Most marketers will admit that video is an important part of a marketing strategy, most of them don’t really have a clear plan on how to use it. Making those videos is on the to-do list but there’s other stuff to handle first.
So, this means if you have a marketing strategy for video, you are likely ahead of your competition.
Video stats back up how important this is. In 2018, over 80 percent of businesses were using video in their marketing plans, an increase from 63% in 2017. And people spend a third of their time watching online video content, which also increases ad spending. In fact, over 80% of people have decided to buy something just based on a video. So how do you create a strategy?
Audience awareness and campaign goals
The fundamentals of a video marketing strategy are two – awareness of what your audience would want from you and goals for the campaign. Audience research is paramount – what kind of video content does your audience want? Where do they watch it? How long should it be? Getting these basics in place is very important or you risk making the wrong content.
As far as campaign goals, think about who you want to reach and what you want them to do. Should the aim be to get clicks from social media to a website? Do you want to make money from ads on the video? Or is it about raising brand awareness? Setting goals at the outset help guide what you do.
Ensure videos are branded and consistent
Next is the planning stage and there are two things here to remember. All of your videos should be branded so that people start to recognise them. If you use a shot of yourself or a staff member in a certain place, that can be a useful element of branding. But even visuals, music and having a logo can be important.
Consistent video content has a 20% higher success rate than random, varied content. An example of consistency is that all videos have a link to your website or a landing page and have on-brand creative and messaging that is united across all social media.
Optimise content for all platforms
There’s no reason one piece of video can’t go across multiple channels, but you need to make sure they are optimised for each to get the best results. So, for Facebook, keep the video shorter, add it directly to the site and add captions. YouTube videos can be longer while Twitter has a limit on length. Plus, you can look at things such as Instagram Stories and even adding video content from YouTube to Pinterest.
Study analytics
Finally, keep studying those analytics and use the data you generate to make decisions about your future video strategy. Some key metrics to study include:
- Engagement rate
- View count
- Play rate
- Social sharing
- Comments or feedback
By studying these, you can get a clear picture of what works, what your audience reacts best to and therefore fine-tune your strategy going forward. This ensures that any video content you create is going to the right people on the right platform and gives the best return.