Video should be on every marketer’s radar right now. According to a survey carried out by HubSpot, 45% of people prefer video over every other kind of marketing strategy, with voice-only being the least favorite among the surveyed. 60% of marketers said their go-to form of advertising and awareness outreach is video and the amount of money spent on video marketing is expected to skyrocket by 72% in the coming year.
The most eye-opening of these statistics is the fact that revenues grow by as much as 49% faster in marketers who use videos in their marketing strategy over those who don’t. It’s pretty easy to remain in your comfort zone when everything you’re doing is working, but when it comes to marketing, no stone should be left unturned. The best way of staying in the game is diversifying your approach. Images have a visual effect on the brain, videos combine sound and moving images, essentially making them the best of two worlds.
Create a YouTube channel for Your Brand
First things first, you will need somewhere to consolidate all the videos your company is going to create. If you aren’t already using YouTube to promote your videos, it’s the best place to start. Once the videos are uploaded and in place, YouTube makes it easy to share the video through links or embedding.
YouTube is one of the most extensive social media networks out there. Though not categorically ‘social media’ per se, the existence of the comments section makes it more or less so. In fact, YouTube is only second to Facebook in terms of most number of active users per month – a difference of half a million people between them.
It’s a bit intimidating approaching a mammoth audience such as this at first, but it takes time. If anything, the biggest mistake you could make would be to try and create different videos for different networks. You’re better off building them for YouTube and then sharing them to Facebook, Twitter or your own website through private video hosting. Concentrate on one thing at a time and let it grow from there.
Use more videos on your website
It’s often said that a good picture is worth a thousand words. If accurate, then an adequately done video has to be worth at least ten thousand. Too many words on a page are both unappealing and confusing. Nobody has the time or patience to read thousands of words detailing what your business does.
It’s all much easier if you replace all those with a short video that explains everything as concisely as possible. The best way to do this is to include a relevant product video on the landing page of your most popular products. They shouldn’t be too long – a minute or two should do – since people’s attention starts to wane as videos approach the five-minute mark. You can tie-up with a good private video hosting company.
Embedding video in your email
The first thing you’re thinking is that support for video in emails is poor at best. In its initial days, email could accept everything from JavaScript to email videos, but spammers and hackers regularly abused the features. And here we are now. However, clients like Apple Mail and the native iOS mail client all support embedded videos. In clients like Gmail, the most commonly used email client in the world, the first frame still is used as a fallback.
The most common strategy used to embed videos in email is by using an image with a play icon on top of it. When the image gets clicked, it redirects to your intended email videos. This is usually advantageous because images allow you to track if the image has been clicking and how many people opened your email.
Use Instagram stories
Instagram and Snapchat have been at it for quite a while. However, Instagram stories are unequivocally more popular than the latter. The two, however, work in similar ways – allowing you to post stories that disappear after every 24 hours. They appear at the top of everyone’s feed and will enable you to see how many people have viewed your videos and who they are.
If your story can gain enough traction, it will also be shown on the search page of even people who don’t follow you. It’s an excellent way to show your products and increase brand exposure.
Use live streams
Live streams have been all the rage when it comes to video marketing for the last five years or so. The main reason for its popularity is that most social networks allow you to interact with your followers in real time. There are three main options for starting a promotional live stream: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, the most popular of which is Facebook.
Using Facebook live streams for promoting video
Despite their popularity, product video live streams aren’t as simple as firing up your webcam and airing whatever is on your mind. There’s a bit of science that goes into it. Think of it like airing a TV show. If your favorite series was to air at any random time, not everyone who could have watched it live is going to be able to catch it.
Instead of the sporadic method, treat your streams like a TV show. Try and stream a video at the same time every week. This way, people can anticipate it and stream it as soon as it airs. You can also build a regular user base and boost its popularity.
The best part about live streaming on Facebook is user interaction. Users can comment on the video as you stream – they can ask questions and have anything they don’t understand clarified. This is a great way to increase brand interaction. A crucial part of doing it even better is to acknowledge them, thank them for watching and give them a good reason to tune in the next week.
Instagram live streams
Instagram also offers a live video feature just like Facebook. However, unlike Facebook, since Instagram is more focused on being flashy, it would be better to use when you’re somewhere cool or happening place. If you’re at a popular tourist destination or are having a fancy meal, people are likely to be interested in your stream.
Other simple ideas to execute include recording videos of your brand mascot interacting with people and show people around your office. This gives them a feel of what the fun side of the brand looks like. Just like Facebook, people can also comment on your branding video as you stream it live. Once again, it presents an excellent way to interact with your users. Another difference is that Instagram live streams shouldn’t be as long as their Facebook counterparts. Short streams of the face of the brand doing something fun should do the trick.
Let users create and submit their videos
Another standard way for increasing interaction with the brand is letting users create different videos of them enjoying your product and submitting them. Some brands usually add a little twist to the mix like adding a competitive aspect. You don’t have to do all the work by yourself. For instance, Apple often has competitions for people to take the best pictures they can with their iPhones and submit them to the site. The winner is awarded a cash prize and used in promotional content such as their branding video.
Allowing users to interact with your products is an excellent strategy for people who have physical products. A user-generated eCommerce video, makes the consumers of your product feel more at home with it. It’s an easy way to both create product awareness and brand interaction at the same time.
Conclusion
Creating video content, for instance, an eCommerce video often takes a long time, but has one of the largest ROIs of all the marketing strategies. The most straightforward ways to approach it include starting live streams on your social media network of choice, creating and promoting your YouTube channel and sharing your videos on other social media networks.
Live streams are a lot more advantageous than pre-recorded videos because they allow real-time interaction with your followers. Many of these can be turned into leads and further into long-time conversions.
Additionally, you can add a little more exciting too by allowing your users to create videos by themselves and submitting them to your site. You can optionally offer a reward to whoever produces the best video. You can win over awards process by using user voting or a personal selection process.
Finally, your business can also include more videos on their website – either hosted on YouTube, then Embedded or on private hosting sites like Cincopa. Include this on your main product pages, so your users don’t have to scroll through the whole page to understand what it’s all about. After all, a video is worth a million words.
