Complete Video Marketing Guide: Types, Strategies, Tips & Tools

Attaining a successful digital marketing strategy can be daunting, but there's no shame in keeping things simple. A few basic principles to a solid digital marketing strategy can help you build your brand online, create buzz, reach prospective clients, and generate strong leads. Showcasing a diverse range of content is one of these basic principles. 

Virtual content for your business can come in all sorts of formats: your web pages, blogs, social media platforms, e-newsletters, and so on. But it's important to consider whether your content has the range to remain fresh and interesting or if it's falling flat.  

Consider Canadian businesses within any industry. Let's say there's a new product on the market that's sure to be a success, offered by two separate companies: one based out of Toronto and one operating in Kitchener. These two companies might be offering comparable levels of quality with nearly identical marketing strategies. Still, suppose the Kitchener-based business has boosted their virtual channels with instructional videos about the product, videos showcasing its use, and interviews with satisfied clients. In that case, chances are the Kitchener company will come out ahead.  

Diversifying your digital marketing content through video marketing is a surefire way to give you a leg up on the competition and give you the boost that you need to speed forward toward success. We've compiled a complete guide of video marketing tips to help you navigate the ins and outs so that you and your company can leave the competition in the dust.  

What Does Video Marketing Entail? 

What does it mean to utilize video marketing, exactly? In its simplest form, it's exactly how it sounds: using video formats to market your product or service. Although it sounds simple, video marketing holds substantial potential for your business; if a picture is worth a thousand words, just think of how powerful videos can be! 

Video marketing encompasses social media videos, instructional how-to videos, testimonials videos, video advertisements, and so on. These can exist on your company's webpage, social channels, in advertising channels – the possibilities are vast, meaning that you can manipulate your video marketing strategy in the way that best suits your particular business. Depending on your industry and what your company offers, knowing when to choose one route over another is a valuable skill in helping your business gain traction and avoid spinning your wheels with nothing to show for it! 

Why Engage in Video Marketing? 

Why bother with video marketing? Well, because it works. 

Video content is immediately engaging to consumers, compared to text content which requires more time and effort before they're hooked. Videos allow you to thoughtfully design the audio and visual components that your prospective consumers will absorb, which helps you engage your audience while showcasing your particular brand and creatively conveying your brand values. 

Video content is becoming increasingly more prevalent on social media platforms as users continue to prefer video content. Facebook videos have been shown to receive 12 times more shares than both text and images combined – meaning that you can increase your brand awareness and showcase your product at an extremely accelerated rate.  

Connecting with the consumer and building a trustworthy brand image is crucial for the success of a business, and videos are the quickest way to achieve this with your target audience. Videos allow you to showcase your brand's character while interacting with your audience in a comfortable, familiar manner. Not only that but including video content can do wonders for your SEO! It helps you to build backlinks to your site, boosting likes and shares, and in turn, driving traffic toward your website. Simply put, video content is a surefire way to kick your digital marketing strategy into the next gear. 

How to Use Video Marketing to Propel Your Business Forward 

1. Harness the Power of YouTube 

As far as video platforms go, YouTube is holding first place with a sizeable lead. If you're serious about breaking into video marketing, the first thing you should do is create a Brand Account on YouTube – here's a simple guide to help you navigate the steps. 

YouTube holds the impressive spot as the world's second-most visited website, after Google itself. That makes for an astounding audience for your company's content, in turn directing a substantial number of new prospective clients toward your website and products. YouTube is an especially suitable platform for any instructional or how-to videos, as a Google Consumer Survey reports that 70% of millennials who watch YouTube do so to learn something new.  

2. Incorporate Video Content on Your Website 

Including videos in your website helps you connect with your audience and engage consumers, resulting in more leads. It also has the added benefit of helping your SEO. When a landing page includes a video, it ranks higher, making it more likely to appear on the first page of search results for inquiring consumers. 

Engage your customers via video to let them know who you are and why they should choose your business. You can include an introductory video about your company and its story on your "About Us" page or showcase your products and their uses. Another option is to utilize video content as a customer service tool by showing common customer problems and how to fix them. Any videos you use within your website can be repurposed on social channels, giving you more mileage for your efforts! 

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3. Consider PPC Video Marketing 

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can be a strong tool to have under your belt, helping you to reach a broader audience in an effective and cost-efficient manner. As the cost of keywords increases, video advertisements are a clever way to increase your return on investment (ROI) for PPC marketing strategies. Not to mention, they can have a substantial impact on consumers. 

PPC video marketing allows you to make a strong impact on your target audiences in minimal time, accelerating your success and helping you to break ahead of the competition. The attention span of consumers is decreasing, so it's crucial to make an impact quickly – videos are a great tool to help you do this. Videos allow you to convey much more information than a block of text would in the same time frame, giving your PPC ad campaign an extra boost to help drive traffic toward your website. 

Optimize Your Videos 

Creating and uploading videos is great, but to make the most impact and get the most mileage from your efforts, you should optimize your videos according to the platforms you choose and your target audiences' tendencies. 

Each of the different platforms offers something unique to their users, meaning that your video marketing strategy should include tweaks to optimize your content for each particular platform. For instance, here are the recommended video lengths for each social platform: 

• YouTube: 2 minutes 
• Facebook: 1 minute  
• Twitter: 45 seconds 
• Instagram: 30 seconds 

These are general recommendations, and the true optimal choice for your business will depend upon your video's content and the goal you hope to achieve.  

Optimizing your video titles and tags is another step that will help you avoid unnecessary detours on the road to success. Conduct some video keyword research, and be thoughtful when writing your video title, description, and adding video (alt) tags. This will help your videos rank higher in search results to reach a larger audience and optimize your video marketing strategy to gain the most benefit for your company. 

Another important consideration you should be making to optimize your video performance is your platform's recommended upload encoding settings. This includes things like frame rate, bitrate, resolution and aspect ratio, and so on. You could be creating the most amazing videos on the market, but if you can't get those videos in front of your consumers, you're spinning your wheels without getting anywhere! Adhering to your platform's recommendations will help you ensure that the content you're creating is being seen and producing results. 

Invest in Video Marketing Expertise 

The potential that video marketing holds could be just what your business needs to kick things up a notch and speed past your competitors. Suppose this guide has got the wheels turning, but you're looking to add a bit more horsepower to your video marketing strategy. In that case, you can always invest in professional help from a reputable digital marketing agency. 

WEB ROI is an expert digital marketing agency with abundant knowledge and expertise in video marketing strategy. Contact the team at WEB ROI today to discuss how your business can utilize video content to propel your company forward, and together we can embark upon the road to success! 

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