In 2016, 33% of all online activity was spent watching video. As we move further into 2017, video marketing is only going to get bigger – and as a marketing agency, it’s critical for you to take notice.
In a recent survey conducted by SharpSpring, 83% of agencies reported they were increasing their video marketing budgets, with 27% claiming a significant increase.
If you want your agency to stay a step ahead of the competition, you need to build video into your content marketing strategy and develop a plan that breaks through the clutter.
The problem is, video isn’t easy to create. It takes significantly more time and resources to properly execute on a video strategy than on most other forms of content.
To help you out, we put together 14 actionable tips to get you started building video marketing campaigns.
1. Define your campaign goals
Before you do anything else, it’s essential to establish goals for your video marketing. Without goals in place, you won’t have a definition of success or be able to measure outcomes.
Having a clear vision of what you want from your video marketing will help to define the rest of your strategy and ensure it’s in line with your ultimate goals.
- Do you want to use video to generate more leads?
- Do you want to focus on educating your clients on your new products and services?
- Are you looking to establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche?
Once you determine your goals, you can begin creating specific types of videos, such as promotional demos or educational explainers to help onboard new clients.
2. Partner with a production company
Unless you have an in-house video producer, you’re probably going to need to partner with someone else to create your videos. These partnerships are common, with 91% of marketing agencies choosing the partnership route rather than trying to go it alone.
When producing video, you’ll need to determine precisely who will:
- Write the script
- Star in the video or do the voiceover
- Record the video
- Edit and upload the video
- Market the video
As soon as you’ve made these decisions, you should begin delegating the tasks to get the process moving quickly.
3. Add videos to landing pages to increase the opt-in rate
Landing pages are your first point of entry for leads. If you’re driving traffic to a landing page, you want to ensure that it converts at a high rate.
The good news is that:
- Adding video to a landing page can increase conversions by up to 80%.
- Videos keep visitors on your site longer, giving them more time to understand you and your brand, making them more likely to opt in.
- Videos can engage those who don’t have the time or patience to read other content.
- Videos provide incredibly useful analytics, especially if you’re using a platform like Wistia.
Don’t rely solely on text in your landing pages. Tap into the power of video.
4. Add videos to emails to increase CTR
Email marketers are constantly battling for higher click-through rates. More click-throughs generate more opt-ins, which generate more sales… and the process goes on.
If you want to increase your click-through rates significantly, video is your answer. Adding a video (or video image) to an email can boost click-through rates by 200-300%.
5. Incorporate videos with product pages
People have been using video to sell products for a long time, with companies like QVC and the Home Shopping Network paving the way. But video doesn’t just sell bracelets. Adding videos to your product pages can drastically increase your sales rate – no matter what industry you’re in.
64% of people say they’re more likely to make a purchase after seeing a video about the product.
Bottom line: People want to see what they’re buying, and showing them videos allows them to buy with confidence.
Consider replacing some of your static product images with engaging videos.
6. Adjust your video content for different platforms
You will probably distribute your videos through a variety of channels, such as Facebook, YouTube, email, your website and more.
Don’t just upload the same video to all locations. Rather, edit the video to optimize it for each platform.
- Instagram videos can only be 60 seconds long.
- Facebook videos should be somewhere between 15 – 60 seconds max for optimal engagement.
- If you’re using a platform like Wistia, videos should be updated regularly based on the length and level of engagement they’re receiving. Measure, optimize and repeat for maximum effectiveness.
- YouTube videos should be optimized for search on Google to drive traffic to your site.
7. Stick to shorter videos for marketing purposes
When you’re creating a video for marketing purposes, you want to keep it short. People have limited attention spans: 45% of people stop watching online video after one minute. That number increases to 60% after two minutes.
To make sure that your message is received, keep your online video content short and concise. Remember, you’ve only got a few seconds to grip people’s attention. Get to the point quickly, just like Facebook did when showing off its stickers feature.
8. Do the “Three E’s”
When creating video content, you want to do “The Three E’s:” Educate, entertain, and engage. If you can address your customers’ questions and concerns in a way that covers all three bases, you’ll knock it out of the park with your video content.
To do this, you need to spend time doing research on your buyer personas. You need to know what resonates with them and moves them forward.
If you’re asking for donations to support a relief effort, you probably don’t want to produce something comedy related. Tailor every video to your target audience.
9. Optimize your videos for Google and YouTube
Most people don’t realize that Google and YouTube work in tandem, with Google often returning YouTube videos as top search results. If you optimize the videos you upload to YouTube, you can see a huge increase in views.
Brian Dean of Backlinko was able to get his YouTube video in the #1 spot for the keyword “SEO strategy,” even though he was competing against large companies like Moz.
The result? Far more views, which in turn gives him far more exposure. Don’t just publish to YouTube. Optimize first.
10. Use videos as social proof
Customer testimonials are considered one of the best, if not the best, forms of social proof for companies. Almost 90% of B2B marketers believe they are more powerful than anything else.
When you use videos as social proof, it increases their effectiveness even more. It increases the trust factor when people hear other customers raving about your product or service. Consider including at least one testimonial on each product page.
11. Infuse your videos with emotion
Do not let your videos be boring. Not only will you quickly see viewers dropping off, but you’ll generate fewer word-of-mouth referrals. The Journal of Marketing Research discovered that brands that inspire emotion are 300% more likely to refer others to that brand.
Obviously, the emotion you inspire should be relevant to your product or service, whether that’s joy, anger or even sadness. But no matter how you do it, there should be an emotional element to every video you create.
Artifact Uprising nailed it with this poignant video:
12. Tell “micro” stories
Macro stories are about how your products are used as a whole, either by industry or company. Micro stories represent individual use cases for your product. These micro stories can connect with people in specific ways that macro stories often can’t.
They allow users and potential customers to project themselves into the stories and envision how they would use your product.
Plus, micro stories allow you to hyper-target particular personas. For example, if you sell bikes, you could make different micro stories targeted to mountain bikers, street bikers and BMX bikers.
Intel did this brilliantly with its “Meet the Makers” series, which profiles individuals who create using Intel products.
13. Use interactive video
Interactive video is relatively new, but it’s the future of video marketing. Interactive videos allow clients and customers to change the outcome of the video, purchase directly through a video, click on something for more information, and more.
The benefits of interactive video are immediately obvious:
- Significantly increase engagement
- Longer viewing time
- More impulse clicks, opt-ins and purchases
- Highly trackable statistics
Using an interactive video, Deloitte managed to increase its engagement by a whopping 300%.
14. Include a call to action in every video
Don’t let your videos fade to black. You want viewers to take action after watching – to click, engage and buy. You’re not creating videos solely for the purpose of entertaining leads and customers.
You want them to actually DO something.
To get viewers to take action, always include a call to action in every video, either in the video itself or near the video. Highlight the CTA somewhere within the video, with text or by verbally asking people to do something.
Set Yourself Apart With Video Marketing
It’s an exciting time in the world of video marketing, and now that you know exactly how to craft a video marketing strategy that’ll drive results, you’re well on your way to leveraging the power of video and getting ahead of the trend.
To learn how SharpSpring can support your video marketing strategy, sign up for a demo today.