How to get started with video marketing in 5 steps
Marketing video content is hugely popular in the current digital landscape, and it’s easy to see why. Videos are the most engaging form of content available – almost a third of all internet users watch YouTube videos regularly! This equates to billions of hours’ worth of video content being viewed by millions of people, every day. You can pick up a phone or computer and watch a video of nearly anything you can think of.
Businesses around the world, big and small, are using video content to marketing their brand and attract countless new customers. When done correctly, video marketing can provide a consistent stream of visitors and leads. For small businesses especially, video marketing can be a great way of quickly building your brand.
In this guide we will show you how effective video marketing can be, and how you can start your video marketing campaign in a few steps.
Why choose video marketing?
Video marketing is some of the easiest content to consume, and it’s easily the most popular type of content out there.
The statistics speak for themselves:
- 87% of marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool (Wyzowl, 2019)
- Video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year (Optinmonster, 2019)
- The average user spends 88% more time on a website with video (Animoto, 2018)
- YouTube receives more than 1.5 billion users per month, and plays over 1 billion hours of video each day (SEJ, 2018)
- 72% of users prefer video over text when learning about a product/service (Wyzowl, 2018)
As you can see, video marketing is a massive industry with a colossal amount of potential leads. But video marketing can do more for you than getting your brand in front of people.
Improve your SEO: using platforms like YouTube to publish video content about your brand can help improve your SEO efforts. Search engines will often display relevant YouTube videos at the top of the results pages, meaning you could be getting more exposure.
Draw in more mobile users: with such a large portion of internet users viewing video content through their mobile phones, you’ll have a better chance of increasing engagement and interest in mobile users.
Expand to global audiences: video content is consumed by nearly every country in the world, so getting yourself established on video platforms will allow more people from around the world to find your content.
Stay ahead of the competition: recent studies have suggested that nearly half of all internet marketers are planning to incorporate video marketing into their strategies, so if you want to stay competitive or have a chance at staying ahead of the competition, you should be using video marketing.
So now that we’ve covered why video marketing is such an effective method of building your brand, let’s go through exactly how you can get started with video marketing.
Step 1: Create a strategy, and stick to it
If you want to create quality video content that can really benefit you then you’re going to need to create a strategy. This doesn’t need to be a sprawling novel of documentation, it can be a rough outline or plan of action. Marketers use many different methods of planning to craft their video marketing strategy, and you can plan the video content however you like – as long as you stick to the plan.
Any good content marketing strategy will answer the following basic questions:
- Who are your target audience?
- What are your target audience’s interests – what do they like, share, and buy?
- What are the aims of the video marketing campaign?
- What type of content are you going to create?
- How are you going to create the content that achieves the goals you have set out?
- How are you going to promote the content you have created?
You can expand or adapt your strategy as you see fit or depending on the scenario, as long as you have a good understanding of your goals. The more detailed the better, provided you follow the strategy you’ve outlined.
Don’t forget that you should also be tracking your progress against your strategy. How else are you going to know whether the video content is performing as expected?
Step 2: Get set up on your video platform
Now that you’ve created a plan of action, you can get set up on the video platform that you’ll be using. In many cases this will be YouTube, as that’s by far the most popular video platform on the internet.
However, may also be creating video for a number of other platforms such as:
- Social Media: Video content on social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram has really kicked off in recent years, so you may want to tap into the large audience that these platforms offer to help get your company noticed and build brand awareness.
- Website: Video content may be appropriate for your website, depending on the nature of the website. Placing video content on your home page for example, can help educate your audience about your brand, and in turn build trust.
- Advertisements: You may find yourself creating video content for advertisements, to be displayed on the internet or television.
How easily you can get setup will depend on which platform you’re going to use. If you’re uploading content to your website for example, then you don’t need to worry about creating accounts and establishing a profile.
Popular platforms like YouTube are simple and straightforward to get started on, so you shouldn’t find yourself sinking too much time into this step.
Step 3: Start creating your video content
You’ve created your plan of action, you’re set up on your video platform – now you can begin creating your video content!
The first thing you’ll need to do is gather your equipment. Each company will have a different budget level so the equipment you need will vary accordingly. Some video content is appropriate for recording on mobile phones, and some productions will require a high-end recording setup.
If you want to create a really high quality, professional video then you’ll want to purchase or rent some basic camera and lighting equipment. Editing can go a long way in transforming any recorded footage into an engaging video, so you may want to invest in some decent editing software such as Adobe Premiere, or Final Cut.
Additional equipment to consider:
- A professional DSLR camera
- Basic studio lighting
- Mounting equipment like a tripod
- Recording microphones
Setting is also something to consider when creating video content. Is your video going to require a green screen, or certain set pieces? Will you need to film on-location, or in a certain setting?
Remember that high quality equipment won’t fix a badly made video. Equipment is always important when creating video content, but it’s far from the only factor.
Step 4: Optimise your video content for SEO
So you’ve finally finished creating your video content. All the hard work has paid off and you’re happy with the finished product. What’s next?
Well, the work isn’t done yet. Although you may have finished creating the video, there’s a few more steps you should be taking if you want the video to perform to its full potential.
While launching your website you should make efforts to optimise it for SEO, if you want it to perform well. Search engine optimisation can be a complex topic, but there are some simple steps you can take to optimise your video and give it the best chance of performing well.
Content: Try and make sure that the actual content of your video is well optimised. Your content should be easy to understand, relevant, and informative. Your content should be “likeable” and “shareable”. High-quality, engaging videos that provide value to the viewer will perform better than low-quality, low-effort videos.
Thumbnail: Although this might not directly affect your Google rankings, it’s still something that all potential visitors will see, so you should try and design an eye-catching thumbnail to draw people in. You should make your thumbnail exciting where possible, interesting, and exciting. Watermarks or logos can also help build your brand. Avoid click-bait thumbnails at all costs!
Title and description: Don’t make the mistake of using the same title and description for all of your videos. The title should be descriptive, informative, as well as exciting – you want to draw viewers in after all. Spend some time writing a good description as well, including some keywords, calls to action, and tags.
Transcript: If possible, you should try and upload video transcripts, which will appear to viewers as captions. This will help make your videos more accessible to a wider audience, as well as allowing your video to be crawled by search bots.
Mobile optimisation: Many video platforms will now take care of optimising your video for mobile devices, however if your video platform doesn’t, then you should double check that your video is accessible on mobile devices.
This by no means covers every aspect of video optimisation, but it should help search engines to begin showing your video in results pages.
Step 5: Promote your video content
If you truly want your video to reach a large audience then you’re going to need to spend some time promoting your content. There are numerous ways of doing this, and you can put in as much time or as little time into promotion as you see fit.
Perhaps one of the most effective ways of marketing video content is to utilise influencers.
You’re probably aware of the term already, but if you’re not, an influencer is a person with a high level of knowledge in a particular topic, who is respected in their field and has amassed a large following. Social media influencers typically attract much higher levels of engagement than anyone else – and this is reflected in their view count. Top influencers will get hundreds of thousands, or even millions of views on their videos.
You can probably already see why influencer marketing can be the most effective way of getting your brand in front of people. If you team up with a good influencer in your industry who can seamlessly promote your content, then you’ve got a golden ticket (so to speak). Just make sure to do some research and work within your budget!
Using ads is another popular method of promoting video content. This may be seen as an antiquated method of marketing, but it can still be quite effective.
There are numerous types of ads available, depending on the video platform you’re using. Nowadays many ad networks will only charge you when your advertisements are actually watched, however you should still check before going ahead.
When using paid ads, you should try and make sure that your video content is as engaging as possible, with clear calls-to-action and exciting content to draw customers in. You can also often choose to target specific types of users, which is where having a good video marketing strategy will help.
