The Magic Behind the Camera
Understanding the what with video marketing is one thing, but how does Video Marketing work? What are the mechanics behind effective video marketing? What are current best practices and trends? Let’s explore.
The Essentials for Creating, Distributing, and Leveraging Video Content
Creation of Video Content
The first step in video marketing is creating engaging and valuable video content. This can range from how-to videos, product demonstrations, customer testimonials, to brand stories, and more. Marcus Sheridan and Impact lay out the They Ask, You Answer framework – which includes some hyper specific video types that are primed to convert. Their Selling 7 take aim at which types of videos every business needs (read more) and with highly organic content, they push creators to fit their content into the Big 5. That is the 5 most searched, viewed, and converted video framings. Some examples are comparisons, top 10’s, and more (read more). Those resources will help you understand how to make sure your content is valuable, but don’t forget to build your content in clusters, optimize the quality of your information, and most importantly listen to your target audience for cues on if your content is being well received and understood. For some more inspiration for the creation tactics for your video marketing efforts – listen to this episode of InboundBuzz as they tackle the most underrated tactics for 2022 (very much still relevant!). Once you’ve settled on your content plan, check out our other articles on deeper strategies to improve your efficiency and output.
Distribution
Once the video content is created, it’s time to distribute it to the right audience. This could be on your own website, on video-sharing platforms like YouTube, on social media channels like Facebook and Instagram, or through email marketing. The crucial piece of distribution is to assess your needs and what elements need to be in place to achieve those needs. Are you working to build a community on a platform? Garner traffic to a web page or landing page? Educate a prospect before a sales call? Whatever the larger need – what platform you publish can make or break your strategy when the time comes to report on your results. Using Vidyard if you are sending videos to prospects will help you observe your results and act quickly when they view your content. Using YouTube will massively help your SEO performance, build community on the second largest search engine, and allow you to build and track your top of funnel performance. Using a social media that is appropriate for your message will also allow you to foster relationships on other platforms and increase brand awareness and trust.
Engagement
An essential aspect of video marketing is engaging with your audience. This means encouraging comments, shares, likes, and responding to viewer interactions. While many further down the funnel content strategies come with direct links to push your viewers to – awareness content relies on other indicators. While plays and follows are nice, a better metric to report come that time is going to be relative “cost” measurements. I say that in quotes because it very much may not be a direct cost. Average follow per post for instance is going to give you a more trackable key performance indicator while also allowing you to set benchmarks over time. Engagement is ultimately your tool to prove value in social efforts or alternatively identify resources that may need to be diverted. If your engagement levels are low or you are not able to convert any level of your viewership (even to just watching more content), your resources may be better spent on pipeline generation or other more cost-effective activities.
Conversion
The ultimate goal of video marketing is to convert viewers into customers. This could involve directing viewers to a landing page with a strong call-to-action, encouraging them to sign up for a newsletter, or offering a promotion or discount. So long as your tech stack is set up for success with all of the proper channels. With the proper setup, you can connect a video view, to click, to conversion, to customer, which ultimately puts a dollar amount to your marketing efforts. Conversion can be defined differently depending on your campaign and goals. If you just need a quota of qualified leads, any action taken that allows you to forward that lead to sales will count as a conversion. If you are only looking to sell wallets on Instagram, you may see conversion as users adding products to their cart. To see some common metrics or KPI’s (key performance indicators) as well as some handy calculators to check your performance, check out our Marketing ROI Calculators.
Video is the Language of the Modern World
From creation to conversion, video marketing works by creating engaging video content, distributing it to the right audience, engaging with viewers, and ultimately, driving conversions. It’s a multifaceted process that requires creativity, strategic planning, and a deep understanding of your audience. Video has become an equal to text or images in the function of communication within the marketing world. To maintain relevance, effectiveness, and accessibility – including video as often as possible is essential for any functioning business.
