Video marketing strategy

Now let's be honest with each other. Are you gonna be a dear and get into video marketing? Because 72% of people prefer engaging with brands through videos rather than text or images. Also, Smart Insights shows that 92% of marketers recognise video’s crucial roles in their marketing strategies. Basically, this is the strategy to hitch ya wagon to, sunshine.

I know, right? You just can’t ignore video marketing in 2020 when 64% of customers purchase products after watching videos!. Just look at Instagram and Tiktok, we can see how videos hugely affect our purchase decisions.

But is video marketing just about uploading a video and waiting for it to be noticed? Nope! The clue’s in the name that video marketing is also a type of marketing and so you’ll want to track it just like with everything else. 

However, I am here to help you with the 4 ingredients for a successful video marketing campaign.

1. Be a personal trainer for your marketing campaign

It’s okay, you’re not in a gym which is trying to convince you to spend £200 for a personal trainer so relax.

First of all, as you may know, all marketing campaigns need plans with SMART goals and objectives. 

In case you are still confused about what SMART goals and objectives are, here is the explanation for it from Smart Insights.

Source: Smart Insights

While making a video marketing plan, it is crucial for you to understand where you are and what you want to achieve through the campaign. Going back to the gym example, you’d (hopefully) not kick off by going over to the heaviest weights and trying to lift them a hundred times right? All plans you make need to take into account these elements which we’re going to vaguely use to spell out SPARTA:

• SPecific: don't just pop in goals like "be viral" and "more comments" as it will get you nowhere. When you make a goal to lose weight, do you just simply say ‘ I want to lose weight until I can fit in my favourite pair of jeans’? Probably not! With no deadline and specific goal, you will just end up saying "I will lose weight tomorrow"!. Trust me, I understand this feeling oh so well. What you need to do first is specify the goals with numbers, time, channels or percentage such as "increase 10% of traffic to the official Youtube channel in the next 6 month". Bingo!
  

• Achievable: I know we all want our campaigns to be big and profitable but setting goals or objectives that can rinse too much money or are not realistic will just make the campaigns become unsuccessful like Colgate's Lasagna. Do insightful marketing analysis before deciding your goals and objectives. Going back to the weightloss scenario - if you set your sights too high and don’t do as well as you thought you’ll be disheartened for next time.
• Relevant: Relevance is essential, as you need to make sure your goals can help you solve existing and  potential problems your company may face during the campaign period. 
• Trackable: Data and information during and after every campaign will provide you with insights about the campaign’s progress and can be a lifesaver in many cases. Making your goals and objectives trackable will offer valuable materials for your next campaign. For example, if you don't track how much calories you consume per day through apps like Nutracheck, you cannot control your diet and your weight loss plan for sure.
• A: yes only an A. Why only a letter for the last bit?. Well, we all know A starts the alphabet, right?. When you make goals and objectives for a video marketing plan, you need to consider future videos with new content (like the rest of the letters of the alphabet) which still engage people and help you achieve your goals. There are more than 5 billion videos on Youtube, imagine how many videos your customers are exposed to on all platforms? As well as offline tv adverts? Yes, it’s massive!. Your customers will soon be attracted by other content, and that's why you need to "seduce" them with your video to grab them by the scruff of the neck from the get go. So bear in mind, pretty much every industry is competitive and if the time between campaigns is too long people will soon forget about you. Balancing this with the need to make high quality content is pretty difficult, but with the above data you should soon be soaring!

2. Differentiate yourself with a suitable video style

The video genre can be pretty make or break to a campaign. Thus, you will want to spend time deciding a suitable video style for your video marketing campaign among these three typical types of content:

• Educational: surprisingly, educational videos are somehow more competitive than the next two categories. When there are more educational Youtube videos than books in the Library of Congress you know you gotta shout to be heard! The videos should be comprehensive but easy for viewers to follow. This type of video content is now developed to be more fun and personal like on BuzzFeed and the Youtube channel ‘5 Minutes of Crafts. Thus, depending on the subject, you might want to steer clear of being seen as too stiff and formal. Add some flavours into your videos!
• Entertaining: Who doesn’t love a fit of the giggles? Again, dependant on subject matter don’t be afraid to make ‘em laugh and love your videos!. Nutracheck's video demonstrates how humour can be enjoyable and relatable to customers. The more relatable it can be, the better, we can see ourselves in it and thus, we laugh, simple right?
• Inspiring: Inspiring video content aims typically to lead people to both action and positive feelings. This can be the most challenging form of video content to get right, tonally. Get it wrong and you have a Pepsi Kendal Jenner on your hands (geez!) You also need to be careful you don't overwhelm with too many messages, characters or stories, simplicity is key here. A simple but fun one like CareMapper's video ad can be a great example of a new way to approach things. For elderly people, it would be enjoyable and fun to see how life in care homes can be!

Video content styles are tricky so make sure whichever form you choose that it’s executed with verve and will be something your viewers enjoy.

3. Create, fail, listen and welcome SEO

No matter who you are: a beginner or an expert in video content marketing, having the mindset to expect failures is crucial and not necessarily a bad thing at all. The same old videos in a well-worn style can receive complaints about being not creative and fresh enough, but new and edgy videos may bring some risks to the brand and customer base who weren’t expecting something that out there.

But it doesn’t mean you will just keep creating failures, if you learn about what went wrong you can soon be back on track. Listening to any feedback given from customers, which can be collected through surveys or comments or other sources will bring you different perspectives about why you’re not hitting the mark and how to overcome it.

You can seek help from experts like us - Simply Thrilled or from your own customers and staff. After all, listening and being open to feedback will help you improve instead of getting lost in failed videos. 

Paying attention to SEO is another key to help you improve your video marketing campaigns.Your videos' descriptions and hashtags are the key! There are two steps that help you make your videos' descriptions and hashtags SEO-friendly.

• Add favourite keywords and high ranking hashtags. But avoid being greedy with hashtags and keywords as if you add too many of them, the Google/ social media spiders will get lost in the ‘webs’ you create.
• Your descriptions should inform and add to the video content with storytelling and construct an engaging journey for viewers. The reason for this is that many viewers will read the descriptions and comments before deciding to watch a video. So make sure you take care of your descriptions and the comment section as well.

4. Create a path to your videos

As I said before, I bet you can’t wait for your videos to make a splash with people. Creating a path to lead viewers to your videos is essential if you want your videos and campaigns to be successful. There are two ways to make a road for your viewers find you:

• Cooperate with influencers or celebrities: by doing this, you will enjoy the support of the influencers/ celebrities' fans, which helps increase viewers and even new customers to your brand. However, the influencer choosing phase will need to be considered carefully to avoid the unexpected crisis from the influencers.
• Leveraging ads (advertising): ads on social media will help your brand and your videos increase their presence on each platform. However, similar to influencer marketing, social media ads can cause some negative feelings from viewers so you will need to consider social media metrics to make sure it’s going down well.

Video marketing is competitive and challenging so you should never stop trying new things and discover your brand’s strengths as well as weaknesses. If you need help, we - Simply Thrilled  are always here to help. Drop us a “Hi” or give us a ring, we will be there for you!