Create Your Ideal Business Video Marketing Strategy

Video creation is nothing new and has long been for big brands and companies with a massive budget. But now video marketing is within reach of all kinds of companies, including small businesses looking for novel ways to spice up their online marketing activities. Video marketing has become the go-to way to build a brand, generate leads and gain sales online. And it’s a trend that’s built to last.

However, simply?how much video is being consumed and thus you need to be using video to grow your business, is not enough. Your videos need to be ones that get attention and engagement and?you also need to approach it methodically with a performance mindset.

If your business is already off and running with video, that’s great! You’ve successfully cleared one major hurdle: the fear of getting started. Now’s the time to put a strategy in place.

A video marketing strategy is the guide that will help you plan your video production efforts, set goals and understand what types of videos and topics you should cover. Before you start creating videos for your brand, you need to build a video marketing strategy, so you know what to focus on and why.

So let’s dive into creating your ideal business video marketing strategy built for success.

Step 1: Choose The Right Audience

Before diving into the nitty-gritty of planning, it is important to first establish who exactly you want to watch your videos. This is a crucial step; if you create a video without a specific audience in mind, it’s much more likely to be a flop. Those who are meant to watch it won’t, and those who do watch it?won’t convert.

To be successful with video, you first need to know who you actually want watching your content. Defining a target audience—and learning about what they like, what they need, what their pain points are—will help you create video content that connects. This is the foundation of who you’ll target and how you will communicate your message. If you still have not hit the audience you’re aiming for, consider profiling your target audience based on the ideal customer.

The key is developing your buyer’s persona. If you already have one — great! Creating a buyer’s persona (or a few) is usually done when a company is developing its product or service offerings. Presumably, the people you want to buy your product are also the people you want to reach with your video.

With your buyer’s persona mapped out, you’ll know exactly who your target audience is.

Step 2: Figure out your goals

By using video as a marketing tool for your business you have the opportunity to speak directly to your audience and convince them to take your desired action.

The goal of your video marketing strategy should be to educate, entertain, and inspire your viewers – this is the content that gets shared and remembered.

Although you still want to drive the viewer to the next step, your goal shouldn’t be for them to walk away feeling like you’ve just assaulted them with a sales pitch.

When deciding on your goal you first want to consider if your video is for branding, for lead generation, to promote a specific sale or to announce a big piece of news, among other things. Once you have settled on that, you can then clarify the content that will be most effective to get that message across.

Before you embark on creating a video marketing strategy, it’s important to know what stage of the marketing funnel you’re targeting.

If you want to attract a new set of customers to your brand, you’ll want to create an awareness stage video. If you want to engage your audience, you’ll want a consideration stage video. If you’re close to closing the sale and need to nurture your prospects, you’ll want to create a decision stage video. You can also create a video to delight those who have already purchased from you, or an internal video to help motivate your team or recruit new employees.

Step 3: Devise Your Brand Language

No two companies are alike. Before creating your videos write down, what do you want the viewer to remember about your business after this video is over? Then as you begin the creation process, go back to your answer to this paramount question. Next, add another inquiry to your agenda; Will the viewer remember?us?specifically?

The best way to accomplish answering the latter question is clarifying the tone and style of your company’s communication. For example, you can look at MailChimp. They have a playful tone and are always both on trend and helpful. That’s what viewers should remember. This means that every element of a video they create should be fun and give value.

Step 4: Diversify Your Video Content

Once you understand who your target audience is, it’s time to determine which format and topic will connect with them best.

But before you record your message, ask yourself a few questions. Will this footage add value to your customer’s life? Does it represent your brand’s voice, tone and mission? Are you succinctly explaining yourself and providing a clear call to action?

To find the answers to these questions, always go back to your ideal customer profile. Research and experiment to determine the most effective style and topics for your niche – and don’t be afraid to borrow ideas from those that have already been successful. Some of the greatest marketing campaigns have been those that took a strategy from an unrelated industry and integrated it into their market.

One video on your website can't do everything. Different types of videos have a unique purpose and drive different results. Certain videos function best as top-of-the-funnel content pieces that answer high-level questions, some types of videos work better for telling stories to elicit trust and emotion from your viewers, and other videos, like testimonials, showcase your credibility.

Take the time to think about other kinds of video content that you can create for your business or industry.?

Step 5: Know where and how to promote your videos

Once you have your videos produced and ready to show off to the world, it has to be uploaded at the correct places. But before you get to the ‘when’ of posting, you need to establish the ‘where’. You need to decide the best platform where your videos will live on the web and on your site.

When getting started with video, make a list of the distribution locations that make sense for you. Think about providing a dedicated place where visitors can explore all of your video assets on your own website.

You could place an introductory video on your homepage. Many major brands now have entire pages on their websites devoted to video. They’re focused on creating a video content hub that will keep potential customers engaged for longer and guide them through their buying journey.

You could also embed them in emails. Social media is also a good choice because it encourages sharing among your customers’ peer groups. Product pages make sense for instructional videos, since you probably want to educate your customer on your offerings.

Remember, each video publishing platform has its own strengths and weaknesses so it’s important to know what each platform has to offer before beginning video production - especially when it comes to determining how long or short your video will be.

Again, your customers’ needs will dictate your distribution strategy. You should find out where are your customers are looking for information and meet them there.

Step 6: Try it out and test it repeatedly

Last but not least, it’s all about numbers. For the creative artist in us all, this can be a less thrilling part of the marketing process, but it’s crucial.

Make sure to track your reach, clicks and sales for each ad and consider A/B testing one element of your video or caption and then run it again.?Needls Co-Founder Michael Koral points out that, “by testing two videos against each other, you can isolate what messaging does the best for you (and at a larger scale because more eyes will be on your content) to see what provides the best engagement and ROI from their advertising.” As you create more and more videos you will be able to track your business trends and what wins your audience over.

Just like you would for a display ad campaign or a landing page, you should look at your data to figure out what’s working and what isn’t. You can see how a campaign is performing by measuring things like:

Engagement rate:?This measures the interaction someone had with your content, including time watched and whether or not they skipped through.

Play rate:?This is the percentage of visitors who actually clicked play and began watching.

Social sharing:?This shows how many people are sharing your footage across social platforms.

Conclusion

Marketing video creation is not child’s play but make the story relatable to everyone. If a video touches the audience chords, they will share it and view it over and over again. Innovation, creativity and correct scheduling of your videos can make them the most effective marketing weapon of your brand. So … lights, camera, action. Or should we say drag, drop and publish.

If you want to learn video marketing content ideas for your business,?click here.