People love videos. If you need convincing, consider that YouTube is the second-largest platform in the world. There are over 2.1 billion monthly active users worldwide, and a staggering 500 videos per hour were uploaded to YouTube between 2015 and 2020. On any given day, 122 million users visit YouTube, and a reported 62% of online users visit YouTube every single day.
The bottom line is that people love videos, and you should definitely take advantage of that in your marketing plan.
Choose Your Video Style
Live videos are live-streamed to showcase products, go behind the scenes, or have Q&As. They can have a feeling of excitement and urgency that keeps viewers engaged. You can also include customer testimonials where your customers share their experience with your business, your product, or your service.
Instructional videos are short, usually animated, and explain the product in a fun and easy-to-understand way. You can use that to introduce a product or service in simple terms and teach your viewers all about your business, along with demonstrating your product or service in action.
They can be used to show interesting features, benefits, or simply how the product works. For instance, if your business sells beauty products, then having models use and demonstrate how to apply them is one way to keep your customers returning over and over again.
Social media videos are meant to create brand awareness. They need to be short and sweet and, of course, clever and witty. Social media users on their smartphones will only stay with a video for a minute or less, so make every second count.
Tools to Help Your Video Look Professional
The most important tool besides a professional-grade video recording device is editing software. That will allow you to combine video footage with still images and audio, along with a lot of other features like fade-in and titles.
You can purchase stock video footage which is pre-recorded and can be added to your own video. There are large libraries at all kinds of prices to fit your marketing budget.
Animations and graphics add a lot to your video and can be purchased pre-made, or you can even create your own using software like Canva or Animaker, which are easy to use and require no experience to make surprisingly professional-looking design elements.
Optimize Your Videos for Searches
First, be aware that it’s not only humans that watch your video; they’re also watched by search engine crawlers. In order for your videos to come up in online searches, it’s important to understand how to optimize them. Make sure the keywords you choose are descriptive of the content of the video. Then include those keywords in the description of your video as well as any subtitles or closed captions.
Add a transcript of what’s being said in the video to help search engines understand it, and make sure your title is descriptive, too.
Place your video where it can get the most views, like Facebook and YouTube. You probably already have followers on those sites, so you have a built-in audience. And by asking your followers to share them on their own pages, you can get a huge number of views without even having to pay advertising costs.
Incorporate Video into Your Content Marketing
Including video in the content marketing you’re already doing adds interest and trust. Videos can take the place of blogs to increase viewer engagement and allow your audience to get to know you beyond your business, adding a personal and human element. Maybe you’ve got an interesting story about developing your own fragrance that lets your viewers know how unique and personal the product is.
And for increasing brand awareness, videos are much more likely to go viral on social media if they’re well-produced and engaging. Learn more here about how to use video to enhance your marketing content strategy.
With the popularity of social media and online engagement, videos are one of the best ways to add fun and interesting content to your marketing campaign. And with the explosion of people sharing videos, your business is able to reach an audience of millions with very little investment.
