1) MAKING YOUR VIDEOS SHAREABLE
Video marketing success largely depends on the view count that your video receives. This means that it’s crucial to make them shareable so that people can find them online and spread the word about them. What it does not mean is not trying too hard to create the next viral video. There are some specific ways that this can be accomplished. First, always make sure when uploading video content to pay attention to your titles and video description. The keywords that you want your video to rank for (to help appear in search engine results) should be included in the title and description. Additionally, if you include auto-generated captions, ensure that they’re correct. YouTube and other search engines rely heavily on closed captions to understand what your video is about. This helps them deliver your video to viewers when they enter relevant search queries.
Making videos shareable simply means creating a video that your viewers will enjoy and speaks to their needs, interests, or challenges. If you can do that, your videos have a greater chance of being shared. This goes back to understanding your target audience.
2) DIFFERENT LANGUAGE VERSIONS
Another important step in the planning phase is determining the language(s) in which you choose to make your videos. Again, knowing your target audience will help inform this decision. It might be a good idea, if your viewers are multilingual, to create multiple versions of your videos in different languages. Also, keep in mind that subtitles or voiceover translation can be beneficial for reaching an even larger audience.
BUILDING YOUR VIDEO
The final phase of creating your marketing videos is where all your hard work in the previous stages comes to fruition – creating your videos! Now, it’s time to put your ideas into motion and bring your video marketing strategy to life.
3) CUSTOMIZED CONTENT
The first step in that process is to create content that’s appropriate for each social media platform in which your videos will appear. Each of these channels are unique so you need to make sure your video content is relevant and engaging for each one.
4) OPTIMIZE FOR SEO
This step is especially important. Optimizing your videos for SEO must be a priority for your videos to be found by new customers and clients who are searching on Google and other top search engines. One of the most important ways to achieve this is through keyword ranking. The keywords that you want your video to rank for should be included in the video’s title and description.
You can also optimize your online videos by making sure your video content is appropriate for each social media platform. For example, if your uploading video content to Facebook, not only should the video itself be customized but also the descriptions and captions on that page should contain relevant meta tags or keywords.
Another good idea is to insert a video transcript to generate captions. This helps search engines better understand your video’s content. If you use auto-generated captions, just make sure they’re correct.
Especially for videos that you embed on your own website, make sure that the rest of the page content (where the video appears) is relevant to the content of the video. For example, if you own a pet store, you would not embed a video that discusses the best foods for your dog on a page in which the content is focused on how to set up a saltwater aquarium.
Specifically for YouTube, there are additional steps you can take to optimize your videos for SEO. These include making sure to use a great thumbnail, utilizing end screens and cards, including keywords in the filename of the video, and adding tags appropriately.
Another great way to support your content strategy is to share the video in a blog post and write about the process, content creation, and how the video fits within your company culture. This will be a great behind-the-scenes look at your video and topic area.
5) AVOID PITFALLS OF VIDEO ADVERTISING
There are some common mistakes that many marketers make when using video advertising. Fortunately, these can be avoided if you’re aware of what they are.
First, don’t make the mistake of making the video all about your own brand. Aim to focus on the audience, their challenges, and how you can solve them. Related to this, don’t make the mistake of trying to hard-sell your product or service. emphasizing this will likely turn your viewer off; nobody wants to have aggressive messaging pushed in their face. In a similar vein, try not to over-crowd your video with too many messages. Less is more.
You’ll also want to make sure you measure the right KPIs. It’s easy to get caught up in video views, but they won’t tell you whether your videos are actually working. You’ll want to make sure that you measure the right metrics to guide your marketing strategy.
We recommend using social media cut-downs of videos to lead traffic to your website – where your main video is housed. We call this “tent peg” marketing, where the tent peg content directs you to the tent pole primary content.
And lastly, don’t forget to include effective CTAs. If you’ve done all the work to create a quality video, but don’t take the last step of directing viewers as to what they should do next, all your effort will be for naught. Make sure each video you produce in your marketing strategy for 2022 isn’t trying to achieve everything, and instead focus each video on one key message directed at one stage of the buyer’s journey.
6) MEASURE SUCCESS
The final step in video marketing is to measure your video’s performance by using analytics. Knowing what metrics you need to track and how you’ll use this information to determine if your videos are working or not is crucial for success. This type of data will help demonstrate the effectiveness of all your other efforts and show ROI on your video marketing investment.
HOW TO ANALYZE, EVALUATE, AND LEARN
One of the biggest mistakes that marketers make in using video marketing is to stop after they’ve made their first few videos. It’s critical to continue your video marketing strategy by consistently analyzing, evaluating, and learning from it. Some ways to do this include:
- Identifying the best- and worst-performing videos. This will tell you what’s working and where you can improve and will help you optimize future online video.
- Analyzing your audience’s response. See how your viewers are engaging with your videos. This is another way to understand how your audience feels about your content and brand message.
- Evaluating the effectiveness of your channel. Look for trends in data related to your own channel and other channels as well.
Video marketing is an effective way to build relationships with your audiences. Using video on social media channels can enable businesses of all shapes and sizes to increase customer acquisition, build their brand, and generate more revenue from existing customers. Now that you have a basic understanding of what video marketing is and how to create a video marketing strategy, it’s time for you to get started building a video marketing strategy for 2022 to better help you achieve your business goals.
