How Does Video Marketing For Business Work?
You may have heard that video can be a powerful tool for business but do you actually know why? In this video we will be answering the question of how does video marketing for business actually work?
Before we get started we need to establish our understanding of what video marketing even is and why people watch videos in the first place.
What is Video Marketing & How Does It Work
In its simplest form video marketing is a branch of digital marketing that uses video content as its main media to drive leads to a business. Video marketing makes use of content distribution platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, now TikTok, your website and even email marketing.
Why Do People Want To Watch Videos?
People watch videos because it compresses time for them. For example, you would much rather watch a video about how to create a TikTok ad instead of reading through countless articles, experimenting with ads for years to find out what works, and doing hours and hours of research yourself.
Someone can distill all that time and energy into a 5-minute video that not only presents the information to you at the click of a button but also uses nice lighting, images, text, audio and graphics to make the video pleasant to watch. That right there is value and providing value upfront helps build trust. And we all know trust is good for business.
Now we can talk a bit more about how video marketing actually works.
Ideal Customer Profile
Effective Video Marketing Starts With An Ideal Customer Profile
Making a video for your business is like selecting the perfect bait when you go fishing. There isn't one type of bait that works for everything. You use different kinds of bait depending on what you’re trying to catch. The same concept applies to video marketing. For video marketing to work you need to create a video that is designed to appeal to a specific target audience.
Use the language and imagery that appeals to the ideal viewer and keep them hooked to the video by throwing in some value in the form of education, entertainment and or inspiration.
Why Do Marketers Love Video Marketing?
92% of marketers who use video say that it's an important part of their marketing strategy (Wowzyl). Video marketing works because it's such an effective tool for moving prospects through the marketing funnel bringing them closer to a sale for your business. But not all video marketing campaigns are the same.
Depending on who your target audience is and what your business goals are will affect the type of strategy you use. The two main types of strategies are social media-driven campaigns and email-driven campaigns but you can also use a combination of the two.
Video marketing and social media are an extremely effective and powerful combinations for generating brand awareness for your business and turning a cold audience into a warm audience. Videos are a consumers’ favorite type of content to see from a brand on social media (Animoto, 2018). Based on the 2018 State of Social Video Marketer Trends report, 73% of consumers claim that they have been influenced by a brand’s social media presence when making a purchasing decision (Oberlo).
People are already on social media with the expectation to consume video content so it's easier to fit yourself in. A social media driven video marketing strategy comes in 3 forms. Organic, Paid and Hybrid.
Can Video Marketing Be Integrated Into Other Distribution Channels Like Emails?
Email-driven video marketing campaigns are great for retargeting warm audiences because you will usually send the video via email to people who have already signed up to your email list. These videos will further provide value, establish authority, and build trust but the difference is you might use different language and calls-to-action when speaking to a warm audience.
How Many Video Should I Make For This To Work?
No matter the video marketing strategy you decide is best for your business, the key to success is being consistent. If you can’t commit to consistently getting new value-packed videos in front of your target audience then you won’t see much success. Making one video is better than none but the real power comes from consistent content and building a library of content because that means you have data to work with. With that data you can make better decisions when creating new video content. Find out what's working and then create more content like it. It's an iterative process and there are no shortcuts.
After all, marketing is all about delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. So it is important to test new ideas and new types of content with different messaging, different calls-to-action, different visuals.
What Should My Videos Look Like To Be Effective?
So now you may be wondering, do my videos need to look like a Hollywood movie to work? Because professional video equipment and software is expensive and requires many years of experience to operate it properly? The answer to that is no, your video doesn't need to have a high production value for it to work. Cell phones record high enough quality video and you can get away with a basic light and microphone. Great video marketing works because of the content within the videos along with the strategy behind it. Not how pretty the video looks.
One thing to mention though is that when deciding on whether or not to film your videos yourself or to hire a production company to do it for you it's important to keep in mind the brand you want to build. Oftentimes your videos are going to be the first touchpoint a customer might have with your brand. You know how important first impressions can be. So having a high production value video subconsciously communicates that you are a brand of high value. It looks like you care about how you present yourself to the world. High production value videos help you stand out among all the rest of the content that everybody is filming with basic equipment.
You don't need expensive equipment and software to create videos that work, you need knowledge on what makes an effective video marketing strategy. That is why I created this free PDF titled The 5 Steps To Creating Effective Videos For Your Business. I’ve used these exact tips to help my clients create content that has helped them scale their businesses and I’m giving these tips away for free.
The best part is that you can start implementing these tips right away to start seeing results in your business.
