09 Sep How To Build A Video Marketing Strategy for Your Brand
Most people know that videos are great for marketing but very few small businesses create a video marketing strategy to increase the effectiveness of their video output.
It’s easier to make a video when you have something to market than to create a month-long video marketing plan to ensure your brand takes full advantage of SEO, platform trends and your video budget.
Without a video marketing strategy, your video ads end up being one-off productions that quickly fade out of existence without contributing to your brand’s engagement results.
So if you ARE making video ads but don’t get much engagement or results, then follow these steps to build a video marketing strategy that actually works!
Step 1: Audience & Marketing Goals
As with all successful marketing campaigns, it’s important that you know your audience, understand the kind of content they prefer to consume and identify the platforms they will be using in order to reach out to them.
For example, if you’re reaching out to a generation that spends more time on Facebook, even if you stay updated on the latest trends and run TikTok ads, you’re not going to get much engagement.
Alternatively, if your target audience prefers swiping through TikTok videos, creating high-budget cinematic ads on YouTube won’t give you the sales you’re looking for.
Also, in order to successfully get results from your video ads, make sure you set clear and concrete goals that will help you know when you get there! Are you looking to increase your brand awareness? Drive up sales figures? Get more followers and likes on your brand’s social media?
If your goal is to have a combination of all of the above, list them in order of priority to help you make decisions regarding budget and reach.
Your goals don’t have to be number specific (i.e.: 1000 clicks, at least 200 sales) but you need to have a concrete sense of what you want to achieve. they do have to be concrete and measurable (i.e.: increase in click-through rate and sales by min. 200%).
Step 2: Consistent Branding, Sensible Budget
The possibilities for video content are endless. There’s all sorts of surprising camera tricks and transitions you could use to capture the viewer’s attention and a lot of storytelling you can do that’s impossible in a print ad. It’s easy to get carried away by novel ideas when you’re planning your video ads.
However, remember that you’re creating these videos for a target audience with a goal in mind. Yes, you want to be creative and surprise your viewers, but you want them to be able to recognise who you are and what you are promoting.
This is where being consistent with your branding is key. You don’t want to create an ad so revolutionary, your audience doesn’t recognise it’s you when they watch it.
Also consider your budget before you launch into the production of an ad or the reach of your video campaign. Don’t try to create a blockbuster-priced ad that you don’t know will resonate with your audience or skim out on the cash but damage your brand’s reputation with multiple, but low-quality, ads.
Go back to the marketing goals you made at the start and make sure you’ve got a sensible budget ready. Your audience’s video preferences will also affect the distribution of your budget as well.
For example, if you’re reaching out to a mostly-millennial audience, you’ll be creating shorter videos for social media platforms. In that case, consider lower-budget productions that feature micro-influencers or industry experts your audience will recognise. Make use of user-generated content or leverage social media trends to keep your viewers hooked.
Step 3: Optimisation & Testing
Optimisation is also necessary if you want to get as much engagement as possible. Depending on where you’ll showcase your video ads, you’ll need to resize or edit your videos so they fit the aspect ratios and length specific to that platform.
You’ll also need to refine your target audience options for each platform even after the ad goes out into the world. Keep track of hashtags that are attracting attention per platform and make sure to use those. A popular hashtag on YouTube might not do as well on TikTok.
Run a few beta-tests for your ads to figure out what’s the best time of the day to deploy your ads or if the messaging is resonating with your audience. You might have to rethink the length of your videos or the channels you’re choosing to show them depending on the results of these tests.
Measure the success of your video marketing strategy by:
Engagement Rate: Time spent on your video, whether they watched the whole thing or left early gives you an indication about whether the length of your video is appropriate and whether your messaging is resonating or not.
View Count: Remember that a view is different from platform to platform. On YouTube, a view is 30 seconds while on Facebook, it’s only 3 seconds. Make sure you know how each platform measures views in order to gauge engagement.
Play Rate: The number of visitors who clicked play to watch the video can give you an idea of where your audience comes from, which specific websites or social media feeds.
Shares: How many times your video gets shared by people on social media will tell you whether or not your content is resonating.
Comments: Pay attention to comments on your video, even if they are negative, because they affect your audience’s perception of your brand.
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