Why Video Plays a Crucial Role in Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Don’t think you need a video marketing strategy? The truth is that people have been using video in their marketing strategies for years, but they’re only starting to realize the benefits of this form of marketing. Creating a comprehensive video marketing strategy is essential for any business looking to launch its brand and products in today’s digital age. It’s a known fact that videos are one of the most effective ways to reach and engage with your target audience. We hope you’ll use this article as your video marketing guide to get you considering all the options before you.

Video marketing is nothing new. It’s been around for years – before YouTube even got started. However, it’s playing an increasingly central role in digital marketing, and if you’re not using it to its full advantage, you’re leaving money on the table.

Consider the fact that more than 99% of current video marketers told Hubspot that they’ll continue using video in 2021, and 96% plan to increase or maintain their spend (again, up slightly from 95% last year). What’s more, from the people who told them they don’t currently use video, 69% told Hubspot they expect to start in 2021. (This is 10% higher than last year’s figure of 59%.)

Video Influences Engagement and Conversion

On the fence about creating a video marketing strategy, or the need to include video in your marketing content at all? Consider the fact that video can dramatically improve audience engagement and conversion.

Video Tells More, Faster

How much time does your audience spend trying to understand your product, or your company’s offerings through text-based pages? Video can dramatically reduce that time, and improve the impact of your message. It can also educate, entertain and persuade.

Creating a video that informs and educates about a problem and how your product or service can solve the issue can be a crucial top of the funnel lead. Video that entertains can not only inform, but also reinforce brand values in the minds of viewers. Finally, video can be used to persuade your audience that you have what it takes to solve their problem or address their pain point.

“ Video is a mega trend, in a decade, video will look like as big a shift in the way we share and communicate as mobile has been.”

Mark Zuckerberg, Co-founder & CEO of Facebook

Video Marketing Strategy and Search

Google is the largest search engine in the world. What would you say is the second? Yahoo? Maybe Bing? It’s neither of those.

Interestingly enough, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. While uploading your videos to YouTube is a step in the right direction, it’s only one. You also need to ensure that your videos are optimized for Google search. This requires creating an optimized title, using optimized, relevant tags, creating a compelling video description, and even possibly uploading a transcript with keywords integrated so that search spiders can index the content accurately.

“50% of your content should be video. Stop looking for that blogger, start looking for that video (partner).” Brian Halligan Co-founder & CEO of Hubspot

Video Marketing Strategy and Brand Image and Influence

Creating a video marketing strategy is not just about audience engagement. The best marketing video content can have powerful effects on brand image, and can even influence consumer trust and the perception that your firm is an authority with expertise in your field. It can also be an integral part of brand response marketing, which helps to cement your company in the minds of the video’s viewers. At Noble Digital, we offer powerful video production and storytelling solutions to help encapsulate the essence of your brand and communicate your message.

Incorporating Social Media and Mobile into Your Video Marketing Strategy

Social media is a vital marketing tool, and video has a major role to play here. 82% of Twitter users watch video on Twitter-a level of engagement all marketers crave . 45% of users watch at least an hour of video on Facebook per week. Savvy marketers know that native Facebook videos offer 135% greater reach than posting a link to Facebook from YouTube, and create their content accordingly.

Pinterest has made an aggressive launch into video in as well as Linkedin too.

Video ads over indexed on brand association around gifting, specifically: finding gifts for all, finding great deals, and finding small gifts. (Walgreens/Pinterest case study)

It’s important to remember that most social videos are watched on mobile devices. This means a couple of things. First, your videos should be shorter when used on social networks. Most consumers prefer all videos they watch online to be two minutes or shorter. Also, while the mobile-first strategy is still alive and well, it’s crucial to remember that this is the first touch point of many.

While your video marketing strategy should include mobile and social media, you must expand beyond those channels to experience the best results.

Types of Marketing Videos

1. Brand /Attraction Video

A brand video allows you to present your company and its history, as well as your mission and vision. As a result, they can also help you reach new audiences or increase customer engagement. When you are a new product in a new space, you absolutely need to invest in this. This will concisely capture what makes you unique in the marketplace and why you’re indispensable. A brand video can also be used as a call to action for your audience.

This means Storytelling! A brand video often focuses on the customer and what they can expect to get out of your product or service. Therefore, they are often called “storytelling videos.” One of the best ways to tell a story is through a short video, so it’s something that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Be sure to get feedback from your audience. The more you know about what they like and don’t like, the better your videos will be! Ask potential customers for feedback about your videos, and then work with that feedback to create better content to find your target audience and target story.

How much should you invest? Well, what are you marketing goals? Is this a video for startups? Or for an established brand making an announcement video for their 100 year anniversary? Are you branding or marketing?

If this video sits at the top of your funnel, it has the potential to produce a multi-million dollar pipeline of leads. Whatever you would pay for a top salesperson over the course of 2-3 years, is about how much you should invest in this video because this video will be working non-stop for 24 hours a day producing results.

Pro tip: Don’t even think of trying to do this yourself in-house! Producing a high-quality video that results in customer acquisition flow will need deep data research translated into storytelling and creativity. The average in-house videographer does not even possess all these skill. Still want to do it yourself? Then you must be a startup (and that’s ok!), see our guide here.

2. Educational or How-To Videos

These videos show you how to use your product or service. The main benefit is that they provide valuable content for people who are new to the business, don’t know much about what you do, or just want to learn a few new tips. They also provide educational content for your customer base, which can be a great way to build loyalty and advocacy around your brand.

Also know this, how to videos could answer the question but also show a prospect that they’re “looking in the wrong direction” For example, if a customer asks “How do I shoot a video?” the answer is something like “If you are looking to grow from $5 million to $20 million… don’t. Hire the right talent, and here is how…” and if you’re a small bootstrap, you’re choosing a very expensive channel to start with when search could at least monetize you and produce the budget needed to activate other channels like video.

This is often where live videos sit as well, in terms of marketing function.

3. Explainer Videos/Product Videos

If you have a product or service, then creating a video for it might be the best way to advertise it. But don’t forget that you also need to create a video that will attract new customers.

Many will not care about your demo video unless they understand why they’re watching your how to, which is the branding/attraction video above (#1). Most likely you’ll find this video on a landing page or embedded in a blog post… but quite often we see companies using this as a top funnel point like an ad, which is incredibly presumptuous.

So sequence and order absolutely matter in video marketing.

4. Case Study and Customer Testimonial Videos

You can’t just create a video for your product or service though. You also need to have a video that shows the audience how it works, why it’s better than other similar products, and how it will benefit them. That proof would come in the form of customer testimonial videos that shows not just the success of your product but the enthusiasm your customers have for your brand, which results in credibility.

Influencer marketing in your case is video testimonials from your customers that you promote, which is the bottom funnel content.

5. 360° & Virtual Reality Videos

Video content has always been a part of marketing. It’s the primary method used by companies to communicate with prospects and customers, and it’s one of the primary ways in which people consume video content. That’s why 360° and virtual reality videos are so popular in marketing today. The two types of 360° videos can be split into two categories: pure 360° videos and immersive 360° videos.

Pure 360° Videos are simply clips that have no interactive components placed within them. Virtual Reality Videos are just that, videos that have been filmed in a virtual reality setting.

Pure 360° and Virtual Reality Video marketing provides your audience with an immersive experience that can’t be experienced through any other medium. That’s why these videos are so popular with marketers today.

If you create an awesome 360° or Virtual Reality Video, it will become one of the most talked about pieces of content on social media.

6. Augmented Reality (AR) Videos

Augmented Reality uses a digital overlay to enhance the real world.

The technology is being utilized in various industries, including marketing and sales. AR videos are a great way to create a sense of immersion and provide a user experience that can’t be had any other way.

For instance, if you were to create an AR video ad for a product, the viewer would have the ability to look around the product to get a 360° view of it. Creating this type of experience is also more effective than 2D, static ads since the viewer can move around and interact with your video content.

7. Virtual Reality (VR) Videos

Virtual Reality is another form of immersive content that is gaining traction with marketers and consumers alike. VR uses headsets on the viewer’s head to create a heightened sense of reality.

One of the most popular forms is in the form of 360° video, in which viewers can watch videos in various rooms or locations. This type of immersive content can be used in a variety of different ways, because not only are viewers able to look around the video, they are also able to interact with it.

We won’t get into video format in this piece because once you get into tech, it can be so overwhelming, you’re best of just hiring a production partner who can guide you through this rather extensive process.

How To make a Video for Marketing That Gets Results

Video marketing is a great way to engage your audience and inspire them to take action, but it’s no secret that traditional video marketing strategies have a tough time getting noticed. That’s because video content is competing for attention with other types of content, and not all of them are created equal.

The key to getting videos to perform goals is to get a partner who has experience with getting ROI from videos. Just like you might expect a partner to understand your vertical, in order to work with you, why would you expect to be a master of a new medium, just because you’re an amazing crypto company?

Most likely you would be shooting yourself in the foot. Find an expert! This doesn’t mean finding video marketing services and most marketing agency teams outsource and have little direct know how on how to do this. You’re not seeking to make a video… rather you’re seeking to create a video that becomes a customer acquisition tool and lead generation tool at any point in your customer journey flow. So you need a partner that understands website analytics and campaign data.

We often find companies stuck on “false negatives” like: “we tried video, it just didn’t work for us”. We highly doubt you never produced the right video to begin with. If you had no strategy what so ever in terms of story, messaging and/or touch points then you are making a huge assumption about whether it will work for you..

Now… if you’ve been through something like this before, wouldn’t you like to do it the right way this time around? And if you had a nice 2x ROI, wouldn’t you like to see a 4x ROI or greater? Video optimization is an ongoing process of reading data and understanding what to enhance. This means checking web traffic for bounce rate, keywords, audience conversions and overall feedback.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, why video marketing is important is because it is a growing medium and all businesses, small and large, can have a video marketing strategy to capitalize on its growing popularity. The most important aspect to all of this is the actual narrative around your product market fit and how it fits into your customer’s journey. Once you begin to empathize with your users, they will connect with your content like never before.

Noble Digital is a creative-performance partner that helps growth companies translate their vision into an integrated marketing strategy that performs. Noble has helped growth companies like: Telesign, Plated and Fundrise, and BiohmHealth to scale and hit business goals and exit goals as well as helping mid-tiers and Fortune 500s optimize their outward facing communications for maximum performance around business goals. See our talk at INBOUND on video marketing.