Is the video marketing game still going to be big throughout the second half of 2016?
Online marketing experts say YES. During the past few years, video marketing has been one of the fastest-growing promotional strategies on the Internet. Just like other marketing techniques, it continuously evolves depending on people’s needs and demands, on market changes, and new technologies that emerge.
Here are 5 tips you ought to know and apply to your own video marketing efforts:
1. Capitalize on Social Media
Just last year, so many surveys and studies came out on the promise and power of video marketing on social media. On Facebook alone, there were an average of 8 billion views of videos per day!
If you haven’t started posting your own brand videos on Facebook, then you are most definitely missing out. A simple, short, catchy video on Facebook or Instagram can give you tons of new leads who may eventually become your page fans, website subscribers, and even loyal customers.
Every single minute, there is more than one video being watched on social media platforms. These may be informational or in the form of a story. They can be viral or controversial videos that are likely to be shared and passed on.
Analyze your current set of fans and friends on Facebook, for instance. What kind of videos do these people often want to see and take time to watch? Now that the social media giant automatically plays videos on newsfeeds, it’s easier to capture the attention of browsing users. So make the most of it.
Check out the competition as they may spark ideas in your mind and heart. You don’t have to be a copycat, but perhaps their effective and captivating video styles and formats can be adapted to your brand and personalized to suit your own image and purposes.
2. Make Videos More Interactive
Don’t let your videos be passive. To capture your target market’s attention and keep them engaged, your videos should not just let them sit back and watch but actually drive them to be alert and to be part of the story unfolding.
You’re probably aware of just how powerful stories can be. From ancient times to modern day, stories are highly utilized to inform, entertain, persuade, etc. They disseminate data and provide content and value to various audiences.
How will you make your stories more interactive through the use of digital videos?
To start off, you may want to follow in the footsteps of companies who create short films but offer choices at some points within the story. They allow the viewer to pick out an option and be led to another video for the story to continue. This choose-your-own-adventure technique is definitely engaging and will encourage people to keep coming back and to stay on longer at your YouTube channel, Facebook page, website, and more. The longer the viewer engages with your brand, the better chance you have of transforming them into future customers.
3.Personalize Your Videos
Another increasing trend is video personalization. Do you remember the time when we discovered that emails that made use of actual names of prospects worked better than general ones? Well, the same concept or idea can be applied to video marketing.
Just imagine how interesting it would be if the name of your prospective customer was used in the video, even if just for the call-to-action part. Research has shown that personalization can increase your click-through and conversion rates by more than a hundred percent.
Perhaps you deem this approach or method tricky. Well, don’t worry! Of course there are several ways to go about it. If you don’t have the software to easily personalize a video, you can do it manually, for particular groups. For example, if you are targeting schools as consumers, then you can incorporate the school name into each video which otherwise contains the same basic content.
If you have a team that creates videos, then it would be good to also come up with personalized videos aimed toward certain organizations, individual clients, and companies.
4. Leverage Video Production
Speaking of teams, did you know that more and more companies these days are investing in video production teams? You might consider getting experts to be your in-house team, if you are planning to go all-out on video marketing, or you could also outsource video makers.
What’s important to remember here is the word “LEVERAGE”. Instead of wasting all your time making your own videos (unless you are the expert on this and you have someone else to supervise and manage other work), you ought to leverage specialists who are experienced and skilled in this field. You can save on equipment and supply costs because they have their own to use.
Since videos are continuously growing BIG online, you should increase your investment. One idea is to have videos constantly being produced for you. This way, you can focus on marketing the videos and planning the content for the next ones.
5. Give Incentives for Video Distributors
Rather than relying solely on your own efforts when it comes to video distribution, why not enable customers to do it? Get more users to distribute or share the videos to their own networks and through their websites, social media accounts, blogs, etc. Just make sure to offer great incentives that will encourage them to do so.
Leverage your happy customers as they can boost your online presence. In the long run, it’s certainly effective for increasing your profits and meeting your goals.
Video marketing is something you just can’t ignore these days, if you wish for your company or institution to grow and expand. It’s also a great way to reach out to the global market.
