There are many methods businesses can explore to engage their audience. A new product or insightful blog post are common approaches, but these rarely bring the pazazz and intrigue that other possibilities offer.
If you want to find better ways to engage your audience. Video marketing is the answer. This method often goes hand in hand with a new product or a relaunch while also being suitable for a sister blog post, written to cover behind-the-scenes. But, how can you create a successful; video marketing campaign?
Here is some advice to ensure you approach it correctly.
Benefits Of Video Marketing
If you’ve never considered video marketing, consider these benefits to encourage you to explore your options, boost your appeal, and reach a larger audience.
Visual Engagement
The modern customer needs to engage, but this isn’t always possible from a blog post, even if you put plenty of effort into crafting the perfect post full of information and insights.
Customers may also not want to read your post, or they could miss it unless they frequently visit your website. Video marketing offers something much more effective. As long as your customers follow you on their favorite platforms, you can shower them with engaging content that teaches them about new products or encourages them to learn more about your company.
Versatile Platforms
Another benefit is the versatile range of platforms available for video content. You already know about the power of Instagram and TikTok, two of the most dependable platforms for hosting your ads or video content to ensure views and engagement.
However, these are not the sole options available. Any social media platform has the potential for ads, including LinkedIn and Facebook, while YouTube and Vimeo are other options depending on the audience you’re trying to reach. With so many different spots available, there’s no excuse for customers not seeing your content.
Long Form Potential
Although short-form videos are popular as they are easily digestible and appeal to modern customers’ attention spans, your marketing campaign can also benefit from long-form videos. Your short videos provide snippets of information surrounding deals or products, and you can direct customers to view longer and more informative videos on your website or social media pages.
This option enables you to appeal to your audience and offers exceptional value that could teach them something. You can use your videos to raise awareness about how you develop your products or share crucial insights into your industry.
Increased Brand Awareness
Aside from several worldwide corporations, every business can benefit from increased brand awareness, yet you can’t expect customers to stumble across you without putting the effort into marketing to them.
Use video marketing to grab attention and show off your company. Use it to promote new products on popular social media sites. You will never increase your customer base unless you find solutions to boost awareness, so work out how to market yourself to reach a broader audience.
Improved SEO Ranking
The final benefit of video marketing is how it increases your SEO ranking, meaning your business will be more visible on search engines. As you know most people do not click past the first page of results, it pays to be as high as possible.
Webpage crawlers identify many elements that can raise your ranking, and videos are one of them. If you host videos on your website, you should see more interest in your company.
How To Create An Incredible Video Marketing Campaign
Creating a video marketing campaign is not as simple as opening your smartphone camera and filming content. Like any other type of video production, from TV ads to Hollywood movies, it requires several key steps to ensure a professional and engaging result.
1. Determine Your Story
Every video needs a story, and storytelling is a vital element of any creative medium. But how do you determine the story you want to tell? This often comes down to your video’s content. Are you selling a product? Are you educating your customers? Are you jumping on internet trends but making it relevant to your industry?
These are all useful questions to ask and they will help you decide what the story needs to be. Don’t stress too much about making it profound (because most ads as content are the opposite), but there still needs to be a story there to ensure it appeals to customers and encourages them to relate to your message.
2. Invest In Quality Equipment
While you can film everything on your smartphone or tablet, you risk looking amateurish unless you’re going for found-footage-style content. Although investing in quality equipment seems like a substantial cost initially, it means you never need to pay for this equipment again, and it will pay for itself when you start making more video content.
Professional video cameras, microphones, and even editing equipment will make your videos stand out and could boost your reputation. You can also look at products like the DJI Air 3 drone for more expansive landscapes or tracking shorts, which is perfect for businesses that want to promote a vast, worldwide appeal or create content that captures the bigger picture.
3. Write Your Script
Your script will help you get your message across and ensure you tick all essential marketing and content boxes. Outlining your script also allows you to be more prepared on the day and you can see what does and doesn’t work on camera, meaning you can make changes where necessary.
You can also consider scripted versus unscripted videos and how different they are depending on the audience or even for the video’s purpose. A lot of viral content is, supposedly, natural and unscripted, although there is bound to be some general direction. If you want to appeal to specific platforms and ages, an unscripted video could be the answer (and it can hide wooden dialog).
4. Decide On Your Tone
Your tone also plays a significant role in your video marketing success. You must match the tone to meet the audience’s expectations and must be appropriate for your chosen platform. If you’re appealing to Gen Z viewers, you need to take a different tone and approach than marketing to Millennials or Gen X. The same goes for how the video is put together. Watch and research popular videos on specific platforms to get a clear idea of what’s popular and easy to scroll past, so you can get the most views and increase engagement.
5. Find The Perfect Actors
You could use your employees in the video, and this is a great way to improve the relationship between your brand and customers as it shows them who is actually working for your company. However, many people lack the acting chops to successfully pull off characters or play convincing roles.
Instead, put out a casting call for local actors to take part in your production. While your ads or video content won’t be too long, trained professionals will at least take the role seriously and they can improve the final project because of their approach.
6. Consider Celebrity or Influencer Collaboration
You can also increase awareness and intrigue by partnering with celebrities or influencers. Many businesses work with celebrities that match their brand values, so you need to find someone reputable who you believe can easily represent your brand.
These spokespeople will promote your product to their thousands of followers, which creates genuine interest in your product or service. From here, you could see an increase in purchases or followers, so you must capitalize on this to ensure it is not a fleeting experience. If you gain these new followers,s make sure you turn them into long-term customers.
7. Where Will You Host Your Video?
There are many places to host your video, so learning the best places for video ads enables you to promote your brand in the right spaces. YouTube and Vimeo ads are great and you can push ads for viewers who have searched for products adjacent to your brand.
Paying for video hosting on TikTok and Instagram is also beneficial, especially since customers often scroll endlessly, meaning they are bound to come across it at some point.
It is also worth hosting the video on your website (or at least including a link) as this can help visitors learn more about upcoming or current promotions and products.
8. Expand Your Video Marketing Options
You have many options for how to make the most of your video marketing. Do not stop at video ads, because you have much more to use to ensure your product or service reaches the right audience.
Companies find plenty of success creating educational video marketing materials that go alongside their ads and other videos. This option helps you share more knowledge and even teach your customers more about your company or the industry.
Lights, Camera, Action!
Video marketing could be the new approach you need to increase brand awareness and see a considerable rise in customer interest. Furthermore, you can prove that you have more to offer, setting your company apart from competitors still relying on other marketing methods.
Although you shouldn’t abandon these methods entirely, building a video marketing portfolio demonstrates that you are willing to adapt and explore different methods to promote your products and business.
Article and permission to publish here provided as contributed content. Originally written for Supply Chain Game Changer and published on August 30, 2023.
Cover photo by Seth Doyle on Unsplash