Video marketing is essential for any business’ marketing strategy in 2018.

Your social media accounts, websites, and campaign landing pages can perform exponentially better if you incorporate video because it engages consumers better than written content does. Simply put, your customers would rather watch a video about your product than read about it.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a video worth?

Videos can be used to educate the world about your business and show them your brand’s unique personality. They are easy to digest and they produce higher recall than other forms of media. You don’t need a Hollywood budget to make your video marketing efforts effective, but in many cases it’s worth the investment to hire a professional videographer and editor to ensure that your production looks professional and reflects well on your company. If you plan on making video marketing a regular part of your strategy, you may want to consider adding video experts to your team and purchasing proper equipment. However, before you get to that stage, you can start getting used to video marketing by incorporating it into a marketing strategy that you’re probably already using to some extent: social media.

Getting Started on Social

Social media is the best way to introduce your company to video marketing because it doesn’t necessarily require professional production value. In fact, you can get started using the camera on your smartphone! This is a great way to get your staff comfortable with being in front of a camera and to find out who the natural on-screen stars are. Here are some ideas for social media video content:

• Behind the scenes
• Employee spotlight
• Event/product announcement
• How-to

Social media is effective at building upon your brand identity and increasing customer loyalty by giving your followers content that they can connect with. Once you’ve gotten the hang of producing your own videos for social media, start thinking about where your marketing strategy could use a professionally produced video.

Producing Your First Professional Video

Plan With Purpose

Before you get started on your first professional video, you need to set actionable goals for it. What do you want your video to accomplish? One way to think about this is to consider where in the sales funnel your prospects are getting lost. Are people visiting your website’s homepage, but not making it to any of the product pages? Are they looking at your products, but not converting? Are they making it to your landing page, but not filling out your form? Are they opening your emails, but not following through with your desired action? Maybe you’re having trouble with the early stages of attracting consumers to your website in the first place. Wherever you see the most potential customers falling off should be the location of your first video.

Another way to think about this is to identify what content is already working for you. If you have a popular blog post or a page on your website that produces conversions, think about reworking that content into a video to be used elsewhere.

Start Creating Content

Here are some ideas for videos to use on your website and campaign landing pages:

• Company biography
• Product demonstration
• Explanation of process
• Case study/customer testimonial
• Frequently asked questions

Have at it! 

Now that you have some ideas, start integrating video marketing into your overall strategy and see for yourself how powerful it is!

RECAP:

• Start making videos yourself for social media
• Hire professionals
• Identify your underperforming areas and integrate video to supplement
• Turn your best content into videos