Video Marketing: The Complete Guide for Brands in 2023
In the fast-paced world we live in, it’s critical for brands to find new and unique ways to expand its reach. Video marketing is certainly proving to be a powerful, effective tool for businesses of all sizes. But, how can you harness the power of video marketing to stand out from the crowd? In this ultimate guide, we'll explore everything you need to know about video marketing, including its benefits, types, distribution channels, and measurement. So, let's dive in!
What is Video Marketing?
Video marketing is a digital strategy that involves creating and sharing video content to promote a brand, product, or service. In today's digital landscape, where attention spans are short, video has emerged as a powerful tool for businesses to convey their message and connect with their audience. By incorporating video into their marketing strategy, businesses can differentiate themselves from their competitors and create a more engaging, memorable brand experience for their customers.
In the past, the high cost of video production was one factor holding businesses back from video marketing as it required different skill sets and expensive equipment. Companies with limited budgets and resources may be reluctant to use video as part of a marketing strategy. However, with the rise of smartphone technology and various editing tools, nowadays it is possible to create a high-quality video in under 30 minutes.
另外，社交媒體平台亦造就了影片營銷的普及。Instagram 和 TikTok 等平台使企業能夠輕鬆製作出簡短、有趣的影片，而且易於分享，從而更容易接觸到廣泛的受眾。 事實上，根據 Wyzowl 的一項調查，91% 的企業正使用影片作為營銷工具。 不僅企業傾向於使用影片，消費者也樂於觀看視影片內容。 Hubspot 的調查發現，78% 的人每週都會觀看線上影片，而 54% 的人更會每天觀看影片。由此可見，影片在未來仍會是重要的營銷工具。
9 Types of Video Marketing
Video marketing comes in many different forms, each with its unique strengths and advantages. Here are some of the most common types of video marketing:
Company culture videos
As consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the people behind brands, using emotional content will help highlight the human side of your brand. Company culture videos tell the story behind a brand, its culture, mission, and values. They are often used to create an emotional connection with customers and build brand loyalty. The target audience of company culture videos is not limited to your potential customer. Sometimes, they are pivotal to attracting great talent. By involving employee interviews, the videos give the viewer a general overview of your workplace and a sense of how they would fit into a company.
Explainer videos
These are short videos that explain how a product or service works. They are often used to introduce a product, service or brand to potential customers, and to demonstrate its features and benefits. The focus of this type of video is to illustrate how your company's solution can solve a particular problem. Explainer videos should be concise and simple. To help your potential customers make a purchase decision, you may add a strong call to action at the end of the video.
Product demos
Product demos showcase a product in action, demonstrating how it works and highlighting its unique features. They are particularly effective for products that are difficult to explain through text or images. The goal of a product demo is to increase consumer confidence in your product, so make sure they look professional and straightforward.
Event videos
Event videos are videos that capture the highlights of a live event, such as a conference, seminar, trade show, or product launch. These videos aim to showcase the energy and excitement of the event, and to provide a glimpse into what attendees experienced. By using recap videos of what happened at an event, businesses can create a lasting record of their event that can be shared for years to come.
Interview / Q&A videos
Interview or Q&A videos are types of videos that answer questions from your audience. They feature interviews with experts, thought leaders or employees sharing their insights, opinions, and experiences on a particular topic. Businesses can use this type of video to showcase the expertise of a particular individual and build credibility with audiences.
Testimonials
Testimonials videos showcase a past or current satisfied customer sharing their success stories with a particular product or service. These videos typically consist of short, authentic interviews with customers, where they describe their problem or challenge, and how the product or service helped them overcome it. When potential customers see how satisfied your existing customers are, they are likely to expect that they will have the same experience after using your products. Wyzowl’s research found that 2 out of 3 consumers say they're more likely to make a purchase after watching a testimonial video. Showing social proof using testimonial videos will help you boost credibility with potential customers, which can be particularly effective for businesses that offer products or services that require a higher level of trust or consideration before purchase, such as health food and beauty treatments.
Educational videos
Video is a powerful tool to help you build authority in a field. Educational videos are designed to educate and inform the audience about a particular topic or subject. To create an effective educational video, businesses should focus on providing clear, concise, and engaging information that is relevant to their target audience, for example, offering definitions to industry terms. Also, they can use high-quality visuals, such as diagrams or infographics, to help explain complex concepts in a simple and easy-to-understand way. By creating this type of videos, businesses can position themselves as thought leaders in their industry and demonstrate their expertise to their target audience.
Short-form social media videos
Social media videos are short, attention-grabbing videos designed to be shared on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and more. They can include behind-the-scenes footage, short interview clips and entertaining skits and challenges. The success of social media videos often depends on their ability to capture attention quickly and make a lasting impression. To achieve this, social media videos often employ creative storytelling techniques, humor, or visually engaging elements, such as animation, text overlays and trending songs.
Customers-generated videos
This is a type of video that involves encouraging customers to create and share their own videos that feature a brand or product, such as unboxing videos and product reviews. Similar to testimonials, they provide authentic and relatable examples of how a product or service has helped or impacted real customers. To encourage customer-generated video content, businesses may offer incentives or simply create a unique hashtag. As a way to open up conversations between a brand and consumers, this type of video helps increase social engagement and drive more brand loyalty. Remember to repost regularly to build a strong UGC community.
What are the benefits of video marketing?
Drive engagement
相比起文字和圖片，影片能更有效地吸引和留住觀眾的注意力。 根據 Wyzowl 的研究，影片被分享的可能性是其他類型內容的兩倍。 Vidyard 的研究亦指出，影片的平均觀眾保留率（Average viewer retention rate ）為 54%，比任何其他形式的內容都要高。因此，你可以透過建立潛在客戶感興趣的內容來提高品牌知名度，並推動與他們的互動。
Boost conversion
Video allows businesses to showcase their products or services in a more engaging and memorable way. Consumers are more likely to make a purchase or take action after watching a video. WordStream’s studies have shown that including a video on a landing page can increase conversion by 80%; businesses that use video marketing experience a 49% faster revenue growth than those who don't. If you are looking for a reliable way to improve your conversion rate, consider adding a product demo video or an explainer video. The more engaging your video is, the more time they will spend on your page.
Improve SEO
影片可以增加使用者在你網站上花費的時間，有助於向搜索引擎發出信號，顯示該網站為用戶提供有價值且具吸引力的內容。 根據 Wistia 的研究，人們在有影片的頁面上花費的時間比沒有影片的頁面多 1.4 倍。在網站上嵌入影片可以鼓勵用戶與網站的互動，例如，如果在網站上銷售健身器材，你可以添加教學影片來告訴潛在客戶如何使用它。 此外，你可以透過結構化資料（Structured data），讓影片出現在複合式摘要（Rich snippets），顯示上傳者、影片長度、影片縮圖等資訊。豐富的複合式摘要可以使網站在搜尋結果中脫穎而出，吸引更多潛在客戶點擊。因此，如果你正著手提升網站排名，不妨在頁面中加入影片。
Build trust
Video marketing can build trust with potential customers by providing a more personal and human connection. It can help businesses demonstrate their knowledge, transparency, and credibility. Specifically, creating videos that address common customer concerns or answer frequently asked questions can establish businesses as trusted authorities in their industry. Additionally, showcasing behind-the-scenes footage or sharing stories of the people behind the brand can provide a transparent view into a business's operations and values. Customer testimonials, case studies, or endorsements from industry experts can also provide social proof and validation for a business's products or services.
5 Steps to Develop a Video Marketing Strategy
Set goals:
The first step in creating an awesome video marketing strategy is to figure out what you want to achieve. You need to set clear and specific goals that are aligned with your overall marketing strategy and business objectives.
To set effective goals, it's important to think about the typical marketing funnel, which includes the stages of awareness, consideration, and decision. At each stage, you should have a specific goal in mind. For example, at the awareness stage, you might want to increase brand awareness and capture the attention of potential customers. At the consideration stage, you should provide more information about your products or services because consumers are considering options to solve their problem. And at the decision stage, your goal should be driving conversions and encouraging customers to make a purchase.
Find your target audience:
Once you have established your goals, the next step is to identify your target audience. You should understand their demographics, interests, and pain points, purchasing behavior and where they are spending their time online.
One way to find your target audience is to create your buyer personas, which are fictional representations of your ideal customers, based on real data about your existing customers and industry trends. To have a clear vision of your target audience, consider the responses to the following questions:
- How old is the customer?
- What is the customer's gender?
- What industry does the customer work in?
- What problems are your customers trying to solve?
- What motivates your customers?
When you know who your target audience is, think about where they're hanging out. Different social media platforms and hosting sites are better suited for different types of content and audiences. For instance, YouTube is great for tutorials and how-to videos, while Instagram is more suited for visually-driven content.
By taking the time to develop buyer personas and choosing the right platforms, you can create a video marketing strategy that resonates with your target audience and achieves your business objectives.
Set timeline and budget:
Developing a video marketing strategy requires careful planning and coordination. This includes setting a timeline and budget for content production, distribution, and promotion. By setting a timeline, you can ensure that your content is being produced on a regular basis and in a timely manner. Creating quality video content requires a team of creative professionals working together. Remember to keep everyone informed of workflow and schedules.
Also, your budget affects the quality and type of video you can create. You should consider all of the costs involved in creating, producing, and promoting your video content, such as equipment, talent, editing software and advertising. The cost of producing a video can vary widely. Make sure your budget is realistic.
Think of your timeline and budget as the roadmap that will guide you through the process of creating and promoting your video content. With a clear plan in place, you can ensure that you're making progress towards your goals and staying on track within your available resources.
Plan the content production:
To plan your content production, start by brainstorming different types of videos that would appeal to your audience. This can include educational videos, product demos, behind-the-scenes footage, customer testimonials, and more. Consider the topics and themes that would be most relevant to your audience, and how you can provide value to them through your videos.
The production process may involve many different aspects, including creating video scripts, storyboards, filming, editing, post-production as well as sourcing talent and equipment. Depending on your available resources, you may need to outsource some of these tasks to professionals or hire additional team members.
Analyze metrics:
To measure the success of a video marketing campaign, it's essential to understand and analyze metrics such as views, engagement, and conversions. Once you have a clear understanding of your video metrics, you can use this information to inform future content creation and promotion. For example, if you notice that certain types of videos or topics are performing well, you might want to create more content in that vein. Similarly, if you notice that certain platforms or channels are driving more traffic or conversions than others, you might want to focus more of your efforts on those platforms.
7 platforms to Distribute your Video
When it comes to video marketing, choosing the right platforms for distribution is key to getting your video content in front of the right audience. There are many platforms you can choose to post your video, from owned media channels like social media and email, to paid media options like YouTube ads and outdoor advertising. Each platform offers unique benefits that can help you achieve your objectives.
Owned media
Website
Your website is an excellent platform to introduce your business in video form to interested people. You can embed videos directly on your site or create dedicated video pages to showcase your content. For ecommerce pages, adding product demos can help online shoppers understand more quickly and effectively how valuable your offering is. Most importantly, videos have repeatedly proven their capability to increase website ranking as they help to boost the on-page engagement.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is another effective way to promote your video content to your existing audience. You can embed your video in a newsletter and automated email to increase engagement and provide valuable content to your subscribers. Unfortunately, most major email providers like Gmail and Outlook don’t support embedded video. To solve this problem, you can create a thumbnail for your video and link it to your video landing page.
Social Media
As many social media algorithms are increasingly prioritizing video content, publishing video on social media gives you a greater chance of standing out from the crowd and reaching your target audience. You can share your videos across a variety of different platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Each platform has its own strengths and weaknesses, so it's important to consider your target audience and marketing goals when deciding which channels to use.
Paid media
YouTube Ads
YouTube is the largest video sharing platform in the world, making it an excellent choice for video advertising. You can create and promote video ads on YouTube to reach new audiences and drive traffic to your website or landing pages.
Facebook and Instagram Ads
Facebook and Instagram offer a variety of different ad formats for video content, including in-stream ads, story ads, and carousel ads. By targeting your ads to specific demographics or interests, you can ensure that your videos are seen by the right people at the right time.
TikTok Ads
TikTok is a newer platform that has quickly gained popularity among younger audiences. By creating and promoting videos on TikTok, you can reach a new demographic and build brand awareness with a younger, tech-savvy audience.
Outdoor Ads
Finally, outdoor advertising channels like billboards and digital displays can be an effective way to distribute your video content in public spaces. These ads are often eye-catching and can help to build brand awareness with a wide range of audiences.
How to measure Video Marketing Performance
How do you know your video marketing campaigns are actually working? Here are some key metrics to consider when measuring your video marketing performance:
View count
The number of views your video receives is a basic metric that can provide insight into the overall reach of your content. However, it's important to remember that views alone don't tell the whole story. For example, if your video is being viewed for only a few seconds, it may not be engaging enough to hold the viewer's attention.
Engagement
Engagement metrics measure how actively your viewers are engaging with your video content. You can use metrics such as likes, shares, comments to see how many people are actually taking action on your video. High levels of engagement can indicate that your content is resonating with your audience and driving the desired actions.
Average view duration
Average view duration shows the average amount of time viewers spend watching a video. Not all viewers stick around until the end of your video. Some may lose interest three-quarters of the way through, while others might only make it halfway. By keeping track of the average view duration, you can know how engaged people are with your video.
Click-through rates
Click-through rates measure how many viewers are clicking through to your website or landing page after watching your video. This metric can help you understand how effective your video is at driving traffic to your website and generating leads.
Conversion
Conversions are the ultimate measure of success for many video marketing campaigns. This metric tracks the number of viewers who take a desired action, such as filling out a form or making a purchase. By tracking conversions, you can measure the overall effectiveness of your video content in driving real business results.
5 Best Video Marketing Ideas
Google Ads
Their testimonial video is a great example of how to tell a compelling story that connects with your target audience. The customer shares the history behind their brand and what makes their business unique. The viewer is then shown how Google Ads played a pivotal role in helping them build their business and reach new customers.
What sets this testimonial video apart is the use of data to back up the success of the project. By including specific metrics and results, viewers can see exactly how Google Ads helped this business achieve their marketing goals.
Netflix
How would you react if one day you suddenly receive a call from Bear Grylls? Netflix created an interactive video on their YouTube channel to promote their show, You vs. Wild, featuring none other than Bear Grylls. In this video, viewers are taken on a thrilling adventure with Bear Grylls, where their decisions will determine the outcome of the story.
Nespresso
The product video takes you on a visual journey, where you feel like you are enjoying a perfect cup of coffee from the Nespresso machine. The stunning visual representation makes you feel like you're living the experience yourself, and it's hard not to be convinced that owning a Nespresso machine will elevate your coffee-drinking game to a whole new level.
Adobe
Adobe has managed to make their software come to life in a truly creative way. In a one-minute video, viewers are treated to a stunning display of what Adobe's software can do - from photo editing with transparency to 3D designs and animations. By showcasing the practical benefits of their software in a visually stunning way, Adobe has created a powerful video that inspires creativity and highlights their product's capabilities.
IKEA
With the release of their augmented reality app IKEA Place, IKEA has made it easier than ever for consumers to visualize their products in a real-world environment. In a product demo video, viewers are shown the app in action, along with a montage of people struggling to design and furnish new spaces. The message is clear: IKEA Place is here to help solve the problem of furniture placement and make it easier for people everywhere to imagine a better, more functional living space.
How SDMC can help
If you're looking for a partner to help you take your video marketing strategy to the next level, look no further than SDMC. Whether you're looking to create a series of brand videos or a single promotional video, we have the skills and expertise to help you achieve your marketing goals.
Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can help and start building a successful video marketing campaign that works for you.