Video Marketing: Handy Guide to One of the Growing Digital Marketing Trends in 2024

Businesses in 2024 understand that they need a video marketing strategy. Incorporating video within your marketing roadmap is not a new concept. However, the importance of digital marketing demonstrates that video is dominating almost every platform and channel for brands. Therefore, video needs to be a priority within your overall marketing plan instead of just a piece of the puzzle.

You risk falling behind an increasingly popular trend if you haven’t begun incorporating video marketing within your marketing strategy. Global consumers have reported that four of the six channels they consume are videos.

Video marketing can be overwhelming for businesses, from having to create a budget for equipment and editing to deciding what content will captivate your audience best. You can cut costs by utilizing a smartphone since many now produce high-quality and even 4k capabilities.

While there are many parts to developing a solid video marketing strategy for your business, the guide below will help break down all of those parts into a cohesive and concise way to plan and implement your video.

What does video marketing do?

In terms of how video marketing is and should be implemented for business, it helps to understand exactly what it is and how it can help you achieve your goals. In addition, developing video as a method of advertising your product or service is a way to connect with your audience on a deeper level. Customers feel more immersed and informed when they can see more clearly how a product or service can work for them.

The more personalized and relatable you can make your video, the better chance you can appeal directly to your ideal viewers. Personalized video is shaping the future growth for marketing and sales teams and support and customer service.

Video marketing does more for your business than provide entertainment for potential consumers. It has the capability of increasing sales, conversion rates and building a loyal customer base. Forbes also noted that 90% of customers report that videos are beneficial when making their buying decisions.

When you utilize analytics properly after launching your video content, you can assist your sales teams with locating potential leads. Even on a budget, launching a YouTube channel with a content strategy can provide exponential growth for your business over the next year.

Types of marketing videos

In establishing a solid video marketing strategy, your team must understand and determine the type of video you want to create. Here are some of the most popular marketing videos that assist businesses.

• Brand Videos — Brand videos are usually created as part of a large-scale advertising campaign to showcase your business mission as well as products and services.
• How-To Or Demo Videos — A how-to video or demonstration video helps show your viewers exactly how to use your product or service. Some examples include showing specific features or taking viewers on a tour of the services.
• Interview Videos — Interviews with experts or leaders within your business can be an excellent option for building trust with your audience, as well as providing them with a face to your brand.
• Explainer Videos — Explainer videos take your viewers on a journey, where you can assist your audience in discovering why it is that they need your product or service. These types of videos tell a story and focus on a specific person who fits your core demographic who is struggling with a problem, and they can fix or overcome that issue with your product or service.
• Testimonial Videos — You can engage your customers by using a specific one who can testify to its validity. Creating a case study video, you can feature satisfied, happy, and loyal consumers who advocate for your products and services.
• Animated Videos — Animated videos help break down more complex concepts. They can provide a solid visual that helps better explain your services or products.

There are multiple types of marketing videos for your team to choose from, and you may want to use more than one. It can be helpful to implement strategies involving more than one type of video and market them to test audiences and analyze the results before prioritizing the specific formats you will move forward within your strategy.

In addition to these popular marketing videos, utilizing a video to text tool can greatly enhance engagement by making your content more accessible and SEO-friendly. This capability allows for instant transcription of video material, enabling broader reach and engagement through easily readable text alongside your video content.

Planning and scripting your videos

Before you begin planning the strategy for your video marketing, you should establish the purpose and overall objective you plan to accomplish with each video. Every decision that is made during the creation needs to correlate with your mission and goals.

Here are some important questions that you should address when deciding on how to align your video content to reach your core audience:

• Who is the ideal audience? - It is crucial to understand the ins and outs of your ideal customers and how to attract them.
• Where will the videos go? Again, knowing your audience can lead you to the proper channels (landing pages, websites, blogs) and social networks (Facebook page, Instagram videos, YouTube) for distribution.
• What is the timeline for delivery? Your business should establish a timeline, which will be dependent on other factors such as budget and the creative scope of the videos.
• How to measure success? Performance tracking is another essential aspect of knowing how to gauge your video marketing strategy. For example, when utilizing YouTube to launch your videos, you should also invest in a shortener for YouTube video links to help you track and monitor your progress and monetize. Then, choose your key performance indicators based on your video objectives.

Your videos also need to have scripts. There will be more time spent editing and re-filming if you do not have a roadmap with at least a beginning, middle, and end to create a cohesive video for marketing. Start with an outline to organize and put everything in order, you will have a much easier time creating the videos.

When developing the script, you also need to agree on other variables such as location, equipment, props, costumes, and colors. However, these more minor details should still tie into your overall goal and speak to your company mission and values.

Remember that your videos will not be more than a few minutes long, with a maximum of maybe ten minutes. Viewers don’t need lengthy descriptions, so you want to keep things clear and concise.

The video equipment and composition

If you are starting your video marketing on a budget, you still need to incorporate the basic needs that your video has to have. These things include:

• A Camera - be it a smartphone or a digital camcorder that shoots in 4k.
• A Tripod - it is necessary to get the most stable, even shots, and a tripod is the best way to accomplish this feature.
• A Microphone - you may need more than one depending on how many people are in the video, but even when using a smartphone, you should still get an external microphone that will help create a high-quality sound.
• Lighting - Making sure you have adequate lighting for your video is another necessity. If you want all of your bases covered you should look into creating a traditional three-point lighting kit with a key light, a fill light, and a backlight.

Once you have established your equipment and have your video format and script set, you are ready to shoot. Have your marketing team research and cover all of the composition basics for shooting your videos, paying attention to the variations in angles such as establishing shots and close-ups. Record your shots broken up into sections based on your script for an easier time editing and splicing videos together.

Video editing, finalizing, and distribution

When all of the shooting is done, it is time to edit and create the continuity to tell your story. There are some options you can utilize for editing depending on your skill level and investment budget. If you are a beginner and are keeping things simple with video on a smartphone, you can utilize simple editing software such as Apple’s iMovie. More advanced editing where you don’t mind spending a little money can utilize programs like Adobe Premiere Pro.

If you plan to add music to your video, understand that you may need to license the music you wish to use to avoid any infringement lawsuits. Even royalty-free music that you may be able to locate is not free for use and still will require a flat fee for use in your project.

Once everything is complete and ready to launch your video, exporting it and distributing it are the next steps. Then, depending on what you have discovered about your ideal customers, you can start distributing the video.

Some of the best platforms and channels for video distribution to reach a broad audience include:

• Business YouTube channel
• Facebook Business Page
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Website or Landing Page

The social media platforms may also require their own separate strategy - your team may have to do more extensive research on algorithms and best times for posting to reach your audience.

Performance analysis and redefinition

Once you have launched your videos and began to track your business goals, you can expertly go back through and analyze what is working and what is not. Redefine your goals and objectives, and make adjustments to any video content, scripts, distribution, and ensure it is still aligning with your mission.

Consistency is vital to growth, and you should always question techniques and tactics while keeping your audience at the central focus. Some of the more popular metrics you can use to track within your video content and engagement include:

• Video Play Rate - determine how relevant your videos are to your audience.
• View Count/Reach - how many people are viewing your video.
• Shares/Engagement - how many shares your video is getting and how many comments you are receiving to show how engaging it is with people.
• Click-Through Rate - you can see how many people are clicking your link based on how many views to gain insight into how effective your video is on your target audience.
• Conversions - how many people are going through with your intended goal, whether signing up for something or purchasing your product or service.

Measuring the performance on your distribution networks will provide your business with valuable information to determine whether the content offered is properly converting customers as you intended.

Finding ways to create a video uniquely and excitingly will help to interest and engage consumers. Don’t let your business miss out on the value that video marketing can provide your brand and help grow it to new heights.