Research shows that people spend a third of their time-consuming video content, so it’s safe to say that video should be an essential component of a good marketing strategy. Using video in your marketing mix can potentially reach a large number of people in a short amount of time. But keep in mind there is more to video marketing than just posting a video on YouTube. It’s about creating helpful video marketing tools that will not only catch people’s attention but keep it.

Set Your Marketing Goals

Video is an effective way to achieve many marketing goals, but the key is to get focused. Before you start, you should be clear about your marketing goals. Are you trying to build awareness for your brand? Increase engagement with your viewers to get more feedback on your products? Once you are honed in on a specific purpose, you can begin to build a robust video content production schedule instead of creating videos just for the sake of having videos.

Identify Your Target Audience

Your products or services are probably not for everyone. If you’re not keenly aware of this, you’ll end up trying to create videos for everyone, which will end up being watched by no one. Make it easy on yourself; only create videos for your specific customer. It’s also a good idea to know where your audience hangs out on the internet. Is it Instagram, TikTok, or just YouTube? It makes a huge difference, as their heads will be in different places depending on where they are when they come in contact with your video content. Keep in mind there are various reasons people go to Snapchat vs. Facebook, and your videos should respect the context of the platform.

Create a Video Budget

In relation to sales revenue, a marketing budget on average can run as low as 2% or as high as 12%. If your budget is tight, it can be stressful to decide how much of that is appropriate for video creation, but it doesn’t have to be. It is possible to maintain a realistic budget while also getting the video (or videos) you need. My recommendation if you are getting into video for the first time is to work backward. Take a look at the products or services you make the most profit on and start there. Suppose you can increase the sales of those bread and butter items via a successful video marketing campaign. In that case, it’s possible to scale your video production to cover the products or services that are not yet big sellers. 

Optimize Your Videos 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is when a website is optimized for visibility on search engines like Google. It’s the same principle with YouTube. The information you list on your videos’ description is indexed and sorted via an algorithm that determines what order your videos appear in a user's search. Properly optimizing your video’s description using the tools available in YouTube Studio can help your video content become more accessible for visitors to find.

Measure Performance and Adjust

This is a step that is easy for creators to overlook when first getting started with video. It’s exciting to finally upload your new video project, but the truth is once you post a video, you’re not done. In fact, you’re just getting started. It’s crucial to look at your videos’ performance to determine what’s working and what isn’t. Of course, the view count is important, but there are other metrics to keep in mind when measuring your videos’ success. Your video’s click-through rate (CTR) will tell you if your title or thumbnail is enticing enough to get viewers to engage with your video. Audience retention shows you if people are watching to the end, skipping through, or exactly when they are losing interest in your content.

Navigating the complexities of creating a video can be a challenge, but working with an experienced video creator and strategist can help you get the most out of your video production investment. If you have questions about getting started with video or are already producing videos and are not satisfied with the results, contact us and schedule a free no-obligation consultation about your video goals.