Is your current brand marketing not getting a good enough ROI? Then it might be time to think about a video marketing strategy.
In this guide, we’ll help you to understand how and why:
Video marketing is an ‘integrated strategy’. It uses video to promote your product/service. You can also use it to build engagement with customers and potential consumers.
Video marketing can be aimed at existing or potential customers.
The great thing about having a video strategy is that you can:
That all sounds pretty good for a simple bit of video marketing, right?
Using video to market your brand is great because it can be used at any stage in your sales funnel. It also allows you to personalise and ‘flesh out’ your brand to potential leads.
Ok then, so what’s ‘brand awareness’?
Let’s start by saying that awareness is a little different to brand recognition.
Recognition can be when people identify your brand by colours or logo alone. But to get to that stage, people first have to know that your brand even exists! Brand awareness goes beyond simple call-and-repeat. It deals with the emotions and values that people associate with your brand. This can be difficult to get from a logo alone. Unless, of course, you’ve already put time and resources into video marketing.
For videos to garner the best response and results from your audience, businesses need to understand the process of growing brand awareness. Contrary to popular belief, it is measurable (well, sort of). ‘Vanity metrics’ like social likes and shares can help you gauge brand awareness.
Just remember that these metrics don’t always translate to sales!
This is where a potential consumer moves through three stages. They go from thinking about to buying a product/service.
And video marketing can help you streamline this process and stand out from your competitors.
The buyer’s journey progresses from:
It’s important to note that, because these are real-life people, a lot of this can be subjective.
So how do you get people to choose you? Well, a strong video marketing strategy is the answer.
Try to get into the mind of your consumers.
You can use video marketing at all three stages of the journey.
In the awareness stage, you might produce an explainer video. Then you can ‘name the problem’ the consumer is dealing with. Then you could offer further value with educational videos and product demonstrations. This would fit into the consideration stage. Just remember not to be too sales-y! And finally, the decision stage. How do you get consumers to make the final decision to choose you when they don’t yet fully trust you? Well, you could curate customer testimonials. You could even create FAQ videos to assuage doubts.
The common denominator with these solutions is utilising video marketing.
But before we get onto explaining just why a video strategy is key, let’s explain why awareness is important. After all, if you already have customers, why divert your brand marketing budget to video.
Just now we asked you - ‘Do people know that your brand even exists?’ Newly-formed companies dedicate heaps of money into just making sure people know they’re out there. And how do they let people know? Well, through brand marketing. More specifically, video marketing. A piece of video content is an eye-catching, multi-channel asset. It’s also more engaging than text-based content like blog posts or written testimonials.
So do you want people to progress from seeing your brand and saying, ‘Oh hey, I know them’? You want them to have an awareness of your products and services. Awareness of what you stand for and what you make them feel. To do that you need to cultivate a clear and consistent digital relationship with your customers. You also need to target potential customers.
So you need to be active on social media channels and consistent with posting content. But what type of content? Well, studies have shown that 54 % of users want to see video content. So how can you use this to build awareness, trust, and social proof?
Let’s have a look.
Having a clear video marketing strategy is the future, whether you’re a B2B or B2C brand. In fact, more than 70% of B2B buyers say they’d spend more time on interactive content compared to reading text. Video marketing allows you to tell your company’s story in an engaging and concise way. Using video is also a scalable and shareable marketing strategy. You can increase brand awareness across all touchpoints - like social media channels. Video marketing can also give you actionable brand marketing data that you can analyse. On top of that, it helps you to:
The benefits of video marketing are twofold. It helps you to get people’s attention and to retain it. Video is a medium that gets information across quickly and in a digestible format. In fact, a recent study by Cisco shows that a whopping 82% of online consumer traffic is video-based!
Video content also boosts information retention. Even the addition of visuals helps to boost retention by around 55%, compared to audio alone.
Build trust with your audience
You can build trust and social proof with:
Video marketing can serve as the bridge between consumers and your product/service. How do you match up to what you say your company does?
With videos, you can control the content and ‘voice’ of all your communications. You can deliver brand- or user-generated content that is transparent and consistent.
And in doing so, you can:
With a content marketing strategy that includes video, you could even see increased conversions. For example, one study showed that email subject lines that had the word ‘video’ got 19% better open rates. They also saw a 65% boost in click-throughs! You can even adapt your video marketing strategy to fit any situation. You could use it to target stakeholders or even an entire online community. You can also communicate at scale. Consider using subtitles or audio descriptions to include users with audiovisual impairments. And as the cherry on the cake, you can increase conversions and sales! This study found that consumers were 64-85% more likely to buy a product after watching a video.
So you can drive quality leads and motivate consumers to consume!
If you want to improve your metrics, then you shouldn’t forget about our old pal SEO.
Marketing your brand through video has extra benefits on top of engagement alone. You can:
So as you can see, the benefits of video marketing are stacked in your favour. But what does a video marketing end product look like in the real world?
The great thing about brand marketing with video is that there are so many options. So you can choose the style that best fits your purpose. Then you can focus on:
In the next section, we’ll explain how to define your goals and pick the type of video you need. For now, let’s have a look at the options.
In an animated explainer video, a business can explain your company’s product/service and your approach to a consumer problem. As such, you can target consumers at the consideration stage of the buyer journey. You could even create demos or FAQ videos. These help to guide viewers to more information about your product.
These are short ads that play before a full-length video with a call-to-action to click and learn more.
Consumers as well as businesses want to hear from people they can relate to. Consider featuring testimonials from customers who’ve solved popular problems with your product/service. Then you can increase your social proof.
This is a style of video marketing that works especially well for companies like GoPro. By blending branded video with user-generated content they’ve created a community among consumers. And you can mimic that!
Live streaming an event can give your brand a broader reach. Live streams also create a sense of urgency and FOMO (fear of missing out). Do you have a global customer base or people can’t make it to the event? Then live streams can help you maximise on brand awareness. Plus, streams can be branded with things like logos and feature CTAs to capitalise on this awareness. You could even use this video strategy for speaking engagements and panel discussions. These all help to establish you as a thought leader in your industry.
Corporate and brand story videos are a great way to capture your company’s essence.
People like to see the faces behind the brand that they’re aligning with. And don’t think that your company is too ‘boring’ to warrant this.
After all, look at how Dollar Shave Club used video marketing to:
If shaving isn’t too boring for brand marketing, then neither is your product or service.
At each stage of your video marketing strategy you’ll need to think what works best for your brand. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. But video marketing can and does work for all businesses.
For your video marketing strategy to see results, you need to set clear goals. You’ll also want to do this for every piece of video content that you produce. Think about setting ‘big’ (but not vague) goals versus specific ones. You’ll also need to define what success looks like for your brand. With specific goals, of course, this is easier to measure. However, always remember that vanity metrics (e.g. social shares) still have a role in promoting brand awareness.
For the best results, you need to define your video purpose and target audience by segmenting your target market you’re more likely to see a higher conversion rate. This also allows you to personalise video content to more specific market segments. Try to appeal to new customers whilst engaging your existing ones. Some good questions to ask would be:
For that last question, we generally use the sweet spot rule of 90-120 seconds. But for more information on optimal video length by platform, check out this guide.
Choosing your video style will depend a lot on the goals of your video marketing strategy. For example, if you want to break down complex IT software to potential consumers, then a whiteboard animation explainer would do the trick. If you want to show the faces that make up your company, you might opt for a corporate video. Either way, remember to try and capture the viewer’s attention quickly. Most video marketers say that you need to grab their attention within the first five seconds!
Think about the video style that best:
Combine this with your audience research in Step 2. Then you can qualify and target genuine leads (people who are more likely to buy your product).
A good video marketing strategy relies on solid research.
This is the stage for tinkering. Make sure to optimise your video content for mobile. Fine-tune things like music, voice actors, and brand tone of voice. Plan, test, and analyse your video content across different channels. Make sure you have an effective strategy and engaging content.
Make sure to include contact details or a call to action at the end of your videos. You want viewers to go on to take a desired action. Don’t just offer to solve their problems then leave. Retain customers with FAQ and process videos once they’ve bought your product or service. Allow your audience to learn and elevate your status as an industry expert, which will make them feel involved.
Video marketing has seen a seismic increase in importance in recent years. When implemented effectively, it can:
If you don’t have the time or resources, then why not outsource to an award-winning production company?
We can help you build measurable brand awareness with our professional video and animation services. So together we can create the video that works best for your brand.
To chat about video marketing for your brand, get in touch with one of the team today!
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