As companies search for new and innovative ways to promote their brands and engage with their target audiences, video marketing is coming to the fore. However, the rise of video marketing isn’t solely driven by companies and marketers.
In fact, video content is in high demand. As the availability of high-speed internet increases and the cost of data plummets, video content is much more accessible than it once was. Due to this, user behavior is evolving, and a larger number of users are actively seeking out video content.
For businesses, incorporating video content into your marketing strategies should be a top priority. After all, meeting customer demand and outperforming your competitors is critical to your success. With this in mind, take a look at these top video marketing tips to boost your small business:
1. Use Different Types of Content
Video marketing can be classified into many different genres. Storytelling, instructional, Q&A, and sales-driven are all options that work well for any type of small business. However, it’s important to vary the types of video you create and publish. As well as keeping your videos original, publishing various different types of video content will ensure that users always have some new and different to watch.
2. Add Click-Through Buttons
You want users to act when they see your videos, either by purchasing a product or service, sharing the video, visiting your website, or making an inquiry. By incorporating click-through buttons into the content itself, you can make it easy for users to access the additional content they’re looking for.
Be sure to direct users to relevant content via click-through buttons on your videos. On an instructional How-To video, for example, you may have click-through buttons that take the user directly to a product or landing page.
Although you can generally include links beneath video content, this isn’t always easily visible, particularly on video streaming sites. You don’t want to add any obstacles to the user’s journey to your site and click-through buttons will ensure that links aren’t hidden in dropdown boxes or lost in a mix of comments and ratings.
3. Use Video Metrics
In the same way that you use metrics to monitor social media activity or to analyze the success of a campaign, you should use metrics to optimize your video content. Using reports that present results of YouTube Ads, for example, you can determine what types of videos your target audience prefers. This gives you the data you need to make informed decisions about future campaigns and allows you to boost the ROI of your video marketing.
4. Optimize Video Content
Most people associate SEO with webpages but it’s important that every feature or element on a webpage is properly optimized for SEO purposes and this includes video content. Furthermore, when you’re posting videos on social media or streaming sites, your own website’s SEO won’t impact its place in the rankings.
By optimizing every video, however, you can ensure that your content ranks highly when users search for relevant keywords and terms. Both image and video searches are becoming increasingly popular, which means you can get ahead of your competitors by ensuring your videos are properly optimized and easy for users to find.
5. Outsource Video Production
Creating high-quality videos needn’t be as costly as you think but if you’re concerned that you don’t have the resources or expertise in-house, you can outsource your video production instead. As video marketing has grown, many agencies and marketing firms have added this to their list of B2B services. In addition to creating and editing videos on your behalf, they will also optimize and publish content for you, if you want to outsource all of your video marketing functions.
For small businesses, outsourcing video production can be an effective way to reduce the cost of video marketing while elevating the quality of your content. What’s more – you won’t need to invest in any equipment or hire any additional staff when you decide to outsource this aspect of your digital marketing.
Incorporating Video Content into Your Marketing Strategy
With so many channels to consider, marketing is becoming more complex. However, the range of tools available and the ease of automation means that small businesses can easily compete with larger brands. In fact, being able to differentiate your company from others is a prime advantage of using video marketing.
By incorporating video content into your marketing strategy, you can satisfy user demand and increase the efficacy of your campaigns. As a result, you’ll generate a higher ROI, secure more conversions and acquire new customers.
