Video Marketing Strategy: Starting Points for the Maritime Industry

Happy new year and welcome to part three of this blog series “Marine Industry Video Marketing: A Beginner's Guide”

It is 2024 now, and even in more conservative niches of the maritime industry, marketing efforts are shifting to digital and with that, to video.

It sounds obvious, but it can‘t be overstated: If you want your video marketing to work, you need a solid foundation, a strategy.

Here are some ideas to get you started.

Analyze? your competitors

When it comes to developing a successful video marketing strategy, analyzing your competitors' tactics is a crucial first step. Start by scanning their websites, social media platforms, and any other channels they use to understand how they utilize video to convey their messages. In addition to videos, pay attention to other types of content such as photos, emails, and blog posts to see how everything works together.

As you analyze your competitors' video marketing, be sure to ask yourself some questions. What types of videos are they creating, and for what purpose? Are they using videos to improve conversions, educate prospects, explain their products or services, or boost brand awareness? Which communication channels are they using to promote their videos? Are they relying solely on a social video content marketing strategy, or are they also using traditional media? What topics are they covering, and how in-depth do they go? What tone are they using in their videos, and are audiences engaging with them? Finally, how many videos are they producing per week, month, or year?

By finding the answers to all of these questions, you'll be able to gain valuable insights into your competitors' video marketing strategies. You'll then be able to use these insights to improve or change your own strategy, helping your brand to stand out in the maritime? marketplace. So take the time to analyze your competitors' strategies thoroughly.

Set some goals

The very first step to creating a video content strategy is defining your goals – in this case, what you want to achieve with your videos.

Do you want to attract new prospects? Are you trying to build authority and foster consumer trust? Do you need to persuade potential buyers to close the sale?

In a perfect marketing world, you’ll want to create as many videos as you need to achieve all those goals, but we know that’s not always possible. So, you’ll have to decide which is the most important to help your business grow and prioritize that. To do that, think about the buyer’s journey.

If you want to introduce your brand to a new audience, you’ll want videos that are designed to be used in the awareness stage. In case you want to engage and explain to prospects why your solution is the best one out there, you’ll want consideration stage pieces. But, if you are trying to prompt prospects into closing the sale, you’ll want to develop decision-stage videos.

Which videos in specific are those? You may ask… We have covered this in-depth in a previous blog, which you can find HERE . This infographic sums up the main points:

Take your audience into account

Understanding your audience’s problems (or needs) will help you figure out what kind of story you can develop to position your product or service as a solution to their problems. How you can present yourself as a trustworthy and reliable company that’s interested in helping them.?

Try to learn everything about your prospects. From demographics, like gender, age, and where they live, to more specific data, such as likes, dislikes, habits, and, above all, their pain points or needs.?

You may even want to create a buyers‘s persona, or adapt it from your previous strategic marketing efforts. Also, try to find out about your audience‘s preferred social platforms. This will tell you if you have to optimize your video content for different platforms — YouTube videos are quite different from TikTok videos. You will also learn where to direct your paid social media budget.

Define Concept and Style

In a sea of content, you want your videos to be recognizable, and aligned with your brand.? Try to match your brand style and voice in your videos.

Your brand voice will also influence your storytelling decisions. If your brand voice is serious and matter-of-fact, you probably won’t want to start with telling jokes on Tik Tok. Yet even with a mature or serious tone, you want to show your audience relatable stories and not be too “salesy”

Plan Your Resources

You basically have three options here: do you have the talent, know how AND capacity in your company to produce all your video content in-house? Great.

Or do you feel your workforce is already at capacity and adding video production would lead to distraction or an excessive work load? Find a? video production agencywith proven expertise in your market. When outsourcing, you may want to have a scalable process with your production partners. You can start out with a package of one or two videos. Once trust is established, consider a bigger package or a retainer that will enable your agency to deliver more bang for the buck.

Speaking of bang for the buck: many of our clients adopt a hybrid model, where they create simpler content, like social media shorts or after sales instruction videos in-house, while having us take care of the more sophisticated videos. Sometimes we do only the post production for employee-shot videos, or help in media coaching, consulting or supervisory roles. Consider having a chat with us if you want to outsource your video creation, fully or in part.

Get started

Ideally, you have everything in place for a long-term video strategy. Human resources, budget, solid metrics from your existing sales and marketing campaigns, and more.

A lot of times, things don’t work out like that and you have to improvise a bit. As with other online marketing efforts, it is ok to start somewhere and iterate as you go along. If you start out with your? in-house team and a tiny budget, just make sure to start with something simple. Small pieces to camera by keen staff members, maybe at company events or trade shows are much easier to pull off than fully blown commercials. Take what you learn and improve next time. If you get the hang of it, and want to level it up, you can always call in a video production agency, like us ;-)

Coming Up: Keep an eye on your metrics

Now that you have published your video, it is time to check the online metrics. We will look into that in one of the next editions of this blog. So if this is of value to you, consider subscribing, via LinkedIn or via the eMail newsletter.

Thank you for your attention.

Best

Gerrit Haaland

Creative Director

NAUTIC.FILM

Next: (Keep an eye on your metrics)