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The Secrets of Effective Video Marketing, Tips & Examples – ContentStudio

In 2007, Brian Goulet and his wife Rachel sat in their dining room with little money, zero marketing knowledge, and a toddler by their side. Times were challenging as they worked out how to market their fountain pens.

Flash forward to the present times and their fountain pen company, The Goulet Pen Company,  has grown into a popular name among pen-fanatics and employs about 40 people. The tipping point? Videos as part of their content marketing strategy.

The Goulet Pen Company has a solid content marketing plan that churns out 230 articles yearly (3-4 every week), sends a weekly newsletter, and hosts the Goulet Q&A session on YouTube. To date, the company has over 1100 online videos, which “is what really sets the company apart from its competitor” as Trevor Young writing in the Digital Citizen puts it.

In fact, their videos are a classic example of video marketing worth studying and looking up to. But before we explore video marketing, let’s start with the basics of what it is and proceed to discuss how to effectively execute it in this post.

What is video marketing and why is it so effective?

Video marketing is self-explanatory – using videos to market your product(s) or service(s). As with every other marketing tactic, video campaigns are also executed with a specific goal in mind.

This could be educating your audience, increasing engagement on your social channels, or showcasing your product, you name it. In fact, mind-blowing statistics backing video marketing reveal how effective it can be.

For instance,

What’s interesting is that the video is not another cog in the machine. Instead, it is useful throughout the flywheel. It is a versatile tool for not only marketers but salespeople and service teams.

For example, service teams can use support video calls, onboarding videos, and videos that give a team intro to name a few ways. Moreover, you can prepare videos for your site for pushing conversion rates. 72% of other businesses like yours that employ explainer videos say that they lift their site’s conversion rate.

In fact, numbers such as these explain why video content is gaining so much prominence. More of such incredible ones include:

In addition to these encouraging stats, there’s interesting science that explains why videos are effective in capturing attention and sparking engagement.

The foremost and most straightforward reason is that videos are moving pictures that break the monotony of text. Our brain processes visual imagery 60,000 times faster than text. Not to forget, videos can convey your message at a lightning-fast pace in contrast to text format.

What’s more, visuals go straight to long-term memory, which is why viewers retain 95% of the video message as compared to 10% of the read text. A good reason for this is that videos show things where text describes them. Also, our mind is attracted to action and movement. Again, visuals are best at delivering that.

Types of videos to create for your marketing funnel

Now that you are armed with the knowledge of what video marketing is and why videos are so effective, let’s dig into where you can use them.

You can employ videos in various stages of your marketing funnel. Here’s a breakdown:

The first stage of the buyer’s journey: plan videos for brand awareness

The top of your marketing funnel covers the goal of widening reach so that more and more people learn about your business. Plus, you need content that gains your audience’s trust. Videos work wonderfully here as they show the human side of your brand.

Create short videos that reflect thought leadership or social videos that show your brand’s personality. Or, plan how-to or explainer videos that solve your target audience’s pain point.

The second stage of the buyer’s journey – create videos that educate and engage

Once you bait and capture your audience’s attention, your aim is to maintain the earned attention and develop the prospect’s interest in your product or service so that he converts into a buyer.

This calls for content that engages and nurtures relationships with prospects. Video content such as webinars, product demos, case studies, in-depth explainer videos, and landing page promotional videos can help. Here’s Evernote’s example:

The third stage of the buyer’s journey – create videos that close sales

Here you need videos that push the buyer to finally purchase from you. Studies confirm that 74% of those who watched an explainer video bought the product.

Video types to add here are product demos, personalized videos that reveal how your product can help the lead’s business, in-depth product demos, and video testimonials that offer social proof to the interested viewer.

For instance, this video shows how Slack and Salesforce work together:

The final aim of the buyer’s journey – make videos that turn buyers into fans

A good buyer’s journey takes a step further than closing sales and attempts to convert the buyer into a brand loyalist. This calls for a thank you video or an onboarding video that explains how to use your product or service. Or, you could send out an educational course that assists customers in magnifying their expertise.

Watch how Canva does this:

How to make the most of video marketing? The secrets to successful video marketing

So far, we’ve addressed the what, why, and when of video marketing. The real question, however, relates to ‘how’ – how can you make the most of video marketing? In other words, what makes a video marketing campaign effective?

Let’s walk you through some critical factors that make all the difference between a failed video marketing campaign and a successful one:

1. Drafting a video campaign plan

Without a plan in place, any and every effort that you make toward video marketing will be nothing more than darts misfired in the dark. So before you talk to the videographer or layout all the bright ideas in your mind, sit down to sketch a plan.

Address the same points that you would when you prepare a content marketing plan for your audience:

Meet Mailchimp: Lizzy

Instagram, for example, shares videos almost weekly on their page:

Source

And while you are at the planning stage, don’t forget to conduct a quick competitor analysis that scans what sort of video content is already available on the horizon. Pull up a spreadsheet and insert the names of your competitors.

Then, scour their video content to learn which topics they address, their publishing schedule, video USP, and holes in their video content to learn what it is that they are missing. Once you’re down with a minimum of 5-10 competitors, you’ll be able to spot the gaps, which will give you an idea of what to cover for yourself.

Keep these findings in mind as you outline your video marketing plan. Now is also the time to address one last question – how will you repurpose your video content? About 60% of marketers reuse content between 2-5 times. You should too.

Think of converting the video that you create, say a webinar, into a blog post. Or, extract the key takeaways and convert them into an infographic. A case in point here is Ross Simmonds covering content distribution on Foundation Inc. He explains the topic in a video as well as presents it in a blog post form.

2. Pay attention to the scripting

A powerful script is an asset for any video, paving the way for its success. Your video is more of an orphan without a good script.

Words supplement the video content in attracting and holding viewers’ attention. There’s no way you can choose one over the other. Compromise on one of the two factors and you risk putting off your viewer.

So you either need to hire an excellent scriptwriter or get to work yourself. Start from scratch with an outline. Outlining a video script is no different than writing an outline for other content pieces such as blog posts.

Follow these tips for writing a video script outline:

While this is the skeletal framework for prepping your script, you need to pay special attention to the hook or opening sentences of your copy. The hook is where your viewer decides if he wants to continue watching your video or not. It tells him a story and reveals what the video will cover, therefore, answers the important, what’s-in-it-for-me question.

3. Focus on storytelling

It’s easy to (wrongly) assume that your product/service should be at the center of your videos. That’s not what is going to win you any customers. What can help though is storytelling?

Research highlights that 80% of the folks are partial to brands telling stories as part of their marketing. Wave.video’s findings also saw storytelling getting the highest votes from businesses as the most popular video ad type for advertising.

Thus, you need to draw a line between creating salesy videos and videos that lean on storytelling. Give preference to the latter. A case in point is Red Bull that doesn’t sell its drink. Instead, it sells competitiveness and living an adrenaline-pumping, sporty life.

Freerunning a GHOST TOWN in Turkey | w/ Alexander Titarenko

One good way to tap into stories for video marketing is focusing on the themes that align with your brand as a social media strategist, Mack Collier shares. He outlines, “This is the new model of digital content creation. Don’t focus on your products… Focus on the ideas and themes that relate to your products.”

We also talked to Wave.video’s Director of Content Marketing, Olga Bedrina for her take on leverage storytelling for awesome videos. She shared, “Trigger emotions by visual components. Hook people with context. Your instruments here are colors, fonts, filters, and the overall environment you create in a video to translate a message.”

Plus, more tips:

4. Let’s not forget video SEO

Content without SEO doesn’t mean it cannot survive on its own. It can. And it does. But SEO increases its visibility, getting it the attention that it deserves in search engines. The same applies to videos and SEO.

Here’s a complete guide to video SEO with a few summarized tips below:

5. Lastly, don’t compromise on video quality

The high-quality video leaves a solid impression of your business, enhances brand image, and gets more engagement as compared to poor quality videos. There’s research backing these claims too.

Brightcove learned that 62% of consumers are likely to paint a negative brand perception when they see poor quality videos. 60% won’t engage with such a brand, harming your business more than doing it good.

Similarly, Verizon Digital Media Services (VDMS) surveyed about 1,000 adult internet users, inquiring about their expected video quality. The results showed that:

👉 The average video viewing time fell by 77% with poor video quality

👉 Over 85% said that they expected TV-like quality from videos on the internet

👉 About 25% of those surveyed agreed that they did not watch a video due to poor quality at least half the times in a month

The takeaway is simple – don’t compromise with the video quality. To this end:

4 more simple tips for creating audience-engaging videos

Although there are numerous tips already sprinkled throughout the previous section, we couldn’t leave you without four more important tips. So let’s continue:

1. Get straight to the meat of things.

It takes viewers less than 10 seconds to decide if your video is worth their time or not. One-fifth of them click away within this duration. Your role, therefore, is to tell your audience immediately why they should watch your video. Ask them a question or tell them what they’ll learn.

2. Include captions in your videos

Not only is a video transcript healthy for your video SEO, but it also makes it convenient for viewers to watch your videos considering 85% of Facebook videos are viewed without sound.

Intrigued by such a stat, the Social Media Manager at Instapage tracked captions and without caption metrics on Instapage’s videos for two months. Altogether the data was pooled from more than 10,000 watchers.

Here’s the complete study with a few relevant takeaways below:

👉 With captions, the average total view time was 5% higher and got 3% more viewers

👉 With captions, the average reach was 16% higher than without captions

👉 Captioned videos also got higher reactions by an average 17% in contrast with videos without captions

👉 The number of average shares decreased by about 15% when captions were removed

3. Add a call to action

A call to action is an action message comprising of a few words that encourage the audience to take action. It tells interested leads what to do next. Adding such a CTA in a video can generate as many as 380% more clicks than a CTA present on the sidebar on the same page as a study by KISSmetrics learned.

4. Write killer headlines

One last tip – write powerful, click-worthy headlines. Marketing pro, David Ogilvy, emphasizes, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

To this end:

Take home message

In sum, learn from the best. Note how they’re creating powerful videos to meet their goals. Before you proceed, create a mind map so your creative ideas are on paper alongside competitor research.

Work on ideas for videos from there, following the tips we’ve shared with you today including setting your goals, recapping your target audience’s pain points, determining your video’s nature, and describing its USP.

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