So, you’ve decided to finally get involved in video marketing. This is good news. Great news.
If you feel like you’ve been lagging behind in this regard for some time, you don’t have anything to be ashamed of; video marketing has long been viewed as something that’s rather cumbersome, expensive to produce and likely to demand every ounce of your time that’s reserved for marketing, leaving little room for anything else.
Once, this was absolutely true. You’d need a truckload of gear and people, a massive budget and an entire team devoted to producing such content. But that was when the content itself would only see the light of day on the TV or before the trailers in a cinema.
Those days are thankfully long gone, and, thanks to the internet and advances in technology that have both revolutionised and democratised video production, anyone can get involved.
It’s not easy, and you’ll absolutely need the assistance of some expert hands at some stage, but before you embark wholeheartedly on a video marketing strategy, the following six steps will help you get yourself in the right frame of mind to produce content that engages and converts.
Step 1: Focus on the story
Video marketing doesn’t work without a story – it’s that simple. If you dive into this form of marketing thinking it’s all about the hard sell or simply turning a glossy brochure into moving images, you won’t attract an audience. At all.
Instead, you need to tell a story. Think about the video posts on Facebook that have engaged you recently and tempted you to share them with friends. They’ll all share one quality: they will have told brilliant stories.
No matter what industry you’re in or the products you produce, your business can tell an engaging story. So, before you so much as press the ‘record’ button, work out what that story is.
Step 2: Nail the first few seconds
When you get to the stage of planning your marketing video, it’s important to spend the lion’s share of your time on those first few seconds of footage.
Just as with words and static images, you need to grab the viewer’s attention immediately with video. If you start with a long-winded intro or over-produced product footage, few people will stay for the duration.
There’s a reason YouTube makes you watch the first five or so seconds of an advert before most videos; they believe the producer of the ad should be able to grab your attention within that timeframe.
Step 3: Define the CTA early on
It’s surprising how many videos produced by businesses don’t include any form of call-to-action (CTA). And that’s a real shame, because without a CTA, a video is next to useless.
What do you want people to do once they’ve sat through the duration of your marketing video? Should they head immediately to a specific landing page on your website? Perhaps they need to pick up the phone. Or, maybe, you want them to share the video on social media using a particular hashtag.
Define the CTA for your video as early as possible during the planning process and ensure it doesn’t get forgotten (trust us, that happens!).
Step 4: Optimise the video for search
Search engine optimisation (SEO) isn’t just for words! It can (and should) be used to great effect for video, too).
Before publishing your video, it’s important to work on its SEO. You might need some assistance from an expert here, but there’s two things you can do yourself:
- Add keywords to the video title.
- Add a description for your video that includes keywords.
Not sure what those keywords should be? Spend some time using tools like Google Trends and the built-in keyword planner in Google Ads to find the most appropriate keywords for the video content you’re creating.
Step 5: When sharing on social, define the audience
Once your video is produced and ready to share, it’s tempting to simply throw it onto as many social networks as possible and hope that it gets seen by the right people.
While there’s nothing wrong with organic posting of this kind, it should be bolstered by the use of relevant hashtags and, if your budget can stretch to it, some pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
To do this, you first need to define the audience, and that means looking back at the audience personas you developed for your marketing plan and considering what hashtags they’re likely to respond to. When it comes to PPC, platforms like Facebook provide a wealth of targeting options that enable you to nail down a very specific audience. Make sure you use them to good effect when sharing your video!
Step 6: Ask others to share
This last step is remarkably simple, but another one that’s easily forgotten.
It shouldn’t be just your business that shares the finished video! Your colleagues, partners and, of course, customers should also get behind it and help spread the word.
Don’t get us wrong, it’s not always particularly easy to encourage people to do so, but the more third parties you can get to share your video, the more significant its reach will be.
When it comes to customers, you can offer some form of reward for sharing (a small discount or early access to a new product, for instance). Your partners and colleagues will hopefully be close enough to your brand to share it with little encouragement, but if you’re struggling to convince them, highlight the value for everyone if the video is seen by as many eyes as possible. It’ll result in significant brand exposure, and, hopefully, a significant increase in new customers!
Wrapping up
The six steps above should be recycled for every piece of video marketing you produce. They are tried-and-tested and designed to make the process as smooth as it should be.
There’s one last step which should only be taken once the video has been out there for a few days, and that’s reviewing the performance of the content.
Make it a regular task to check in on reach, views and engagement metrics such as clicks, likes and shares. You’ll soon start to find what does and doesn’t work, and you can apply those learnings to future video content you produce.