unique way.
If this idea seems daunting, remember that if you plan to advertise through channels such as YouTube, there are plenty of additional opportunities to drive the sales message home, whether that’s with bumper ads, shoppable ads or sell copy. The more views your video advertising campaign gets on YouTube, the more people will see those accompanying sales messages.
2. THOSE FIRST FEW SECONDS REALLY COUNT
According to YouTube’s latest figures, more than 20% of your audience will click away from a video within the first 10 seconds. That means the first few seconds of your video must be show-stoppingly good to keep your viewers’ attention.
Ask yourself when planning your content – ‘why would anyone watch this?’. Successful video marketing will have one goal in mind, whether that’s to make your audience laugh, to inspire them, or to teach them something new. There are loads of things you may want your campaign to achieve – being really clear about this upfront will help you when planning out your content.
3. DON’T BE AFRAID!
Even the most boring and bland organisations have come up with some truly inspiring video marketing campaigns over the years. In fact, some of the best corporate video productions of this year have been produced for IT software companies and taxi firms.
The key is to be brave. Just because a business sells photocopier paper or plastic cups doesn’t mean the video has to play it safe. Again, tap into the emotional reason as to why an individual would want, need or use those products, then design the story around that.
4. OPTIMISE, OPTIMISE, OPTIMISE
Many marketers think that search engine optimization refers to written content only.
In 2019, this couldn’t be further from the truth!
As we said earlier, landing pages that feature a suite of content – sell copy, video, photography – convert at almost 80% more than those without. For e-commerce businesses, well thought out on-page content can boost the average order value by a whopping 43%. Those figures can’t be ignored.
There are dozens of ways to ensure your video campaign is found in search engines, and this starts with thinking about the type of content you plan to feature.
When writing scripts, do your SEO research at the same time. When talking about product X, what are people searching for on Google? Where is the traffic going? Answering these questions upfront will ensure you have a video that is already optimised to feature for those search terms.
You’ll also want to ensure your video is optimised for mobile too – after all, more than half of all online video content is now viewed in ‘vertical’ – aka, watched on a mobile device. If you’re using a video production company, they will guide you through this process.
If you’re hoping your video will be shared outside of your campaign or your website (dare we say it, goes viral) then you’ll want to make sure it’s embeddable too, to allow viewers to share the video on their websites or social media channels. Hosting the video on YouTube will take care of that.
Finally, when uploading to your website, ensure you have a transcript of your video ready to upload behind the scenes. While Google can ‘see’ you have a video on-page, it cannot actually watch the content, so make sure you maximise your campaign’s effectiveness by doing this one simple thing.
5. WANT TO GO VIRAL? GET THE BALL ROLLING YOURSELF
So, you’ve got your video ready to go, you’ve shared it on your website, and perhaps it’s now on YouTube.
While your new video will start to improve the performance of your website over time, it can be a little disheartening when those views fail to shoot up at the rate you were hoping them to.
If you want your video to go viral, ensure you plan in some media spend to give it that first boost. Digital advertising is significantly cheaper than traditional channels, and there are far more options to hyper-target your audience so that you can be super clever with your spend.
Think about allocating some budget to YouTube advertising (YouTube’s digital marketing partners are often free to use and are incredibly helpful when starting out. They can even provide some editing tips to maximise the effectiveness of your campaign) and social media advertising, depending on your audience. Find out where your target market is and start there.
TO WRAP IT UP
If you want to grow your business, then you’re going to have to stop ignoring the power of video. To get the ball rolling, get in touch with us and we can have a chat about what video could do for your business.