If you ask the average marketer about their video marketing strategy right now, you're probably going to just wave you off. While most marketers know on a fundamental level that video is important, there's not always a deeper objective behind it.
No doubt that video is important. Based on our poll results, 23% of the respondents said they have difficulty creating an effective video marketing strategy. Since your audience is likely spending a third of their time watching videos, it might make sense to have a strategy.
So how do you launch a video marketing strategy that helps get more engagement and more results?
We recommend you start with these steps:
Learn about your audience and set campaign goals
All successful marketing campaigns must start with research – who are you targeting? What type of content tends to resonate with them, and what channels are they likely to be on? There's little point in making great video content and paying to have it play on websites your audience doesn't visit.
Most importantly, what goals are you trying to reach with a particular video marketing campaign? Are you trying to drive awareness, sales, traffic, or all of the above? To capitalize on video's ability to connect with your audience, make sure you're using the right tone of voice and message to reach them. It's important to spend time gathering insights before launching your video because these are the insights that will inform the type of videos you produce and how much budget you will spend on producing them
Stay on brand, and be consistent with your message across videos
Video marketing seems different from other types of marketing, or branding. But your video content needs to be recognizable to viewers, so they know who is speaking to them.
According to an article written by Jessica Wong for Entreprenour.com titled, Why Consistency Is Vital to Your Branding Efforts, "Consistent messaging, backed up by a compatible brand experience allows your audience to form an expectation about your brand". For example, if your videos are on YouTube or social media, they should link to your site or landing page, with consistent, on-brand creative and messaging. If the video users see in your email is different from the one, they see on Facebook, it won't show your brand, and could hurt instead of help.
Make sure your video budget makes sense
Many marketers make the mistake of thinking that putting a ton of money into a video project will automatically make it a huge success. On the other perspective, not spending enough on a far-reaching campaign could hurt your brand's image by not letting the messaging come across in a low-quality way.
When developing video content, keep your campaign goals in mind and make sure you're spending your budget well.
Optimize your videos and target for each channel
To get the most engagement, make sure your videos are optimized for the channels you choose. For Facebook, this means keeping it short, uploading videos directly to the channel, and adding captions. For YouTube, this means waiting two weeks after your video launches to make any tweaks and refine your target audience. For Twitter, this means finding the balance between fine-tuned targeting around interest to keywords to a device, and not over-targeting.
Test and Test again
Similar to digital display ad campaigns, A/B testing will help you figure out what elements of a campaign are working out, and not working. Maybe it's not the creative but your messaging, or maybe it's the time of day you're deploying your campaign, or the channels you're choosing. Or maybe your videos are too long or too short. Whatever it is, make sure you test, and test again to figure out the optimal content and timing of your campaigns.
Here are five ways to measure campaign success:
Engagement rate
Engagement rate measures any interaction someone has with your video. How much time did someone spend on the video? Did they watch the whole thing or leave early, or merely skipping the entire thing? This number should give you an indication of the quality of your message, creative, and whether your video is too long or the right length.
View count
View count is how many times a video has been watched, but this is measured differently across different channels. On YouTube a view is considered 30 seconds, while on Facebook it's only 3 seconds. Understanding how viewers are interacting with your videos across different channels means you can know how each platform measures view count. Understanding how to use each platform's insights tools will help you figure out how much true engagement your video is getting. This type of information will help you plan future campaigns and content.
Play rate
The number of visitors who clicked play to watch the video. This metric is important because it gives you an idea of how the video ad does on specific websites or social media feeds. Maybe it doesn't do well in the New York Times, but gets played a lot in the Business Journal. This metric will also tell you something about your audience. Play Rate can also be influenced by the thumbnail you have, the copy, or even the size of the video.
Social Sharing
This metric measures how many times people on social media channels have shared your video. People don't bother to share content they're not interested in, so if your videos are getting lots of shares, it means your content is resonating.
Comments/feedback
When viewers leave comments on your social channels, read to see whether they're positive or negative, and take both views into consideration. People who are taking the time to watch your video and comment are now well aware of the brand and could very well be prospects in the future.
