An effective video marketing can be tested in a series of experiments involving proper and careful strategies that would include funding to create the videos, effective creative ideas for content, appealing content output that could entice target audience and potent channels for the distribution of videos.
But let’s start with the fundamentals to appease your passion in starting to create videos for marketing purpose. We believe in the efficacy of video marketing if it is done the right way. We are in the industry of creating animated videos for marketing anyway. However, the purpose of this article is to make you realize, eventually and gradually, about the relevance of videos in the integration of your marketing efforts.
Fundamentals of an effective video marketing
The essence of video marketing begun during the earliest times when television was able to mechanically provide moving images including sound for viewers. Television became one of the breakthrough innovations of the 20th century. The first television advertisement was aired in 1940’s in the United States and we believe that it was the same time that men first realized the power of video marketing.
Before the Internet became the most cost-effective medium to distribute videos for marketing purpose, organizations have had to define the cost to distribute their marketing videos to television channels that could bring the most desired outcome in reaching their target audience.
Yes, the definition of cost was important and it still is. But that should not deter any company that realizes the power of videos in conveying the right message to their audience to start their videos for marketing.
In fact, to help you in creating your first video to be the precursor of more videos to promote your business, brand, product or service, it is vital to consider the points laid out for you.
1. Define your organization’s marketing mission and make it resonate in the video
Your marketing mission doesn’t need to be different with your organization’s mission statement. However, to describe the marketing mission is also important to come up with ideas for a video to be the tool of promotion for your brand, product or service.
Defining the marketing mission and make it resonate in the videos has more effective outcomes rather than just coming up with a video to sell.
Let’s take for example two popular brands of shoes in the market: Nike and Converse.
Converse and Nike have YouTube channels where they take their patrons and brand loyalists to different spectra of moving stories in video formats in their video libraries. Though both are brands of shoes, they differ in channeling the brand perception to their markets.
Converse is the definition of cool shoes with signature labels such as Chuck Taylor and All-Star. If you regard the following video observantly, you would derive to that assessment that Converse is for cool people with stories. These cool people would be regarded as representations of certain markets that have been doing the similar thing or are in the same passion as the guys as seen on the videos. And because these people are regarded as cool, anything they wear is cool in the perception of those who view the video.
On the other hand, Nike is a brand of athletic shoes. Most, if not all of their videos, feature successful athletes. By featuring athletes who wear Nike shoes, the brand has advocated awareness that their athletes are worn by people, who are athletes, who are into sports or who have active lifestyle. And because of the intensity in the manner that athletes wear shoes, Nike has created a consciousness to their markets that their shoes are durable and are right fit for people who are in constant motion.
Now, as you digest the videos carefully, you would find that their videos don’t really highlight the shoes or products all the time in the videos. But rather, they take on the notion that their shoes are for these people whose lifestyles are not completely different from certain groups of people.
And that’s where the relevance of pinning your marketing mission brings resonance to the videos that you would have to create.
2. The video to help solve problems
If there is something in the video that brings the solution to a problem or pressing problems bugging out a different kind of people, then it should be properly highlighted without recourse of being it a hard sell. Instead, make the video the recourse for something that the product or brand can do well and effectively.
An example to take note again is Nike.
The perception of featuring athletes wearing the brand of shoes already provides the solution for people who desire for durable and long-lasting shoes. Nike didn’t regard hard selling in the video in which they have to enumerate the features of the new design of shoes fit for certain athletes. Instead by featuring a representation, it manages to convey the message that the brand’s products can bring the solution.
There’s subtlety in the effective video marketing campaigns of Nike. And that’s how effective it is as brand of shoes.
A word of note prior to creating a video that would solve problems, it is important to ask your market what problems they want solved. This would help determine the ability of the product or service able to deliver the solutions.
1. Plan out your video production and distribution on specific dates. Also regard the duration of the video promotion.
The plan here is to create a framework that will be the guide for your effective video marketing funnel.
2. Video requirements
This is where you determine what kind of videos you have to make. Would it be an explainer video or a short clip to get your audience hyped up?
If it’s an explainer video that would require you to create 2d or 3d animation, then it should be done with a professional team. But if it’s a live video that would only require your presence in front of a camera, then have the right equipment to record high quality video for editing and uploading on YouTube or Vimeo.
3. Your audience requirements
The goal here is to create a video that brings real value.
Creating videos for marketing can be tricky and it would somehow involve the organization to be experimental. But proper strategy should also be applied to make a video that would be embraced by the audience.
If the first video released fails to please the audience, then the organization should take that factor and should then create a video that would subliminally inject in the consciousness of the audience for future regard. On that note, it is significant to know what your audience needs through a process where you encourage the creation of FAQ’s.
By creating FAQ’s, you would learn the common misconceptions that affect your product or brand. In that case, the video should be integrated with proper information that would answer your audience’s questions specifically.
4. How to materialize the creation of videos?
You can go bootstrapping in which you engage in do-it-yourself thing or you can hire someone or a team composed of professionals to do the work.
Creating a video should be regarded as an investment and it should be something not to be done lightly if the brand is in line.
5. What’s the schedule or more precisely, when to create and publish the video?
Timing is important in the creation and publishing of the video. The duration of the video may depend on the marketing campaign period.
If there is a need for a periodical creation of content, then by all means, create a calendar to serve as a tool to make you more prepared in implementing effective video marketing. Incorporating the periodic creation of videos including release of these videos in the content calendar is vital to bring added benefits in product and brand campaigns.
3. When to Begin the Video Production
This is the part in which you have to determine what you should do:
- To bootstrap the video creation and that means, you have to do it yourself or you hire a small team to do the video production;
- To outsource the video production to a team of professionals
- Bootstrapping your Video Marketing
This option can be tedious at the beginning since you have to undergo the process of learning the craft and then it would involve you to hire a team composed of an expert and proteges. Hiring interns would prove to be cost-effective, for the short-term. But then, you will also have to involve into personnel management integrated into the project management.
However, if you start with the real bootstrapping that would save you on cost, then you must be educated first on the craft of creating a video.
The Internet is a vast place to find resources to help you with video creation 101. Nonetheless, it is important to derive at a point where you have to be resourceful if you do the video creation by yourself or you want to at least hire one that would be your assistant. Hiring an assistant doesn’t mean an expert, in which case, you have to even instruct him on what to do, like for example, holding the camera for you, if there is no need for tripod. Some personal assistance work involved in the process of creating a video would also be in the list.
Bootstrapping a video production, including marketing would require a great amount of time. It is applicable if you are still in the starting phase, thinking of really pushing this video marketing thing for your startup or during the period when you are still beginning to realize the potential of video marketing to do wonders for your business. However, it also means, you haven’t regarded the potential that video marketing is a powerful strategy to bring in more leads and clients.
Outsourcing the video production
If you are in the point where you need to really fast track the promotion of your business, brand and product and you have the right funding for doable and effective marketing strategies including video marketing, then it would be vital to choose outsourcing as a means to materialize things more possibly according to the timeline in your project management chart.
Most companies that find 2D and 3D animation as more effective for explainer videos would have to hire a company that is really into providing the service with quality outputs.
On that note, you can check our menu of services. You can also a request for a quote.
4. Execute the Video Production
Video production starts with content including generation of ideas. Even from the generation of idea phase, content is still relevant. It is extremely relevant in all cases.
Start out by finding the best script writer you believe you can work with effectively in materializing the ideas to content. The script is a decisive factor to derive a result where you determine whether or not your video works.
Have a video produced according to the capacity of the team you are handling or you have outsourced the video production to. Don’t be overly demanding in the process that would end up in a subpar result.
Video production is an artistic effort that involves pressure but also creative inputs in which the character of the video producers would resonate based on their perception of the ideas.
Also, it is important to have realistic expectations for the quality, cost, and the timeline for producing your video. That means, you have to have a project management chart.
5. Be Consistent with Video Quality
A non-video company doesn’t have to drop a video every week for the purpose of attracting leads. Unless they are a video marketing company, the tedious task of creating and editing videos would end up most of the time of your marketing personnel unless the company hires someone who is tasked to do the video production specifically. But remember, creating a video is a collective effort and it would require a team to make the whole process of the video to result to a more consistent video quality.
Spending all your marketing efforts on producing videos may be counter-effective. It is best to spread your marketing efforts evenly among all marketing content, such as infographics.
Whenever you’re planning to create content, it has to be hyper-targeted for a very specific market or audience.
6. Video Optimization
Optimize videos to enable them to tap large YouTube audience or in Vimeo to get more views.
As a basic way to optimize video content on YouTube, you should regard these when you are able to upload videos:
- Write a relevant video title, description, and tags.
- Select an interesting thumbnail image to attract clicks
- Aside from YouTube, also consider Facebook and Twitter.
Other things you have to involve in optimizing videos:
- Search and compare Trends using YouTube trends Dashboard
- Demographics to know what locations or types of users you want to target the videos to.
- Cross Reference to enable to you to select locations, age ranges and gender settings. The “compare” button would aid you in knowing what’s popular with different groups of people.
- Use Keyword Research tool
- Help Search Engines Find your Videos
- Adding tags and video categories can improve the performance of your videos by helping search engines find them when users search for your tags and similar terms.
- Embed Your Video in your website or blog more more websites if possible.
- Link To Your Video to enable backlinking. As the cornerstone of SEO is backlinking, your video should be able to attract more links to your videos on YouTube, which also happen to help you gain links directing to the proper landing page on your site.
7. Get more views by tapping the influencers and by having the right social media marketing plan
Social media promotion involves getting your brand in the social media platforms and making your videos more viewable to a large audience.
Aside from YouTube, the close contender in your effective video marketing as as tool is Facebook videos.
The Facebook Live, which is a very head-on competitor to Google+ Hangouts, has become more popular in recording live videos. Doing this is a form of effective video marketing, but real-time with no time for editing.
Just a word of caution in doing Facebook Live. It must be done strategically to reach a lot of audience.
By promoting your videos on Facebook and other social media platforms, you have a big chance of attracting influencers that would support you in reaching more audience.
However, the key here is to make a very compelling video that entices clicks. So it must be of good quality or that the content idea is so attractive that even those influencers who are not yet part of your network would be compelled to watch and share your videos to a more large audience.
Summary
Now that you have a better understanding of the different ways to to plan your video for video marketing purpose, here are the things that you should remember in the process of video production to marketing:
1. Plan out the content and scene ahead of time.
Envision the plan and visualize the things of what you want to accomplish with the video prior to the production.
2. Keep the video short
Unless you want the whole video as a tutorial with step-by-step instructions, it is vital to create a shorter video that would leave your audience hanging for more. And that’s where you’ll be most effective in enticing potential clients to the landing page.
3. Reach out to influencers
The more views, the better. But to make this possible, make sure you target the influencers. Poke them if you are bold enough or tag them without resorting to spamming.
That’s it for our ultimate guide to effective video marketing. We have just started in providing more information for you.