The Ultimate Guide to Video Content Marketing for Increased Engagement
Video marketing is not what it used to be a few years ago. Today, it has gone to become lot more serious, and much more effective, especially for businesses that have already managed to build an audience.
A large number of small businesses are taking advantage of video content marketing to stand out from the competition in order to achieve their goals.
Why video? Because it works. And it will keep working.
Look around and you’ll find that video content is being consumed like never before. YouTube has turned into the second biggest search engine in the world. That’s right, not Bing or Yahoo, but YouTube is where people are searching on right after Google for everything. Recipes, product demos, how-to videos – you name it, they’re searching for it.
Here are some more video stats to convince you about the power video holds on the web:
- 82% of Twitter users consume video content on the microblogging site.
- 92% of mobile video viewers like to share them with other people.
- 87% of Internet marketers leverage video content to meet their business goals.
This simply means that as a business you cannot and should not take video content marketing for granted. With time most of your competition will be leveraging video, which means it should be a part of your core marketing strategy now. The value of video should not be underestimated if you want to taste real success with your content marketing efforts.
Storytelling Via Video
Before we delve into how you can use video content marketing, it’s important to first understand what actually makes video click. While there are a number of reasons that come to mind, the biggest one is that videos allow you to tell stories. Stories that you can use to connect to your target audience. Stories that you as a marketer can leverage to create powerful impressions and long lasting relationships. Stories that simply deliver.
Yes, video has the potential to help your prospects and customers understand your business and create a ground for future promotions. But it’s also an amazing way to spread your ideas with meaningful stories. And that’s what makes it so exciting.
You, as a consumer, which will you most likely to engage to? A video that sounds like a sales pitch or a narrative that tells you the value of the product? Consumers now are more connected to a brand if they feel like their lives will change once they use it. Connect with them emotionally, that’s the key.
Also, you can use video to experiment with new and brave content to touch the emotional side of your target audience. Because videos are a mixture of visuals, motion and sounds, they allow you to create deep and more meaningful connections with people — while positioning your brand in the best possible way.
However, in order to make the most out of video and find success with it, you as a business should know and understand how to use it the right way. Until and unless you realize the true power of video and take the right steps to leverage it, you won’t see the kind of results you want to see.
What Exactly is Video Content Marketing?
Content marketing in its purest form is nothing but the production and online distribution of content that is educational slash informative in nature. The goal of this content is to convert online content consumers into prospects/customers. And also to provide enough information to current customers and convince them to become repeat buyers.
Content marketing is used across various channels, with the help of different types of content. Which means it is not limited to text, and video is a big part of it.
Since video is a strong and effective way to spread your marketing message, it can take your content marketing efforts to the next level. But once again, this depends on how well you execute your video content marketing campaign. And what you want to achieve from it.
5 Valid Reasons Why Your Business Needs Video Content Marketing
By now you should know what video content marketing exactly is and how it’s growing rapidly. It’s a tactic that your business needs to incorporate in order to get a higher return from your online marketing efforts.
Let’s now look into a few strong reasons as to why you should invest in video content marketing and make it a part of your core business strategy.
More Conversions
When it comes to running an online marketing campaign, the ultimate metric that matters is the conversion rate. Because if you’re not converting your prospects into leads or customers, your business isn’t growing, it’s as simple as that.
By leveraging video content marketing, you’ll be able to get more people to sign up for your newsletter or buy your latest product. When compared to other types of content, video content can give your prospects the needed clarity to make the final decision. It gives you a certain edge over the competition and since quality video isn’t as easy to produce, it can take a while before others catch up with you.
A recent research conducted shows that 71% of marketers have found video content more conversion-friendly. When done right, it can easily help you get better results with minimal efforts.
Better Emotional Connection
If you look around the social media landscape, you’ll find that videos are being shared the most in comparison to other content types. While there are many reasons as to why people like sharing videos, one of the strongest “why” is that people connect to the right video content on an emotional level. By creating videos that appeal to the emotions of your target audience, you not only give them a reason to consume your content but also spread it across their own network.
For example, if you look at a traditional blog post, you won’t find the emotional cues that come with video content. Right from the tone of voice to the sound effects/music being used, everything can have a positive impact on the viewer. Which ultimately makes your content stand out from the rest and also memorable.
When interested people watch your video that evokes their strongest emotions (happiness, awe, anger, etc), it may not push them towards taking action immediately. However, it will help them make a buying decision later on when they see more such content from you.
So whether you are in the B2B or the B2C market, impressing the emotions of your audience with video marketing, can and will help you bring in more business.
Higher Accessibility
Let’s face it, video production is no longer the difficult task it used to be a few years ago. You no longer need to spend a ton of time on creating a video or have a huge budget to achieve studio level quality. Yes, we’re talking about video content that only the big guys were able to produce before.
Thanks to the advancement in technology and with new/innovative tools available, creating and launching your own video has become much more affordable. In fact, it will keep getting easier in the coming years as more and more businesses jump into producing their own videos and starting their own channels.
Stronger Engagement Levels
Many studies have proven that visual content works great when it comes to engaging your target audience. People today like to consume to content that is visually appealing and engrossing. Now, this isn’t limited to pictures or photographs. Video content is proven to be a big part of the “visual content” movement.
With more and more people watching video content on social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, you can see firsthand how video is helping generate strong engagement from target users.
When you create and share video content with your social followers, you have a 10X chance of them engaging with your video, which often translates to more shares and comments. However, do keep in mind that the quality of video content marketing matters to a huge extent and has a direct impact on the kind of results you are able to generate.Easier SEO Results
Does video content marketing have an impact on SEO? Can videos actually help you rank higher in the search engines for keywords that are hard to rank for? The answer is yes, given that you’re doing it right. There is little doubt that Google and other major search engines like Bing love video content and won’t hesitate to rank it higher than traditional articles.
According to a study done by Comscore, by adding video content to your site, you have a 53% higher chance to end up on the first page of the SERPs. This just goes on to show that quality video content can make a big difference to not only your conversion rate, but also the organic search traffic you generate.
Understanding the Video Content Marketing Funnel
Using video for marketing becomes much more effective when you take a prospect though a well-defined content marketing funnel. By implementing video, you will be able to generate more sales with your content strategy.
It doesn’t matter what type of video content you use, with the help of a proper video content marketing funnel, you can:
- Create more awareness among your target audience about your product or service while creating a positive impression on them. This is the first and the most important stage of content marketing because without awareness, it’s impossible to gain trust.
- Focus on the problem and the solution you offer, clearly explaining the benefits of using your product and educating your audience. This is the second stage where you help your prospective buyers understand how exactly your product/service can help them.
- Stand out from the competition and make it easy for prospects to reach a buying decision and do business with you. This is the final stage of the funnel where you can expect to actually close the sale.
In order to make the most of your content marketing funnel, it’s important that you use the right type of content to take potential buyers through it.
When you use video content, your funnel not only becomes stronger but you also end up getting a higher return on investment. Right from building brand loyalty to increasing your conversion rate, you’ll find that video is the perfect medium to get more of everything.
7 Simple Tips for Efficient Video Content Marketing
If you want your video content marketing to deliver results, then you need to take a calculated approach to it. You can’t just blindly play the video marketing game and expect to see returns.
Here are seven proven tips to help you make the most out of your video content marketing efforts.
1: Grab their Attention Quick
Internet users are not as patient as they used to be. Today, it’s all about finding the best piece of content. So don’t be surprised if people jump your video to look for another one if they don’t find it enticing enough.
The solution is to hook your viewers without wasting their time and delivering on your promise. You only have a few seconds to impress them (less than 10 to be precise).
So have an interesting, relevant start to the video and don’t wait too long to reach the meat. Whether your video is long or short, give your viewers a reason to watch it without skipping it.
2: Deliver Real Value
Powerful video content marketing is all about giving immense value to the viewer in whatever form you choose. Your content strategy should focus on adding value to the lives of your target audience. How you provide this value is subjective. Because what’s valuable for your audience may not be that valuable for a different type of audience.
So for instance, if you find that you can give value by creating and publishing entertaining yet informative video content, do that. Or if you want to choose an even simpler route by creating videos offering specific (niche or industry related) knowledge, even that’s fine. Keep in mind that any video that you produce must be watchable and enjoyable. Because if it’s a drag, then it’s not valuable.
So be interesting. Stay relevant. Seek engagement.
3: Go Beyond YouTube
While there is no doubt that your video content marketing plan cannot be complete without YouTube, it’s not enough. In other words, there are many other valuable video sharing channels/platforms that you can tap into besides YouTube. Your aim is to reach out to your target audience in the best possible way, and that can’t happen if you only focus on YouTube.
The most obvious reason as to why you need to consider other platforms is because of the potential to connect with a varied audience. For instance, the kind of people you can reach with your videos on Facebook is not the same as YouTube. Because Facebook users discover video content in a different way. Also, different platforms have people from various age groups using them.
This is why it makes sense to leverage as many video platforms as you can. However, allocate the majority of your time to a platform where your target audience is most likely to be found.
4: Stay Consistent in Your Approach
Consistency plays a big role in making your video stand out from the competition. Why? Because videos are visual, which means you’re not limited in how you present the content. With every video you create, you can help your viewers resonate with your message by being consistent. Your brand’s personality, look and design matters to a great extent in keeping consistency high.
For example, if you are creating videos with people in them, then keep using the same cast so that your viewers see faces they’re already familiar with. Similarly, if your videos only have a voice-over, see to it that the colors and the design in the video you use stay consistent.
You may also want to plan your video content well in advance (create a video content calendar) to make sure your consistent with timing as well.
However, when it comes to video platforms, your videos need to be customized for each. The one size/look fits all approach doesn’t work here. If you’re posting a video on Instagram, then it helps to create videos that look more natural, unedited or spontaneous. But on YouTube and Facebook, people expect a professional feel, so that’s what you give them.
5: Don’t Ignore the Quality Aspect
Just because you’re creating and uploading videos on YouTube or Facebook doesn’t mean that you should forget about quality. In fact, keeping up with quality is extremely important on these social media sites because they’re moderated by real communities. Users won’t think twice before giving your videos a thumbs down if they don’t see quality.
So say no to low-definition video and hello to HD video content that people like to view and share with others. As video platforms improve in quality and service, they expect to give their users a better experience. Which will only happen if you stop testing the patience of your viewers with bad videos. Remember, quality over quantity is the number one rule of creating amazing video content.
6: Optimize for Silence
Besides YouTube, other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram tend to auto-play videos without sound. The user may or may not choose to watch the video with sound. But stats show that up to 85% of videos viewed on Facebook are watched with volume down to zero.
The simple reason for the “silence revolution” in the online video world (especially on social media) is that people are increasingly watching videos on their mobile devices. Since the social experience is largely silent, especially with people around, it’s no wonder that many users prefer to viewing videos with sound turned off.
So how do you impress users when they are only watching and not listening? By creating attractive yet relevant visuals that make the video feel engrossing. If there’s dialogue in your video, then add English subtitles. In short, have sound in your video but also optimize for silence.
7: Add a Call to Action
What’s the use of video content marketing if there’s no proper call to action in place? Businesswise, if you’re investing in video content marketing, then you need measurable results. Having a clear CTA makes real business sense and it should not be ignored.
Call to actions in videos need to be complicated. Simply prompting viewers to visiting your website or subscribing to your newsletter at the end of the video is usually enough. But if you want to go a step further, you may have a call to action come up right in the middle of the video when the viewer is deeply engrossed in the video.
However, stuffing your videos with multiple call to actions is a strict no-no. The last thing you want is to come off is salesy or pushy to your viewers. Because annoyed viewers will move away from the video and avoid sharing it with others.
4 Quick Video Content Marketing Ideas You Can Apply to Your Business Today
Coming up with creative video content ideas can seem daunting but it’s not impossible. What you do with video largely depends on your goals, so if you’re clear about them it shouldn’t be difficult.
Here are a few ideas that you can use in your business, depending on your marketing goals.
- Share your company’s or business’s value using videos which could be anything from repurposed blog posts to staff testimonials. The idea is to create video content that makes your brand stand out from the crowd. Remember, the more your audience sees your brand as unique and trustworthy, the better it is.
- Deliver company news and make important announcements with the help of videos that can be shared through your social media channels. Added a new feature to your product? Use a video explaining the benefits. Have a special event coming up? Create a video detailing the ins and outs of it, and how viewers can become a part of it. Running a special promotion? Run a video Facebook ad and share it with your target audience.
- Provide a product demo so that people who don’t want to read can see your product in working. When your prospective customers see your product in a running condition, it positions you as a trusted brand. Show your audience what your product is about so that it sells itself. Make the video demo powerful enough to remove any doubts from your prospective customer’s minds.
- Show that your brand or business is a thought leader by creating videos about your industry and about evergreen topics related to your subject matter expertise. Help your audience understand the difficult areas of your market. Make their lives easier with your videos and in return they will give you more business.