The importance of video marketing has ballooned with the dawn of the ultra-digital age. With the growing role of social media, video has become an even more popular way of consuming content. Its marketing power lies in offering value-rich, interactive, and highly engaging content that you can absorb passively. To fully leverage the potential of your video content, it’s all about your video marketing strategy.
This article walks you through the basics of video marketing and develops a strategy that will get you the return on investment you deserve.
TL;DR
- Video marketing harnesses the power of video to communicate and market your product or service effectively.
- A few common examples of video marketing are webinars, product demos, and customer testimonials.
- When developing your video marketing strategy, make sure to think about your target audience, budget, and the production quality of your video.
- Using Riverside.fm you can record the HD studio-quality videos you’ve been dreaming of
What is video marketing?
First off, let’s get things straight: video marketing as an overall concept is nothing new. However, with the dawn of the ultra-digital age, video marketing has changed a lot. The prominence and vital strategic importance of social media have centered video marketing within most marketing campaigns.
Video marketing harnesses the power of video to market, promote, and advertise a service or product.
Typically, video campaigns will run across various digital and social media platforms to maximize reach and engagement.
Why is video so important in marketing?
The unique power of video makes it a compelling marketing medium. Not only are you able to forge a real sense of connection to your audience, but you can effectively convey a message in a short space of time. But that’s not all. Let’s take a look at the other advantages of video marketing:
Benefits of video marketing
Personalized Brand Messaging
Video is a highly creative medium that you leverage for the benefit of your brand.
You can make your video content sing through the visuals, branding, and tone (amongst other things). This will help reinforce your branding, maximize exposure to your brand, and promote your product or business.
Build a connection with your audience
Because you can so effectively convey your brand voice, culture, values, and imagery through video, you can build a sense of connection with your audience. Your viewers will become familiar with your brand and product, and if your marketing is effective, draw direct value from your content. All being well, this connection will ultimately lead to sales.
Effectively promote your brand
By harnessing the different types of video marketing, you can create highly effective marketing assets that’ll bring you a high return on investment (ROI). Many formats, such as customer testimonials, explainers, or brand introductions, are extremely powerful marketing tools that build trust and add a ‘human touch’ to your marketing.
Benefits your SEO
On specific platforms, videos can boost your SEO. For example, by following SEO best practices on YouTube, you can help push your business to the top of Google search results. For instance, try including keywords in your video title and description. The same goes if you post your video to your website alongside a transcript or subtitles.
Why is video marketing so effective?
Easy to digest
One of the fundamental strengths of video marketing is its approachability. Rather than asking your customers to read long-form content, they can absorb the information passively (and in an entertaining form) with your video. This is even backed by statistics. According to Wyzowl’s 2022 video marketing report, 73% of customers prefer to watch a short video to learn about a product over other methods such as reading a text or receiving a sales call. This report also states that people are twice as likely to share videos over any other type of online content.
Value-rich
The real beauty of video marketing is just how much value you can actually offer through your content. Beyond simple product advertising, you can provide value-rich content such as explanations and how-tos.
Taps into the power of social media
If your business isn’t already in the video marketing game, you should be. Social media is interwoven with our everyday lives, and it should constitute a fundamental element of your business’ video marketing strategy. If approached correctly, social media platforms can be highly lucrative advertising channels. Plus, since everyone else is leveraging social media, you need to be to stay competitive.
Video Marketing Types and Examples
Video can be a great way to get creative with your content marketing. The most important consideration is your target audience, and what they’ll respond well to; the rest is up to you.
Here are some different types of marketing videos and examples to help you get better video marketing ideas:
Video podcasts
Video podcasts are a great way to tap into the podcasting world while still harnessing the visual power of video. You can choose to interview an industry expert, talk about your product or business, or opt for a more educational or conversational format. It’s up to you.
The best bit? They’re straightforward to record using a video platform like Riverside.fm. Simply log in to your digital recording studio, invite your remote guests, and click record.
You can check out our own video podcast, Hit Publish as an example:
Webinars
Webinars are a hugely value-rich form of video marketing. Webinars can either be live or ‘evergreen’ (essentially pre-recorded but playing on a loop). The unique aspect of a webinar is that your captive audience has chosen to attend. You can get a great ROI with highly lucrative conversions if you get it right. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with our guide to recording a webinar that people will go back to.
And, did you know you can use Riverside.fm to record 4k webinars?
Check out Notion’s webinar about managing your contacts and sales funnel using their service. Not only is this giving customers insight into their product, but it also educates them with real-action-based information on how to solve or improve a situation.
Product Videos
Product videos are a pretty straightforward but effective format for video marketing. In these videos, you should highlight the features and functionalities of your product and why it would benefit your customer.
As Disruptive Marketing highlights, Dollar Shave Club’s product video is a great example of how to use humor to get across what they offer and how it can benefit their customers.
Brand Videos
See brand videos as an introduction to your customers. You should outline your brand’s overarching mission, values, and vision instead of zeroing in on a specific product or service. You can also introduce your team in these videos to offer a more human element to your marketing.
Explainer Videos
Explainer videos should be short, snappy, and very clear. They are a great way to communicate what your business or product does effectively. Some brands will opt for an animated video with a voiceover.
A good example is Monday’s explainer video:
Commercials
Everyone knows what a commercial is. And as we know, they can take all sorts of different formats, depending on your business, product, and marketing department. In the digital age, traditional commercials are likely to be viewed before a YouTube video or as you log on to TikTok. The trick is to avoid your viewers skipping past your commercial at the first opportunity.
You can watch Webflow’s commercial that captivates what their service offers in an interesting way.
Educational or How-To Videos
Educational and how-to videos are another value-rich form of video marketing. You can teach your audience about your product, its uses, and other applications they may never have thought of. You can also choose to talk about themes that go beyond your product but perhaps relate to your industry.
We’ve got a whole guide on How-To-Videos if you’d like to learn more and see a variety of examples.
Demo Videos
Demo videos are another extremely value-rich video format. You can demonstrate how your product is used in detail, and explain its benefits as you go. Plus, you can choose to feature real customers using your product to reinforce your messaging. These are similar to explainer videos, but they differ because instead of just explaining how the product works, they actually show a detailed demonstration of the product in use. These are generally better later in the conversion tunnel, whereas explainer videos can be used earlier on.
360°, Virtual and Augmented Reality Videos
360 degree, VR, and AR videos are still taking off. And although they’re not yet totally mainstream, if you choose to include this in your marketing, you’ll be ahead of the curve. Using AR, you can help your potential customers to ‘experience’ your product. For example, if you’re selling furniture, you could use VR to help them envision your pieces in their own home. The most significant benefit of this type of video marketing is just how immersive it is.
Personalized Messages
Using personalized video messages, you can create an entirely bespoke customer experience. Personalized messages help you address one specific lead at a time (or appear to) to elevate their interaction with your service.
Live Videos
Live videos can help you directly engage with your audience base and build a sense of live interaction and community. You can use these live sessions to answer customer questions, live demo your product, or talk about your business.
Watch Google Cloud’s live Q&A to get a better idea of how this looks:
Case Study and Customer Testimonial Videos
Case studies and customer testimonials are crucial for reinforcing your marketing through third-party validation. These videos are highly effective in promoting your product because potential customers can relate directly to the people talking.
Animated Videos
Animated videos are a fun and visually pleasing way of promoting your business or product. You can choose to animate your explainer videos, personalized messages, and commercials depending on what you’re going for.
Headspace, a meditation app, does this well.
Expert Interviews
Expert interviews are a simple video format that give a lot back. Your viewers will gain invaluable insight from an industry expert, which will indirectly build trust and loyalty to your product or service.
Event Videos
Event videos are used to promote upcoming events and encourage viewers to buy tickets to attend. Typically, you’ll showcase snippets and teasers of your event, as well as try to build momentum and traction in the run-up to the day.
Important Considerations for Video Marketing
Your target audience
Your most important consideration when conceptualizing your video marketing strategy is your target audience. To ensure maximum efficacy, you’ll need to consider the most appropriate format, tone of voice, and content for your viewers. The most prominent example of this is the distinction between a B2B and B2C video marketing campaign.
B2C versus B2B Video Marketing
Your content and strategy will probably look quite different depending on whether you’re creating B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer) videos.
For instance, if you’re creating B2B content, you will likely angle your videos towards more financial, detailed information. Whereas if you’re advertising for B2C purposes, your content is more likely to be entertaining and consumer-oriented.
Production Quality
A crucial aspect of video marketing is the production quality of your content. There’s nothing worse than a great video concept that is poorly executed. Ensure to invest in the best equipment and recording software to maximize your video quality and bring your video to life with the quality you deserve.
You can use our guide to the best equipment to get your setup kitted out. And why not try Riverside.fm for guaranteed HD video every single time? Start now for free.
Your overall marketing campaign and strategy
Once you’ve put in the hard work to conceptualize, produce and publish your video, your marketing strategy should ensure that it gets the maximum exposure possible. Plus, it’s critical to consider your marketing campaign as a whole to provide your video content complements and fits into your overall strategy.
Your budget
Your production and advertising budget is a huge consideration for your video marketing strategy. This will determine how much you’re able to spend in the creation of your video, as well as for the duration of your marketing campaign.
How to come up with a video marketing strategy
Online video marketing is not easy, that’s for sure. But as with anything, having a plan with robust tactics always helps. Here’s how to create an effective video marketing strategy:
Know your target audience
The ultimate goal of video marketing is to promote your brand and product. So your most significant consideration should be your audience. As mentioned above, you need to think about who you’re targeting. What do they want to see? What format would be of the most value? What would make them want to buy your product or use your service?
Come up with your overall campaign message
An effective video marketing campaign should have an overarching message or arc. Once you’ve settled on yours, you’ll be able to craft your content and video assets more effectively to align with your overall campaign.
Set goals for your campaign
You’ll need to decide what stage of the conversion funnel your videos are targeting. This means determining whether your video aims to raise awareness in new customers, engage a pre-existing audience, or encourage prospects to make the purchase.
Determine your budget
As mentioned in what to consider, a vast amount relies on how much money you have to spend. Your budget will inform how much you’re able to invest in the production of your video, as well as in advertising costs.
Tailor your videos to each platform
There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ video, so you’ll need to tailor your videos to fit with each platform. For example, if you’re uploading to a dedicated business YouTube channel, your videos will look very different from videos destined to be Instagram feed ads.
Test your videos
You won’t know until you try. A/B testing is a crucial step in developing your video marketing strategy. You’ll be able to toggle variables such as your video’s length, title, or thumbnail to see which ones work best.
Review the data and analytics
It doesn’t end there. Once your campaign is live, you should continue to measure the success of your video marketing by looking at:
- Engagement rate
- Views
- Plays
- Comments and shares
These metrics will help you ascertain how successful your video campaign has been. You should use your results to help you refine and optimize your video marketing strategy moving forward.
How to learn video marketing
Just like conventional advertising, video marketing is both a science and an art. You can study the data and scrutinize your engagement analytics to create a digital marketing strategy or go with your gut about your audience’s response.
Given just how important your digital marketing strategy is, you could consider investing in a course that will introduce you to the basics and give you some crucial video marketing tips. LinkedIn Learning, SkillShare, and HubSpot all offer a beginner’s course, for example.
How much does video marketing cost?
There is no set cost to video marketing. This is because it all depends on your budget and how much your business is willing to invest in its digital marketing. Here are some of the costs you may have to consider:
- Equipment
- Hiring a script-writer
- Hiring a professional production team
- Hiring a video editor
- Advertising costs
- Hiring a video marketer
Mind-blowing digital video marketing statistics
If you’re not convinced yet, these video marketing statistics should do the trick.
According to Hubspot, 85% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, and 87% of digital markets say that video gives them a positive ROI. And Zenith Media predicts that the average person will spend 100 minutes each day watching online videos in 2021.
Video marketing tools to try
Fortunately, you don’t need to go it alone. There is a whole range of marketing video production tools out there designed to help you produce, edit, and launch your marketing campaign. Here are just a few examples:
Video Makers:
Animoto
Easy-to-use video maker with a vast range of stock images, video templates, and easy customization.
Riverside.fm
Best platform for creating HD videos every single time. Record with remote guests, live stream your session and use the text-based Editor to produce a video that’s ready to go in no time.
Biteable
Videomaker designed to be used by your entire team, whether that’s the marketers or HR. Use Biteable to create customized animations, ads, event promos, or pitch decks.
Video Editing Software
Adobe Premiere Pro
Professional-grade editing suite with a range of features that help you refine your video and make it your own.
Final Cut Pro
Apple’s Final Cut Pro is a professional editing platform designed to be user-friendly and intuitive.
Video Marketing Platforms
Wistia
One-stop platform to help you maximize the marketing power of your video. It offers a branded player that you can embed anywhere, as well as effective email collectors, calls-to-action, and other interactive tools.
Video Marketing FAQs
What is meant by video marketing?
Video marketing is the use of videos to promote, advertise, and sell your product or service. Under the umbrella of ‘video marketing’ is a whole range of video content ranging from traditional commercials to live product demos.
How can I improve my video marketing strategy?
Accept that you can never stop learning. As the digital world develops, so do mainstream trends, the most popular platforms, and how audiences interact with and consume content. Learn from your mistakes and successes and use the data you have to improve your video marketing strategy continuously.
How effective is video marketing
According to HubSpot, in 2020, 93% of marketers say that video is an integral part of their strategy. If that’s anything to go by, video marketing is highly effective. In the same report, HubSpot highlighted that 84% of video marketers say their content generates leads effectively. A vast 94% agree that videos increase user understanding of their product or service.
How important is video marketing
In this digital world, video marketing is critical. As we mentioned above, an overwhelming majority of marketers say that video is integral to their overall marketing strategy.
Why video marketing is effective
Video is inherently engaging, interactive and can help you build a connection with an audience. It’s often far more accessible for viewers to digest information and, therefore, to understand your product or service.
Plus, in this incredibly digital world, video has become one the most popular ways to consume content, especially in short form through platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
How to start video marketing for your business
Even if you’ve never delved into the world of video marketing, it’s never too late. If you’ve got an established audience and other marketing funnels, it’s easy to adapt your existing approach and pivot into video. Follow our tips above and get recording!
