To create a successful video marketing strategy, you need to create many videos. This is easy to figure out.
The tough part to figure out is the types of videos you should be creating to keep your audience engaged
Videos are everywhere and people are devouring them in every shape and form. Why wouldn’t they? Videos are interesting, easier to connect with, easy to remember and less hard work. But, for a company, marketer, educator or any content creator for that matter, it’s an uphill task to figure out what videos they should include in their video marketing strategy.
Sure, you can go gung-ho and try creating as many types of video content as you can, and then wait to see which one sticks with the viewers. The problem with this strategy is that you end up spending a lot of time on fruitless pursuits. In other words, you create videos that fetch a low number of views and engagement.
Instead, what you should be doing is focus on the most important types of videos, stay consistent in producing them, and, once you have an audience, experiment with more video ideas.
How to find the right type of videos for you?
To have a full-fledged understanding of what types of videos are right for you, there are three main areas where you have to concentrate – your business, your audience and your competitors.
Your business
No one knows your business better than you. You don’t have to be a big-shot entrepreneur or a Harvard-educated MBA for that. You may be an independent content creator, but only you can determine your goals. The same goes for your video marketing too – start by identifying the marketing goals
Identify marketing goals
Having a goal is like giving direction to your marketing strategy. What is it that you want to achieve with your marketing? Do you want to create more awareness for your product? Or, is it the conversion that you want to achieve? Your videos should resonate with your goal. For example, if you want to create more awareness about your product, your strategy should prioritize creating short videos related to your company, team, product and its variants.
Learn more about your product
Knowing your product gives you more confidence to make videos and makes them more convincing for the viewers. You should know what are the strengths of your product. How you can use them in the videos. For example, if you sell cloth bags online that are eco-friendly and sustainable, then use such keys to differentiate your product from competitors. Talk more about the advantages of using eco-friendly bags and why more people should adopt them
Your customers
Your customers are your target audience for your videos. You have to take care of likes and preferences while making videos. And, to find your audience’s taste, here are the two things you have to keep in mind
Find out the buyer’s persona
A buyer’s persona is about building the worldview of your target audience. It includes their demographics like age, gender, income & geographic location. It also includes their likes, interests, challenges, and goals in life. A buyer’s persona doesn’t give the microscopic details of every buyer’s life, however, it’s an immensely powerful tool to learn about your audience. Once you know the buyer’s persona, you can experiment with video content that will be liked by your audience
Know the buyer’s journey
Similar to a buyer’s persona, is the buyer’s journey. A buyer’s journey is made of steps that a buyer takes before finally deciding to buy a product or service. There are four major steps that a buyer goes through – Attention, consideration, evaluation and decision. This journey looks like a funnel with the wider base referred to as the top-of-the-funnel buyers. At this stage, the buyer is aware of their challenges and is looking for a solution. The lower part is referred to as the bottom-of-the-funnel buyers, as only selected buyers decide to stay on the journey and continue to show interest in your product. Videos play an important role in keeping your audience informed at every step of the journey. For example, at the evaluation stage, where buyers are evaluating your product along with competitors, you can make their job easier by making a video on what makes your product better than others
Your competitor
There’s no doubt that you have done extensive research to find out how you can make your product better than your competitor’s. Great! But, don’t just stop there. Stalk their video marketing strategy. You have no idea about the potential of generating ideas from your competitor’s video marketing plan.
Here are the two broad areas where you should be looking –
Check their video distribution channels
You can watch videos on multiple platforms. It’s not just websites or YouTube where you’ll find videos of different brands. Check where your competitors are more active. This will tell you where you should be concentrating to build an audience. You can have a separate series of videos specifically planned for this type of platform to take advantage of its popularity.
Measure engagement metrics
Along with checking where your competitors are posting more videos, you should also concentrate on how the audience is engaging on the videos. Is there a particular type of video that is garnering more likes, comments or followers? If yes, then you need to start creating them too. These are some low-hanging fruits that you should take advantage of while making your video marketing strategy
Five types of videos you can’t miss including in your video marketing strategy
The previous section of this blog was to tell you how you can find the types of videos that will work for growing your brand. But, you know what, things slip through the cracks. Even when you have followed all the above steps, you can still miss out on some important videos. So here is our list of the top 5 types of videos that you can’t miss including in your video marketing strategy
1) Product videos
Product videos talk about your products. These types of videos showcase the strength of your product and tell your target audience how it can solve their challenges. Product videos need not be very long. Of course, it depends on what you’re including in the video. For example, if it’s a product walkthrough video, it will be more lengthy as it goes to the depth of your product. This type of video works great when you’re launching a new product line. Or, an advanced plan for customers that require a customized product. Moreover, product videos are also very effective for audience who are at the awareness stage of the buying journey and are not very familiar with your product
2) Short-form videos
This is 2022, and you have to include short-form videos in your video marketing plan. People don’t have the patience to watch long videos, they want more information in the least amount of time. This is particularly true for social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram & TikTok. For example, the maximum length of videos on TikTok is 15 seconds. But, an average TikTok user spends 26 minutes every day. This is also good news for your business because 68% viewers will happily watch business videos if it’s less than 1 minute in length
3) Explainer videos
Explainer videos tend to be shorter. They’re great for highlighting single features in your product that every customer should know about. A bit of context on how it works, how customers can access it and how it solves the problem does the job. You can also include explainer videos in your blogs and help documents as a visual aid to whatever the user is reading. Explainer videos are effective for prospective customers who are in the consideration or evaluation stage of the buyer’s journey. These types of videos help them to explore more exciting features that they could’ve missed in the initial part of trying out the product
4) User-generated content
User-generated content are videos created by users after they have liked using a product. Think of it as a customer testimonial in a more raw form. These types of videos create great publicity for your brand because they come from your customers directly. This acts as a social proof and more potential customers find your brand trustable. Although this type of content is created by your customers, you can always encourage them to record their experiences of using the product and sharing them on social media. Your participation will be minimal in this case, so the content still remains genuine and doesn’t look like a propaganda or corporate promotion strategy
5) How-to videos
How-to videos focus on telling the viewer on how to perform an action or complete a task. It’s made with a specific objective and the intention is to serve the details in the shortest time possible. A how-to video often gets mixed up with explainer video, but there is a difference. An explainer video is about how a feature or a module of a product works. Whereas, a how-to video is more about how you can use the feature to perform an action. There are many ways of making a how-to video. You can use demonstration, animated videos or a screen recorder to record simple screen and webcam videos with the help of your computer
BONUS: Use a video content calendar
It can get a bit overwhelming while making a video marketing strategy. There are multiple types of videos with different platforms to focus on. In such a case, your ideas can clash or your video ideas might run dry very soon. In that case a video content calendar can be very useful.
A video content calendar helps you to keep track of video ideas for weeks, months and years. This keeps your team informed and you can plan your activities accordingly. In addition to that, you can keep adding ideas to the calendar, and then brainstorm with your team on how to get working on it.
To help you get started with a video content calendar, you can download it for free from this ultimate guide on video marketing strategy. This calendar comes pre-filled with video ideas for different platforms that we discussed above. So that you can get started with video marketing without spending time procrastinating.
Link to above image: https://www.vmaker.com/ebook/video-marketing-strategy#downLoadDiv
It’s time for action
So what are you waiting for? You know how you can find the right type of videos for you, what are the five most essential types of video, and how to get started with video marketing using a video content calendar.
The only thing that you have to focus from here is being consistent with creating videos. Video marketing is for the long-haul. Your results might come slow at the beginning, but if you put in the effort consistently, results will start showing up.
