Every business needs to keep their goods and services top of mind for their customers. The industry is starting to shift away from written content, but what should you do instead? Video marketing is the new norm for advertising your brand, with people tuning in more than ever before. If you want to make the best use of your budget, you should consider video marketing for business growth.
Marketing videos can help you attract new customers if you do it right. Here’s what you need to know about making video ads.
Why Video Marketing for Business Matters
Out of all the new marketing strategies out there today, most people are ready to watch videos that tell them what they need to know. It’s a low-commitment way to consume content passively, but what do you need to know before launching a video marketing campaign?
Statistics on Video Marketing
Don’t get left behind when it comes to your marketing. According to Hubspot, an incredible 91 percent of businesses are using video to grow their brand, and it doesn’t seem likely to stop any time soon. The majority of businesses that are involved in creating video format ads also believe it’s a significant part of their strategy.
Other surveys indicate that 2024 could be the year that more people jump on the video trend. Wyzowl found that 68 percent of businesses that aren’t currently using video intend to start this year.
Wyzowl also found that 90 percent of those using a video format thought it had great ROI via brand engagement, customer retention, and actual sales conversions.
Doesn’t that sound like something you could tap into to skyrocket your sales?
Increases Visibility on the Web & Social Media
Most people will take the time to watch videos on the web if they’re short enough. Unlike blog content that requires them to read, process, and share the main ideas, videos speak for themselves. As a result, customers are more likely to share them with others including on social media.
Especially if you pay attention to SEO, you can gain a hit of link juice for your brand. Google loves video marketing and can link back to your site in the SERPs.
Plus, people are more inclined to share a video marketing campaign that hits home with them. Video is the second most popular content type on socials. If you find yourself struggling to get social media shares, you might want to consider trying video marketing strategies instead of sticking with the status quo.
Key SEO Tactic to Improve Conversions
Video content is a great way to boost your search engine optimization — if you’re careful to cultivate the right titles, meta tags, and descriptions for your videos. Google shows more video results in their search engine results pages than ever before.
It includes videos in their rich snippets as well as general search results.
Not to mention, having videos on your pages encourages people to stay on your site longer. This leads to a lower bounce rate, which could further indicate to search engines that your page delivers the type of content people want.
As a bonus, the more time they spend with you, the more likely they are to convert.
Increases Know, Like, and Trust Factor
People like to be able to put a face with the brands they love the most. One of the best ways to further the know, like, and trust factor is to put up some video ads. Seeing your product or service in action creates emotional resonance with your prospective audience.
They get to know you more which leads them to start liking you and ultimately trusting you with their hard-earned dollars.
Depending on the type of video content marketing you decide to try out, you might be able to provide social proof and answer the most common questions you receive from customers. All of this adds up to make your video ads more powerful than ever before.
Tips for Video Content Marketing
Maybe you feel ready to start making your video marketing strategy stand out in a sea of competition. Here are our top tips to make marketing videos that your audience will love and share with their friends.
Find Where Your Audience Hangs Out Most
Your social media video marketing won’t have the desired effect if no one is around to see them. This means you need to know where you get the most engagement with your audience. Are your customers on Instagram or Facebook? Do they prefer Pinterest over X?
Identify your ideal customer avatar and then start reaching out to figure out where they spend their free time. Video marketing for business is most effective when you leverage existing platforms where clients already see you, know to look for you, and want to hear more from you.
Get Clear on Your Goals
There are lots of different ways video ads can reach your audience, so you should set goals from the very start. Every business will have a unique set of priorities ranging from social shares to converted leads. Before you create a video, be extremely clear on what you hope to gain from a video marketing strategy.
Don’t Break the Budget
It likely comes as no surprise that video content can be quite expensive to produce. Set a budget from the outset and do whatever you can to stick with it. Spending too much money on your video content can eat into profit.
Professional brand videos can cost thousands of dollars, but you can bootstrap your marketing videos on a budget if you want to capitalize on the trend. You don’t need fancy production software and professional actors. All you need to do is take a quality video with your smartphone.
Stick to your budget and use these mostly free video marketing tools to get your videos up and running in no time. You don’t have to be a whiz with hard-to-master video software, and you can produce awesome videos just using Canva.
Be Consistent with Your Video Content
As with all marketing endeavors, you need to commit to creating video content regularly over the long haul. Think about how it might look to your audience if you only make one video. They might think that there’s nothing left to say about your brand, product, or service.
Instead of turning to you as an expert in your field, they may turn to competitors who are consistently putting out new video content for them to consume. Your target audience wants to hear from you more than just once in a while.
Create videos on a regular basis if you want to stay top of mind with your customers.
Figure Out Promotion Tactics
Video marketing for business also means you will need to think through your promotion of those videos. You could pay for ads on social media platforms that put your videos in front of more people. This can boost the visibility beyond what you would get with organic reach to your target audience.
Another way to make the most of your marketing video is to partner with influencers. Doing so can give you access to a new sea of potential customers, help you to gain some social proof, and capitalize on someone else’s know, like, and trust factor.
The cost of promotion for each video should also be a part of your budget. Be sure to consider every aspect of your strategy when thinking about how much you can afford to spend on this.
Keep Tabs on Performance Metrics
How do you know if your video marketing strategy is reaching the right people? The only way to know for sure is to keep tabs on your performance metrics.
Here are just a few of the things you want to keep tabs on when it comes to implementing a new marketing strategy:
- View count: How many people are watching your YouTube video or digital video for several seconds or longer?
- Watch time: When do people drop off watching your videos, or do they always watch videos to the end?
- Engagement: How many likes, comments, and shares do you get on your social media posts?
- Click-through rate: How many people head back to your website to learn more about your product or service? How many of those people convert to leads or sales?
When you create a marketing video, you should track everything related to it. YouTube video makes it easy to do this within their platform, but it may be harder to track on other social media sites. Do your best to keep track of your video audience with these KPIs.
Ideas for a Creative Video Marketing Strategy
Now you know the benefits of video marketing, but what kind of content can you create with these video tips? A little bit of creativity can go a long way to help people find you on the search engines. Using some of these videos in your marketing strategy can get you started.
Brand Story or Behind-the-Scenes Videos
People want to know more about you, your company, and what goes on behind the scenes. People love to have a bit of background information. Before you start making product videos, you might want to make a video that tells more about your brand story.
Here are some questions you can answer in a brand video:
- Where did you get started?
- What are your goals?
- How can customers benefit from your product or service?
- Who are the people behind your brand?
- Why do you do what you do?
Another common way to engage people with your video marketing strategy is to create videos showing behind-the-scenes footage. This could be the production of your product, a glimpse at your coaching process with a willing participant, or your team simply having a good time doing what they love.
Customer Testimonial Videos
Social proof is one of the best ways to tap into the benefits of video marketing. An incredible 88 percent of people rely on user reviews before making a purchase decision. That means product videos are great, but they might pale in comparison to sharing customer testimonials.
Creating videos from engaged customers who are in love with your product can be a huge asset to your digital marketing. You can enlist them to read their review on camera or have a professional read their written review on a branded video.
Either way, it will increase brand awareness and you’ll likely find that your target audience will watch the entire video.
Educate Your Audience
One of the best things you can do is create an actual video that shows customers how to use your product. Explainer videos and how-to videos allow customers to get the most out of your product and head off objections from the very start.
Not to mention, these can be a valuable resource once people purchase so that they can learn how to best utilize your product. A good product video will stand the test of time and can be a great asset to include on your own website to help people at every stage of the buying journey.
Social Media Video Marketing
Last but not least, you should take advantage of all social media channels where you have an audience. Video planning for your digital marketing strategies should include a video script well-suited to social media platforms.
You can create several different types of videos for social media marketing:
- An explainer video for your product or service
- Customer testimonial videos
- Webinars about your product or how you can solve a problem
- Live video where you take questions from your audience.
Final Thoughts: Video Marketing for Business Strategies
Video marketing for business is a crucial part of your marketing strategy in the digital age. Whether you target social media, YouTube videos, or want to enhance your website, you can do many things to move your target audience further along in your marketing funnel with paid or organic traffic.
Start planning what content you will produce today and measure how your videos convert!
