Guide to Video Marketing and Why do We Need It?

It’s already 2020, and video content has been there for a long. But why is video marketing so important now?

 I think you already know the answer. Videos are available everywhere. Our social media pages are filled with videos. Creating videos has never been easier, and we can shoot 4K videos from our phones, almost like professionals. Audiences can relate to video content more than text. Also, with the human attention span dwindling to less than 10 secs, videos have become the best medium to capture the audiences’ attention. 

All the above thoughts bring us to the most crucial question, how to create the most effective video content to get the best conversion rates for your landing page. After reading this blog, you can definitely get started with your own video marketing campaign.

Before we dive into the details of video marketing, let’s get our basics sorted. You will get tons of definitions on the internet with all the techy marketing jargon, but to put it in simple terms.

What is Video Marketing? 

Video Marketing is a way to get your ideas or content from words to motion pictures that the audience can understand and easily relate to.

The last few words are really important here, i.e., the audience can understand and easily relate to. Believe it or not, these two facts might be one of the most important factors that drive your video marketing campaign.

Now there might be several motivations behind creating your campaign. 

For example, 

1. An advertising video for your product or a How-To video that explains how to use your product. 
2. It can be a live conference for building your brand value. 
3. Or just a subject matter expert interview to build the trust of your existing customer base. 

Each of these categories has a different approach and strategy to be followed to get the most out of the campaign. We will deep dive into each of these, but before that, it’s essential to understand video marketing’s significance.

Why do we need Video Marketing?

Studies have shown that 65 % of the general population are Visual learners compared to 30% Auditory learners and 5% Kinesthetic learners. 

These numbers mean that we don’t have to write up a 10000-word article or speak technical jargon to convey our message; instead, a carefully curated video with symbols, maps, diagrams, or easily relatable content can do the trick. 

According to Google’s article,

For more and more shoppers, video is becoming indispensable when they’re ready to buy. In fact, more than 55% of shoppers globally say they use online video while actually shopping in-store.

If you are still not convinced why video marketing is the buzzword in Digital Marketing, here are few facts from different studies and research.

Some more Facts around Video Marketing

1. Videos by early 2021 will dominate 82% of the total traffic. (Cisco)
2. A billion hours of video content is being watched on YouTube almost daily. (YouTube)
3. Platforms like Facebook and Google are giving priority to Video feeds
4. A homepage with video increases conversion rates by 20% 
5. A landing page with video increases conversion rates by 80% 
6. 70% of people prefer to watch videos rather than reading marketing content.
7. Emails carrying videos have 200-300% better click-through rates.

Here are some more interesting video marketing statistics for you from biteable.com,

Categorising the marketing videos

Before we start creating our own video content, its important to understand and categorise it. Following the categorisation of videos might help you decide your target audience and decide your video marketing strategy.

1. Brand Awareness

The main aim of such videos is to share the company’s vision, values, or mission statement and might also include products and services offered by the company. One important thing that must be kept in mind while creating such videos is that we don’t want to oversell ourselves or the products or services; rather, our focus must be on engaging, entertaining, and educating our audiences. Such a kind of video must leave an impression. It must motivate and provide emotional value to your target audience. 

Checkout below coca-cola ad that falls in this category.

2. Advertising or Commercials

Video commercials or advertising might be perhaps the most commonly watched category. We come across such content almost on all platforms every minute of our day. Like other videos, commercials must also be created, keeping the target audience in mind. A wrongly targeted commercial might do more harm than good. Nowadays, most of the ads are skipped in the first few seconds of the content, so strategically, it becomes important to reveal the CTA of the ad in the first 5-10 seconds of the content. There are various types of ads. For example, linear, interactive, overlay, and campaign. You can read about them individually here.

3. Expert Opinion or Interview

If you want to build and capture trust of your audience, then this category of videos fits perfectly with your requirements. Such videos generally require a minimum amount of work in presentation as significantly less editing is required.

Before creating an expert’s opinion or interview content, it’s important to think through what kind of content your audiences will be more interested in or what values will be more beneficial to them. Generally, there can be two categories of people you could interview, first are people who are role models for the audience, whom the audience would relate to, or like to hear from. And second, people who are successful in their own fields.

Generally speaking, there are two sets of questions that can be asked; one is a general set that you can ask almost every successful person or an entrepreneur, for example 

• Significant events in your life
• The motivation behind your work
• One piece of advice for the audience etc

The second set is more targeted towards the expert and requires a brief background study of his/her work. Such questions must be carefully compiled with lots of research and study. 

Before any such interview, it’s good to consult the expert if there are any particular subjects on which they would like to talk. This is a win-win for both as it gives the expert an opportunity to sell himself and reach a wider audience through your medium.

4. Social Media

We don’t need a degree to create great social media content. Nowadays, anyone with a smartphone can become the next sensation on social media.

Video sharing apps such as Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram have already taken over the internet. Even the corporate business is actively creating social media campaigns now. Few tips about creating a good social media content are as follows, 

• Keep the content short and simple.
• Script your content or else plan before creating the content
• Proper lighting is the key.
• Audio should be clear; use an external mic if possible.
• Use a camera stand or a selfie stick. Keep the camera steady.
• Use a video editing app to make the video more presentable.

Here is a detailed step by step process that can help you with creating the next viral video.

5. Event or Live Stream

If you don’t live stream your show, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity that your competitors are going to pick up on

Elizabeth Fuller, Digital Manager at Carolina Herrera

Why go with live stream based video marketing?

• 91 million subscribers will utilise live streaming by 2024.
• 47% of viewers are already live streaming for more than a year
• Live streaming topped 4 billion hours in 2020.
• 82% of the audience prefers streaming than reading a blog.

There are tons of platforms available for streaming videos live like Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Twitter live streaming and LiveStream of course.

Best ideas for your next live stream video marketing

• A fundraiser event
• Company conference
• A Day to day working culture of the company
• A product launch etc
  

6. How-To or Explainer Videos

Such types of videos are generally used to explain the functioning of a product or service of the company. This can be of a narrative type that gives a 10,000 feet overview of the product or can be a step by step deep dive process.

Three ways to create such content 

• Live-action explainer videos – This is a non-animated video explaining the product or service. Bringing in a live conversation with people increases attachment with the audience as people relate more to human faces. However, such kinds of videos tend to be limited by laws of the natural world. 
• Animated Videos – This is the most popular among its kind. It brings in more creativity and is easier to edit and update for future enhancements. Unlike live-action videos, these offer more ways to put ideas together so that it’s easy for the audience to understand.
• Whiteboard explainer Videos – This is a hand-drawn animation that can be drawn and erased on a whiteboard. This is becoming extremely popular due to its ease of creation and low cost, as the same format can be reused by making minor adjustments to background and effects. 

7. Testimonials Videos

Trust is difficult to build, and with growing numbers of online services, it’s difficult to find any products with authentic reviews. There are tons of reviews written everywhere, but how to differentiate the real ones from the fake ones. This is where customer testimonials help us.

A single video review can be more trustworthy than 100s of reviews written under a product because we easily connect with people. The most important facts why video testimonials should be used is that it is a tried, tested, and proven methodology. It’s a more modern take to “word to mouth” marketing, and also, it’s not limited to your family or friends or acquaintances. Such types of videos help build credibility towards the business.

Recommendations from friends remain most credible form of advertising among consumers, branded websites are the second-highest-rated form

nielsen.com

8. Demo Videos

A product unboxing video or real-time demonstration of a product is the best way to explain how something works. It helps users see for themselves rather than trust the instructions written over the package. It’s best to replicate a user’s experience and create a smooth journey for the user from start to finish. 

Below is a sample demo video that explains the usage of an app with simple animation, texts, and voice-over without overwhelming the user with all of the information.

Start Creating the Content

Now that we understand different video marketing categories and why it is so important, we can start carefully curating the steps to create our own videos. Here are a few simple tips that might help to create compelling video content.

1. Understanding the category of video will help narrow down the target audience and focus on the content.
   
2. Keep it simple: Keep the content small and straightforward. A video length of 1-3 mins is appropriate; however, explanatory videos can be longer.
   
   Hubspot recommends the following video lengths:
   1. Instagram 30 seconds
   2. Twitter – 45 seconds
   3. Facebook – 1 minute
   4. YouTube – 2 minutes
   
3. Keep it relatable: If it’s an advertising video, it’s best to target the audience based on geography. Such types of carefully targeted videos result in the best conversion rates.
   
4. Build trust: It’s important to build trust with your audience. Include testimonials if possible. Keep the audience engaged by frequent questions, be natural in your presentation, bring up interesting updates like behind the scenes etc and remember to keep smiling.
   
5. CTA: While thinking about your content, always remember to include your CTA in the video’s early few moments (first 30 secs). Do not assume that the audience will wait for you to disclose the big secret at the end, this rarely works.
   
6. Understand your equipment: Creating videos has become easier and also tougher at the same time. Easier in the sense that now we can create videos on mobile devices and tougher because now we have so many options to choose from and understanding these devices’ complex working is sometimes really difficult. So the best option would be to start with your phone and then move to professional devices like DSLR or Prosumer cameras.
   
7. Set up your workplace:  A workplace or studio might be difficult to set up at the start, but there are plenty of DIY options available over YouTube that will help you in this. A few of the important things that need to be taken into consideration are microphones, lights, and camera settings.
   
8. Video Editing: Finally, when everything is done. Then we need to carefully organise it and polish the content before presenting it. This list might help choose some of the popular apps in this context.
   
9. Script your video: Always script your video before starting to avoid unnecessary rework and multiple edits. One of the strategies followed by many marketeers is to create a table of 2 columns having a script and the video message.
   Something like the below table.

Conclusion

Using a video in landing pages boosts the conversion rates by almost 80%. But posting a video alone won’t help; the correct positioning of the video is also important. 

1. In a video landing page, video is the most important element; hence the visitor shouldn’t scroll down the page to see the video. 
2. The CTA for the landing page must be prominently displayed and often mentioned in the video’s early 15 seconds. Directional cues often help to direct the attention of viewers.
3. The thumbnail’s choice is as important as the rest of the video’s content because it’s the thumbnail that attracts the viewers and tempts them to click. 
4. Autoplay isn’t the real devil. Instagram and Facebook use the silent autoplay feature very wisely. We can make the play button more prominent and give audio options to the viewer so that they can play/pause or mute on will.

And finally, always go for A/B testing and analytics. A few of the common metrics that we must watch out are visitor count, play rate, click-through rate, watch rate, and page conversion rate.