Every brand needs to produce more videos. Buyers want more of them and your competitors are responding.

But how do you keep up with an increasingly competitive marketplace?

In this blog post, I’ll share six video marketing tips that any brand can use to help boost their conversions. I’ll cover how to tap into important psychological triggers to boost engagement, how to use metrics to inform your strategy, and more.

Let’s get started!

1. Find the gap

Video, like every piece of content in your content marketing strategy, has its place. Depending on your goals, you can use video to create awareness at the top of your funnel or educate and convert buyers into customers at the middle and bottom of your funnel.

For your brand to really influence buyers and convert them, you need to find your video gap. Your video content gap is the void in your video library that could be preventing conversions.

For example, if you’re building a YouTube marketing funnel, having a collection of testimonial videos (perfect BoFu content), but no explainer videos to create awareness for your solution, and no product walk-throughs (ideal MoFu/Bofu content) won’t help your brand.

Buyers will struggle to draw a correlation between a challenge they may or may not have defined as yet, and how your product will help.

To find your video content gap, audit what you have. Use analytics to tell which videos drive traffic and what happens once viewers arrive on a landing page. An increase in conversions will mean your funnel is working, where a drop-off in visitors indicates a broken or leaky funnel.

2. Use pattern interrupts

Pattern interrupts are powerful psychological levers. They break thought patterns by introducing a new idea. And they are highly effective! Buffer saw a 59% jump in growth of their YouTube channel in just 30 days by introducing pattern interrupts.

But why do they work?

The human mind is wired to focus on what’s directly in front of it. Often, videos that aren’t entertaining become boring to viewers, and when that happens, the probability of losing a viewer increases.

Pattern interrupts in videos accomplish two things:

First, they prevent viewers from falling into a lull. As new ideas are introduced, your audience perks up and pays attention.

Secondly, an increase in attention leads to greater consumption of more of your videos. And as more people view more of your videos, metrics like YouTube’s watch-time increase, helping boost your rankings on search results pages. Also, with more people paying attention to your content, they’ll be able to absorb more of what you offer, increasing the likelihood of higher conversions. Pattern interrupts are extremely effective at increasing your audience retention for both your long-form video content as well as your live streams.

How can you introduce pattern interrupts?

Here are three easy tactics to use:

3. Use SEO – it matters

SEO is a term most marketers are tired of hearing about. It’s got a bad wrap due to all the misinformation about what helps rank content, and because it’s a highly competitive field.

But it’s still important and every marketer needs to practice it to position their brand competitively.

When it comes to video SEO, unlike website SEO, there aren’t over 200 ranking factors to pay attention to. In fact, you’ll use basic on-page tactics that will help your videos show up in both Google and YouTube.

Fact is, Google is indexing video more regularly and predictions are that video is 50 times more likely to feature on the first page of results.

SEO your video by focusing on keyword usage. Include it in your titles and description.

But don’t stuff your keywords. Create captivating titles that capture your audience’s attention and make them click-through to watch.

For example, Brian Dean ranked for “link building” by “front-loading” his title with the term. He also included it in the description. And while other factors (think watch-time and comments) also influenced his ranking, unless he strategically used the term, YouTube would not have ranked his video.

4. Out-create your competition

Creativity is subjective, but it can be distilled down to a science, and based on facts you know about your audience.

With a clear understanding of your audience, you can produce videos that resonate with buyers at each stage of their journey.

But just how creative do you need to be to beat the competition?

Here are four tips on how to elevate your videos:

Create a stronger intro. People tend to gloss over videos that don’t provide valuable information. The best place to shell out the goods at the beginning of the video. Tell your viewers what they’re getting and why it matters to them.

Introduce pattern interrupts. Change camera angles, introduce graphics to illustrate concepts, text, use free music for your videos, and also change the speed, tone and volume of your voice at different points in the video.

Create more engaging titles. Your title matters just as much to YouTube and Google as it does to potential viewers. Make it more catchy and interesting than your competitors.

Notice how the top results present interesting ideas related to content marketing strategy?

Design attractive thumbnails. Thumbnails stand out because they’re visual elements and people are attracted to graphics. To make you’re more captivating, incorporate striking color contrasts, use text and include a hero image that features a person.

5. Use analytics to elevate your videos

If you produce videos, you’re on YouTube and know that analytics matter. You may also know that metrics drive YouTube’s ranking algorithm. But what most marketers aren’t clear on is how to use their data to make more informed content creation decisions.

YouTube’s algorithm is all about engagement. They want to share more of the content that people interact with. The metrics that matter include:

Your goal is to generate more engagement to help rank your videos. To accomplish this, identify which videos have low engagement metrics and elevate them.

For example, if you find that your watch-time is low, introduce pattern interrupts.

Not generating enough likes? Get a little more creative and produce a stronger intro.

Want more comments? Ask a specific question that’s related to a problem or topic mentioned in your video.

While not a ranking factor, you should also pay attention to view velocity. It’s a measure of how much interest your video generates in its first 72 hours on YouTube. View velocity is best used as an indicator of what’s important and interesting to your audience now.

Image: Morningfame

Knowing what’s interesting and important right now will help you create more content to support your buyer’s journey and boost conversions.

6. Promote your videos

The rule of seven dictates that people need to see a marketing message at least seven times before they engage your brand. And with the constant barrage of content produced today, it’s clear to see that you have to promote your videos feverishly to generate views that lead to conversions.

Here are for ways to get in front of your audience:

Use social media

Social media is low-hanging fruit. Publish your videos on all accounts your brand owns. But don’t stop there. Motivate employees to share and like your videos to generate as much reach as possible

Email your list

A new video is a perfect excuse to email your list. Make yours a well-designed email with a clear call to action to watch the video. If you’re feeling creative, include a GIF, they’ve proven to boost click-throughs by at much as 103%.

Use paid advertising

Paid ads are the best way to generate reach fast. Dedicate a small piece of your budget to promoting videos. This can help boost engagement (think likes, comments and watch-time).

Leverage partnerships

If there are brands you’ve partnered with before, rekindle those relationships. Ask for shares of your video, and if possible, an email drop.

Steph from Courageandclarity.com partners with Fizzle to promote her webinar.

Video is here to stay and you’ve got to make it a tool that generates results for your brand. Your video must be attractive, resonate with viewers, and most of all, it has to support the buyer’s journey. While not an exhaustive list, using these tips to elevate your video strategy can help you figure out what works with your audience and how to use your results to drive more conversions.

Guest Post by: Amir Shahzeidi

Amir is the digital marketing manager at Uscreen, an all-in-one video monetization and live streaming platform that empowers video entrepreneurs and creators to monetize their content and build thriving businesses around their videos.