Learn about the importance of a video marketing strategy in your overarching content marketing plan.
Video marketing services enable organizations to more easily create videos and fold them into their marketing strategy. This is increasingly important for modern organizations to stay competitive in the digital-first economy.
From an increase in engagement, to a decrease in bounce rate, and higher conversions overall, video marketing is a powerful tactic you can use as a core pillar in your current strategy.
Videos will increase user engagement on your website, decrease bounce rate, and according to Explain Ninja and Unbounce, including a video on landing pages can boost conversions by 80%.
While your overarching marketing strategy should feature a spectrum of content types and formats, weaving videos into blogs, social media posts, and ad campaigns can enhance their performance and create immense value for your organization.
Marketing in today’s digital-first world requires a unique approach to content and storytelling. Watch Impact’s Attract, Engage, Stand Out – Building Effective Marketing Campaigns Webinar for expert advice on bringing your brand's unique voice to life.
Creating a Video Marketing Strategy
Smartphones are so ubiquitous these days, with built-in cameras and editing software, that anyone is capable of creating a video and uploading it for public consumption. But the difference between the videos you likely see created by friends on social media and a professional video that has a real effect for your business is the presence of a goal-oriented video marketing strategy.
Like any other medium, creating a marketing strategy starts with understanding every element of the organization, what it is they're looking to do, and using their unique position in the market to share their point of view in a way that resonates with audiences. Impact's own video below explains how our managed marketing team does that for clients.
The Five Stages Involved in Building a Video Marketing Plan
With video marketing, just like other forms of content marketing, the first step is all about identifying your goals. Then you can move on to the next of the five stages involved in creating a comprehensive and powerful video marketing plan that engages and converts consumers. Those stages include:
- Goal Identification
- Target Audience Analysis
- Creative Requirement Audits
- Timeline Scheduling
- Budgeting
Let’s break these stages down even further to get an idea of what’s involved in each of them so you can start actively creating and embracing a video marketing strategy for your brand.
1. Goal Identification
This is the first stage in the process because it informs the entirety of the strategy that follows. By creating specific goals for your video content strategy, you will also naturally uncover the metrics that you want to measure to gauge success.
Videos can be informational, entertaining, or somewhere totally in between. Understanding what you want your video content strategy to accomplish will guide the ultimate message, tone, and visuals, and will allow you to pick out which key performance indicators (KPIs) to track to measure success.
For instance, if your goal is to increase average engagement time on landing pages as well as organic traffic, you can measure those metrics on those pages before and after you add videos to them. If they don't increase, then you can edit the video and adjust until you see the improvements you're looking for.
The goal is just the beginning, though. Once the ball is rolling, the real work begins. The nice thing, though, is that having goals in place will help you navigate the other stages involved in creating an engaging video marketing plan, like identifying your target audience.
2. Target Audience Analysis
The internet is an absolutely massive place with an almost infinite amount of content. That being said, not a single person on earth could ever digest the sheer volume of information and content out there. This is why narrowing down your target audience is so crucial, especially when it comes to creating high-quality video content.
An all-natural pet food brand, for example, might specifically target young, single, working professionals with a certain amount of expendable income, as well as animal lovers, and environmental activists.
While these three consumer-groups fundamentally differ from each other, they’re all potential diet-conscious pet owners, ultimately making them the perfect audience for a high-end pet food brand leaning into a video marketing strategy.
3. Creative Requirement Audits
You’ve done the research, you’ve narrowed down your target audience, and now you’re ready to start actively making some videos to push to your consumers.
This is certainly an exciting stage to reach when just starting with your video strategy, but you’re far from seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. At this point, you’re going to need to conduct a creative requirements audit that informs equipment and talent needs.
This audit will slightly depend on the goals established earlier. If you’re only looking to lean into video content for social media, you might be able to get away with filming on something as rudimentary as an iPhone.
If you’re looking to create longer-form videos, perform extensive editing, or publish in high-resolutions, you may need more sophisticated and capable equipment. On top of that, you need trained professionals to operate this equipment and the creative talent to script, direct, film, and edit the videos you plan on using.
4. Timeline Scheduling
After going through the first three stages, you’re going to have a somewhat solid idea of what your initial video marketing strategy will look like. You’ll know your goals, your target audience, and all about the equipment and creative talent necessary.
So, what’s left, then? Well – enterprise level projects can quickly derail if there isn’t an established timeline of benchmarks, due dates, and expected milestones. Once you’ve been able to determine your scope, you should have a good idea on how long execution will realistically take.
One quick note to make is that it’s always good practice to have timelines scheduled out, but you also want to be somewhat flexible with due dates, especially on new initiatives.
5. Budgeting
Now that you’ve got the whole picture painted for your video marketing strategy, it’s time to get into the raw numbers.
This can sometimes be the most stressful part of building out any new strategy for your brand. However, the digital video marketing industry is valued at a staggering $135 billion. On top of that, organic traffic from search engine results pages increases significantly when a video strategy is embraced.
"Video gives a 157% organic traffic increase from search engine results pages.”
Benefits of Video Marketing
There are several benefits that stem from incorporating a comprehensive video marketing strategy into your overall content marketing plan.
First and foremost, by prioritizing the inclusion of videos on landing pages, social media, and ad campaigns, you can significantly boost consumer engagement times, decrease your average bounce rate, and arguably most importantly, improve your conversion rates.
This is only reinforced by the fact that the average user consumes about 16 hours of online video content per week, and approximately 33% of all online activity is spent watching videos.
Additionally, your target audience will have people who learn in all kinds of ways. While some people will prefer blogs or demonstrations, for visual learners, video is the ideal way of consuming information and being educated about your brand and product.
Final Thoughts on Video Marketing Solutions
Video is certainly an extremely important part of a modern marketing strategy. It enhances existing content, opens the door for an expanded brand presence on new platforms, and creates a whole new dynamic for your consumers to engage with and explore.
If you’re not already leaning into a video marketing strategy, consider partnering with Impact for expert marketing advice and an actionable video plan.
In Impact’s Attract, Engage, Stand Out – Building Effective Marketing Campaigns Webinar, our in-house experts walk you through everything you need to build a unique and memorable marketing campaign.