7 Ideas of How to Start Video Marketing Being a Brand or Individual (for Beginners)
Content marketing is the king of any marketing strategy. Whatever may be your business; content gives your brand an extended reach to consumers and also helps them connect with your brand better. It’s efficient and highly effective in terms of recognition and sales.
Content marketing is evolving every day and keeping up with its latest trends and capitalizing on them is what a good marketer should always aim for. One such latest trend that has completely whipped the internet into a frenzy is video marketing.
If you are a marketer then you must be aware of the “Video Marketing” buzz in the digital marketing world. It has taken over every platform in social media and has become a popular content marketing trend that every business, big or small is determined to take advantage of.
If you are still not sold on making videos as a part of your marketing strategy then here are a few statistics that you should know before you decide on it.
- Videos on YouTube get nearly 500 billion views everyday.
- According to 2016 statistics, around 500 million users were watching Facebook videos every single day.
- 82% of Twitter users like to watch video contents on the platform.
- Snapchat has more than 10 billion video views everyday.
You can tell from the aforementioned facts that video is the ruling content right now and if you want more eyeballs on your products and brand then video marketing is the bandwagon you should jump on without wasting any more time.
With its total domination over every social media platform, videos are a surefire way to your brand’s success if done right. It needs a lot of attention and tweaking along the way to get the most out of it but it is effective as can be seen in countless brands that have adopted video marketing.
So, if you own a business and have not tried your hands in video marketing yet then no doubt you are falling behind. But not to worry, you can create a video marketing strategy that works for you and start gaining attention for your brand quickly and effectively. Yes, initially this might seem intimidating to venture into but is extremely rewarding in the long run from the marketing point of view.
Here is a guide that will help any beginner who wants to wet their toes in this exciting world of video marketing. Follow along with the points and in the end, you will have a fairly clear idea of how to create a video marketing strategy for your business from scratch.
1. Do Your Research First
Before you start the process of creating videos to share with the online community, there are loads of stuff that you need to take into account and grasp properly. Before creating a video content marketing strategy, you have to know a few things like:
- Your consumers’ profile.
- What your consumers are looking for or what are their pain points.
- Which platforms to utilize when launching your video marketing strategy or where your consumers generally mingle around the internet.
- Effective ways to showcase your brand.
Once you have these basic questions identified, you should do your due diligence in providing answers for them in ways most advantageous to your brand.
Figure out your consumers’ demographics and what type of content especially videos that will most likely engage them. Do they like ‘behind the scenes’, ‘tutorials’, ‘how-tos’ or any other types of videos?
Once you know this answer, you have to come up with content ideas that will help your brand and your consumers likewise. Good content always has a good idea at its core. Feel free to look around and seek inspiration from other businesses in your niche. See what is working and what is not and plan your video contents accordingly.
Do proper research about your product and what all ways a video can effectively help bring it to peoples’ attention. Will a short video be enough for a marketing campaign or will a longer-format video be more effective for an extended impact on your consumers? You have to figure all of this out before you start the actual work.
2. Find Your Niche
Video content can be all-encompassing. There is a myriad of topics that you can cover using videos. But to help you stand out and make people notice your videos and therefore your brand, you need to stick with a niche and excel on it.
If you don’t own a business but want to create a brand revolving you then you need to settle on a niche before you start your YouTube channel or start marketing yourself on social media. Choose a niche that you know most about or is passionate enough to spare the time and effort to create videos.
Niche selection is an important process of creating a digital identity. By sticking with one, you will be having better chances to rank on YouTube and Google search results.
If you are promoting your business then create videos keeping your audience in mind. If you are a cosmetics brand, then use your videos to showcase your products by creating tutorials that will benefit your consumers along with your sales.
If you have a service-based company, then your consumers will respond more to videos providing free resources based on your niche. Provide your consumers with videos that will help them develop their skills as well as provide in-depth knowledge in the niche. It would make your brand an authority in your niche which will increase brand recognition and help generate more sales leads.
3. Support Your Research with Target Keywords
Keywords are an important part of optimization for any type of online content. Target keywords that are popular in your niche and create your content surrounding them.
Keywords are specifically what your target audience is currently asking for on the internet. If you can identify those queries beforehand and use your videos to answer them then it will drive traffic to your videos, increase online recognition, and finally generate qualified leads.
Your research on your consumers’ profile and content ideas of your competitors will help you recognize and isolate the keywords that are most likely to generate views for your videos. Use these keywords to help boost your video content.
Once you have all the questions answered regarding what your consumers want, then comes the task of creating the videos that will address those questions, add values to your consumers’ life, and also act as an efficient marketing tool.
4. Make a Quality Video
With the increase in popularity of video content on the internet, there has been a deluge of them pouring in from all business and personal brands online. So, if you are new to the game, making your mark amongst the big-name brands can be a tough job to accomplish.
Nowadays you have to work extra hard in creating a video that is aesthetically pleasing, short and sweet, and engaging to keep your audiences’ attention. You need a great fun and engaging idea to create your video around as well as take care that your video quality is up to the par.
With smartphones available which can be used to shoot 4K videos, capturing videos has become a cost-effective affair. With some basic equipment like a tripod stand, a microphone, and some lighting fixtures, you can set up your studio at home or office conveniently without breaking your bank.
After shooting comes editing which is also made easy by various editing software present online, some free and some paid. So, you can pick and choose according to your video editing needs per your marketing campaign.
A quality video will engage your viewers and even go viral if you play your cards right. You just have to be a little creative and know what your consumers want from you. You can also use your videos for a specific Call to Action at the end which will help you streamline your viewer flow according to your needs.
5. Optimize Your Video to Drive Traffic
Optimization is the name of the game in the digital world. Just as written content optimization, your video content also needs to follow a specific set of rules of optimization to help them rank in SERPs of Google and YouTube.
Once your video is edited and ready for upload, you are done with the production. Now, you have to make sure that it is following Google’s and YouTube’s guidelines to help them rank and generate coveted views.
Choose the best video hosting platform suited to your needs. If you are looking for overall brand awareness then YouTube and Vimeo are your best bet. And if you want your videos to drive traffic to your website then you can go for Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and many more.
For your video to be clickable and attractive to your audience, you need to make sure that your video thumbnail is compelling and relevant to your content. Does not matter if your content is really good if your thumbnail does not succeed in hooking viewers.
Just like in a blog post, a video should have a relevant and engaging title and video description to make them rank better. Do a keyword search and use them accordingly in your video title.
Another winning point of any video content is inserting a video transcript. Audiences not fluent with your video’s language will be able to better follow the video and prefer them moreover ones with no transcript.
As with written content, duplicate content on multiple places is not advised for video content as well. Make sure that you are repurposing them properly before posting them on multiple channels.
Search Engine Optimization is a delicate mix of science, arts, and commerce. And following every rule is not always possible or probable. Just keep a few salient points in mind and focus more on creating quality video content. Because no matter how optimized your video, its views or popularity won’t increase if it is like any run of the mill video and don’t add proper values to your audiences’ life.
6. Video Content Optimization
At this point, we will focus on how to tweak your content itself to better drive traffic.
For a video to generate the exact type of reaction in your audience you have to design it accordingly to align with what you want from them. Keep in mind the goal your video is supposed to fulfill. Do you want your consumers to be excited or ready to spend money? Create a video that helps generate that excitement you want in your consumer.
You have to know your target buyer-persona and what kinds of videos will appeal to them. Also, you should be particular about what actions you want your leads to take based on the videos they consume.
Your videos should be able to make your audience do your bidding. Use Call to Actions at the end to help direct your audience to what you want from them. You can either add a link at the end to a landing page or links to resources that you have talked about in the video. Your videos may also be used for capturing leads from your visitors.
Track your video’s performance along with producing them. It will help you understand what is working and what is not. It will give you a metric to better your content for the next time onward.
7. Cross-Platform Video Promotion
Your video is ready to take the world by storm, now comes the job of promoting it which will allow your audience to become aware of its existence and relevance.
If you are posting a video on YouTube, then you will have other multiple social media platforms available to you to inform your audience that it is up and running. It will help you to drive more traffic from various online platforms to the original video.
You can create a short sneak-peek video of the original one and promote it on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. It will drive interest and also stir up more audience from various parts of the online world to watch it. You can also leverage the handy feature of live streaming available on Facebook and Instagram to announce your video launch and excite viewers.
A video can be posted on various platforms simultaneously to garner more buzz. So, while creating a video make sure to repurpose the video to suit the formats and duration of various other platforms, so that you are not stuck with only one format and depending on it.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully, now you have a marginal idea about what to do, how to start, and how to better arrange your resources to make this happen. Start planning your video marketing strategy keeping these salient points in mind. You will make mistakes along the way but if you stick to it, your brand will give your competition a run for their money in no time at all.
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