A detailed guide for every business owner today

Marketers have been using video since the 1940s, but the term “video marketing” has gained momentum over the last decade.

Google’s acquisition of YouTube in 2006 can be seen as a key turning point in the growth of video marketing.

Video marketing is a hot topic and area of ​​focus for all marketing teams, regardless of industry or size of organization.

For those readers who are still confused about the term video marketing, here’s a standard definition to explain it.

These are short how-to videos, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, YouTube videos, and more.

Why Choose Video Marketing

Video marketing has gained so much attention over the past decade that nearly every business is considering it today.

There are several reasons behind the increasing adoption of video as a content format for marketing. Here are some of them:

• Humans prefer visuals to words. Our brain processes visuals much faster than words. An MIT study found that it can identify the images we see in just 13 milliseconds. Video is a great way to capture your audience’s attention in a time of declining attention.
• Videos evoke emotions: Through impactful storytelling, videos can evoke the right emotions in your audience. Creators can plan their storytelling based on the goals they’re trying to achieve with their content.
• Video engages multiple senses in the viewer. Video stimulates the viewer’s five senses, including sight and hearing. This will help evoke emotion and persuade.

Videos that help you achieve important business goals

Video content helps companies achieve several goals and objectives. These goals include:

• Increase website traffic and engagement: Video is an effective medium for driving quality traffic to your website and increasing engagement with your brand.
• Building social media communities: Videos can also serve as entertainment. When Educational resources for your audience. By providing this kind of value to people, video content can help engage social media users and grow social communities.
• Customer acquisition and retention: You can use videos to communicate your brand, products, and value proposition to potential prospects. In this sense, it often helps to convert people into customers and ultimately generate revenue.
• Increased content consumption: Without a doubt, video is one of the most popular and consumed content formats today. By using video on the right platform to tell the right story, you can reach more people.
• Gaining Thought Leadership: If you follow best practices and focus on your own storytelling, your video will help you stand out and tell your story in a crowded marketplace.
• Improve customer experience: Video content can enhance your efforts to provide the best experience for your customers through product descriptions, how-tos, tutorials, or customer case studies.

Statistics Proving the Rise of Video Marketing

To understand the power and dominance of video in the world of marketing, you need to check out the latest stats from Wyzowl’s 2022 State of Video Marketing report.

• By 2022, 86% of businesses will use video as part of their marketing strategy.
• 81% of marketers say video helped them increase sales in 2022.
• 94% of viewers watched explainer videos to learn more about products and services in 2022.
• 87% of marketers say video helped drive traffic in 2022.

These stats alone make it clear that video has become an integral part of the average company’s marketing strategy, regardless of size or industry.

Marketers have traditionally faced daunting barriers to entry into video content, including high costs, inadequate tools, and lack of access to talent. Video content has become viable for any business. today.

Video formats currently dominating marketing

If you’re considering video as part of your content strategy, now’s a great time to research and think about how to approach video content.

There are a variety of platforms and formats marketers and business owners can experiment with to tell their brand story.

Questions to ask before building a video marketing strategy

With so many different forms of video marketing available, you should ask yourself some important questions before starting any video marketing effort.

Please answer the following questions honestly. It helps you build a real and powerful video content strategy for your business.

• Do you know your audience well? Knowing your audience well is the cornerstone of successful video marketing.
• Are your viewers consuming video content? If you answered “no” here, there’s no point in wasting your energy and resources on video marketing.
• Do you have a compelling story to tell your audience? Every business needs an interesting story to tell its audience. If you don’t know yours, it’s time to go find it!
• Do you have the time and resources to execute your video marketing strategy? This key question will help you determine which gaps you need to fill to make your program successful.
• How committed are you to a successful video marketing program? Video marketing, like any other marketing strategy, requires a long-term commitment to deliver results for your business.

All these questions provide the right answers for building a successful video marketing program.

Building a strong video marketing strategy

A well-designed video marketing strategy can do wonders for your business or personal brand.

Video content can serve a variety of business goals, such as increasing brand awareness, increasing website traffic, generating leads, booking demos, and more.

Videos can often grab your audience’s attention quickly and, if done right, can help you reach your goals.

Here are the basic steps to building an effective video marketing strategy for your business:

audience research (including buyer persona exercises)

The first step in building an effective video strategy is to research your audience.

The goal in this step is to understand your audience demographics, challenges, and content preferences.

This exercise will help you determine if your video content will help solve your target audience’s challenges.

Decide on a theme for your video storytelling

Once you’ve clarified your audience’s preferences, you can move on to identifying some key themes that you can use in your content strategy.

These themes help determine the content types and stories you can tell using your video.

These themes include education, holidays, events, regular updates, and more.

Identify the right tools for your program

Once your theme is clear, you can move on to identifying the right tools for your video marketing strategy.

These are tools for video creation, topic research, SEO, content delivery, and performance tracking.

Choose the right talent for your program

The most important factor in the success of any program is the people who run it.

If you are a small business owner, this could be you! Or, if you don’t have time, you may need to hire or identify the right person for the job.

Implementing appropriate measurement mechanisms

A successful video content strategy depends on how you monitor and measure performance.

Identify the metrics that matter to your goals and put mechanisms in place to consistently measure them.

Consistently improve your video strategy

Continuous monitoring helps determine the changes needed to make your video marketing more effective.

Keep improving the program by making timely changes to improve the performance of your content.

Storytelling Tips for Effective Video Marketing

As a business owner, you may face questions such as:

• What stories can you tell with video?
• Will my talk even appeal to my audience?
• How can I consistently tell a story with video content?
• Can I continue on this video marketing journey?

Let’s get a little real.

Video storytelling is not an easy task. It requires the dedication, dedication and constant focus of the creator.

Here are some storytelling tips for any business owner building a video strategy.

• Be authentic: Authentic stories are more likely to resonate with your audience. So make sure your content is original and represents the true brand.
• Be consistent: Video marketing, like any other marketing strategy, requires consistency above all else. Stay consistent with your video content and stay on course.
• experiment: Always try video content. New formats appear regularly, so you need to test them quickly to find what resonates with your target audience.
• Being Customer-Centric: Customer centricity is a key factor for a successful video marketing strategy. Tailor your content to your customers, their challenges, and how to solve them for the best results.
• Thick skin: With highly visual content like videos, you will always encounter feedback and criticism. Don’t forget to also develop the resilience to take constructive notes on board and ignore the rest to keep it going.

Tools to support video marketing

There are many tools available to help you run an effective video marketing program.

Here are some cost-effective and user-friendly options for all business owners.

• Animoto: Video creation software that offers ready-made templates to help you create various videos for social media and other marketing purposes.
• Kamba: A graphic design and video platform with the largest collection of templates to support your video marketing.
• tube buddy: The go-to tool for managing and growing your YouTube video marketing.
• stream yard: Tools to help you schedule and run live streams and webinars for your business.
• Lumen 5: Business owners can create videos faster from blogs and written content.
• loom: Powerful screen recording software for creating educational and promotional videos on the go.
• in video: A video creation platform with convenient templates for your video content needs.
• Youtube: The perfect platform to upload video content for your target audience.
• speechro: An easy-to-use tool for creating professional narration for your videos.
• Beyond: A video platform for creating impactful animations and whiteboard explainer videos.

Content Ideas to Start Video Marketing

Here are some content ideas to help you get started with video marketing. These can be tested depending on your appetite and resources.

• Business introduction video: Create a video that describes your business, the unique value it offers, and who its services can help.
• Product/service animation video: Create an animated video that describes your product and highlights its key features.
• Live Streaming Shows with Stakeholders: If you dare, try starting a social media live-streaming show with guests such as influencers and customers.
• Live content behind the scenes: Similarly, you can use tools like Instagram Stories to broadcast special live sessions that give a behind-the-scenes look at your business or team.
• Product demo video: Prepare a screen recording video of your product and its features for your customers.

The conclusion is

In conclusion, video marketing could transform your business in 2023.

All you need is to understand your customers and their challenges, and plan video content that focuses on solutions to those challenges.

Dedicate time and resources to creating video content according to your strategy and stay consistent.

And, as James Wedmore says,

“Stop thinking of video marketing as this separate, optional entity for your business.

Video is an effective form of communication that should be integrated into every aspect of your existing marketing efforts. “

Happy video marketing!

Other resources:

Featured image: vichie81/Shutterstock