Are you thinking of managing a video marketing campaign this year? We think now is the right time and you need a video strategy to match. Follow our eight tips to help you plan for success.
1. Integrated campaign
It’s important to stress that whenever you think video it’s not just about the production, but also about the marketing. You’ve nothing without engaging content, but if no-one sees it you’ve lost value (and you don’t want them to miss out on your powerful creative).
2. Planning
At the start of your campaign, you need to identify how video marketing fits into your wider marketing strategy. The voice of your video should be match the tone of your other brand channels.
Questions to ask include:
- Who’s the video aimed at?
- What messages do you want to convey?
- What brand values are being embodied?
- What about your competition?
- What do you want to achieve from this video campaign?
- Are you teaching about a new product?
- Is it about brand development or repositioning?
- Do you want to increase traffic or subscribers?
The video may have more than one aim, but make sure that you are clear about your objectives at the start, and that they are measurable. This will ensure you create the most effective video possible, and get a higher ROI.
3. Creative content
Now you know your target audience and key message, you need to create your video content. Although ultimately you want to sell your product or service, your video isn’t about the hard sell.
It’s time to tell a brand story, which is compelling enough for your audience to watch, and share or act upon. Questions to ask include:
- Does your video talk to your audience?
- Do you want one video or a series?
- Would your audience or trade press engage with a ‘making-of’ or teaser trailer video?
4. Video Production
In terms of the actual video production, ensure that you know exactly how you’re working with the production company so that you can minimise costs and keep to time.
- Do you know everything that’s needed for the video production?
- Does your ultra-busy CEO have to make an appearance?
- Do you need to gather audience testimonials?
5. Where to host the video?
A campaign landing page can work well and you can encourage users to navigate to other areas of your website to complete desired call to actions. Do you want to go further than this and develop a campaign microsite?
YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine with over 4 billion views per day, so upload your video there too. Encourage sharing, add call-to-action overlays as necessary and optimise for search terms.
6. E-marketing
In a recent industry report on video marketing, 60% of marketers agreed that adding video to their email campaigns increased conversions (ReelSEO). It is worth taking advantage of the opportunities e-marketing brings, and therefore essential to ensure that your target list and email is ready to go.
Why not use the increased traffic to your site as a chance to capture more data about your audience? Ask video viewers to sign up to your newsletter or to receive more information about the product or service in the video. You could also offer them exclusive video content.
7. Video seeding
Video seeding is at its most effective when it’s planned in advance. Identify and build relationships with influential bloggers and publications which you want to target.
A combination of traditional and digital PR is the way we do it at Hurricane. We can help seed videos through owned and bought media.
8. Analyse and learn
One of the key benefits of digital marketing is that marketers can start analysing stats in real-time and crunch data as soon as the campaign starts. You’ve set clear targets for your video marketing campaign, and the results can be used to benchmark subsequent campaigns.
We’re sure your video has been a success and your boss is smiling, but there’s always an opportunity to learn from a campaign and room for improvement.
Are you ready to get your video marketing campaign started?
We hope our tips will help you get your video marketing off to a good start this year. Let us know if you have any questions. As you may have been able to tell, we love talking video!