Every marketing professional knows that all forms of marketing activities need a strategy, no matter if it is offline or online. With the rise of video marketing in the digital marketing industry, you can expect that every marketer is now in search of the most effective strategy. In fact, your competitor might be watching what other successful video marketers are doing online as we speak.
Perhaps you’ve just been given the go signal to include video into the marketing plan. You’ve got the budget, the resources and maybe even a rough idea of how you want the video to turn out. Ideally, everything will go as planned and your campaign will be a success. But where should you start?
You’ve heard a lot of good things about video marketing, but you also know that not all videos are meant to bring in success for their company. Some videos just do not make the cut with the audience.
Because of this, you are fully aware that creating a video marketing strategy is step one. But how do you know what factors to focus on in your marketing plan?
With so many new features and updates popping up everywhere, it’s a challenge to keep up with every single detail. Not to mention, the production process itself sounds too overwhelming. The good news is that you don’t actually need a complete and detailed plan. All you need to do is to cover the basics first.
Below is an easy 4-step guide that can help you achieve your video marketing goals.
4 Steps on How to Create Your Video Marketing Strategy
Step One: Do Your Research
If you want to build a strong marketing strategy, you must first do your research properly. Even though it can be a bit time-consuming, it is important that you do not rush through this step.
The information you’ve gathered will act as a guideline throughout the production process. There may be times when you feel like you’ve lost sight of your goals and this is where your research will come in handy.
Apart from acting as a guideline, your research also gives you a clearer view of your video marketing goals. Similar to any other kind of marketing strategy, you have to be familiar with the playing field first; get to know your competition and the audience. Below are some questions you might want to ask about your project during the research phase.
1. Who Are Your Viewers?
Knowing who your viewers are is your secret weapon to a successful video marketing strategy. After all, you are creating content for them and therefore, you should know at least some basic information about them.
Is majority of your viewers male or female? What age group do they belong to? Basic questions such as these can shed light on what kind of videos your audience might be interested in. If you are still gathering some ideas for the video, having your viewers’ background information can help you gain more insight and hopefully, more ideas.
2. What Are Their Likes and Dislikes?
Along with knowing your viewers’ basic information, it would also be helpful to research what their interests and their passions are. Having this type of information can help you think of a way to connect with your viewers.
Think of it as if you are trying to strike up a conversation with a total stranger. Your first move might be to ask them some questions based on your observations. The next step is to link their answers to something you might have in common. Knowing your viewers’ likes and dislikes helps you curate ideas to build a connection with them.
3. What Are Their Pain Points?
The next thing you might want to research for are their pain points. What are their current problems? What issues are they facing today that they are trying to resolve? Let them know that your business exists to help them solve these problems.
Getting to know their pain points expresses your genuine interest in their welfare. It just shows that you care. Regardless if you are trying to create a sales video or a business video, your involvement with your audience is vital.
After talking about all these problems, your video must also provide some sort of solution. This adds meaning and purpose to your video. Although gimmicky videos and catchy tunes or advertising jingles might grab your audience’s attention, your service is still what matters most at the end of the day.
4. What Kinds of Videos Are Effective?
Now that you’ve gathered information about your audience, it is time to look at what other companies are doing. Find out what works for them and what doesn’t. A quick analysis of their video should already be enough information for you to work with.
You may also want to look at the most popular types of videos among your viewers. Not only does it help you discover more about what they like, you also get an insight into which types of videos influence your audience. With this kind of info, you might be able to create a video which has been proven to be successful among your viewers.
5. What Is Your Content All About?
After making a research about your audience and your competitors, it is time to look inwards and find out what your content is all about. See how it aligns with all the other information you’ve gathered. Create some changes when you notice some things that don’t work.
During this step, you may also want to ask for the advice of someone outside of your team. Sometimes an outside perspective is all you need to grasp a bigger picture of the project.
6. How Is It Relevant to Your Audience?
The great thing about videos is its ability to incite emotion among your viewers. But simply allowing them to express their feelings isn’t enough. Try to create content that motivates them to take action. Ideally, this would align with the goals of your marketing plan.
In order to do this, you must create content that is important for them. Perhaps you are trying to solve their problems through your company’s service. Provide them with information as to how they can reach out to you.
Step Two: Create A Video Outline
After an intensive research, it is now time to create an outline of the actual video. Video production is never easy but with a plan, the process can become a lot smoother. Whether you are working with your own video production team or if you are imploring the help of a video production company, an outline will provide direction not just for you but for everyone involved as well.
1. Conveying Your Message
The first part of your video outline should explicitly talk about your project’s message. What do you want your viewers to take away from the video? Now that you have all the information you needed from your research, it is time to utilize it during this part.
Your message will become the voice of your company or brand. It is important to note that your message is the whole point of the video in the first place. Without a clear message, it is easy for your audience to get lost in all the concepts you have put together.
2. Think About Branding
Video has the capacity to tell a story and to showcase a company’s branding. Discover some video production techniques and how to utilize them for your branding. Use it as an opportunity to represent your company’s image through your video.
Unleash your creativity by thinking of new ways to represent your brand as well. We all know that video has so many available features today, try to keep up with the times by using these new features into your video production as well.
3. Write Down Your Content
Finally, we have reached the most tedious part of the whole process. One might think that writing the content is just for formality’s sake. But actually, writing everything down on a clean sheet of paper means finalizing everything from top to bottom – which means that your decision is final and that you are ready to proceed with the actual production phase.
Besides, writing down your content neatly isn’t just for your own sake but for the other team members as well. It will help them understand the outline better and also keep them organized during the production phase.
Step Three: Be Involved in the Production
Now that you have a final outline in hand, it is time to prepare for the actual video production phase.
Below are some tips during the pre-production phase that will help you stay on top of all of your tasks. By participating in these steps, you are also keeping count of the production costs of your video. Keep your eyes open for careless mistakes and potential accidents as they may cost you some money off of your marketing budget.
1. Delegate Tasks
In order to properly manage your video production project, it is vital that you delegate tasks to the people on your team. If you are working with a video production company, let them know that you are interested in knowing who is in charge of a certain role.
Have a chat with each member and make sure that they are well briefed about the project. Ask them if they have any questions and remain open for communication. Video production is never easy and it involves a lot of many different people. The key is to talk to each member and allow them to reach out to you when needed.
2. Set A Deadline
Try to set a deadline a lot earlier than the actual deadline. Marketers know that timing is very important and this is especially true for digital marketers. Updating a social media account or uploading a video isn’t simply about making the content available online, it is also about perfect timing.
You might want to have your video go live during times when your viewers are available online. As you might have already known, uploading a little too late or too early causes your content to go unseen. The best time to go live is when your potential viewers are online too.
3. Make Room for Changes
The last step of the production phase is to make room for changes. Earlier, you have set a deadline earlier than the actual deadline. It isn’t just about timing but rather, it is also a backup plan for when things don’t go your way.
Human error is inevitable. What matters most is how we deal with it. Don’t allow these mistakes to stop you from creating a great video. Instead, be well prepared for such situations. By having ample extra time, you are not compromising your video marketing strategy.
4. Review Regularly
As you progress throughout the production phase, it might be a good idea to step back and look at the bigger picture. Grab all the information you’ve gathered and the outline you’ve created and compared it with each step of the production.
Creating videos is fun and exciting. Feel free to use up all your creativity during this process but don’t lose sight of your company’s marketing goals. It might be fun to add a little extra flair here and there but try to keep close to the bare minimum. After all, you have yet to test how these elements work with your audience.
Remember to keep your video project as simple as possible. It will also be a lot easier to measure your KPI’s after the video has gone live.
Step Four: Go Live and Measure
1. Find A Place for Your Video
There are plenty of websites where you can upload your video. You can also embed them onto your website page if you would like it to be accessible from there too. A lot of these websites have attractive features. It all depends on your marketing goals to choose which one is the best website for you.
If you are still undecided, you might want to start with a website like YouTube. It is said that YouTube is the second largest search engine and so you can expect a lot of people to use it. This would mean that your video has the ability to reach out to billions of people across the globe. It is also a great place to build a following since YouTube also has sharing capabilities.
2. Network
If you have a couple of connections you can rely on, ask them to share your video with their audience. Likewise, get in connect with your current community and let them know that you’ve created something new. By tapping into your available network, you are actually giving your video project some free publicity.
During this step, you may also want to dive more into social media marketing. A lot of social media platforms have features specifically for video. In fact, social media today love videos! Make use of the current technology available to you and make your video accessible on those platforms as well. You’ll be surprised at how many people will engage with your content if you just update the way you share it with them.
3. Measure Your KPI’s
Like all the other marketers out there, it is important that you measure the KPI’s of your video marketing strategy. It can help you determine which techniques worked for this project and which ones need improvement.
Don’t be discouraged if your expectations on video marketing haven’t been met. Now that you have relevant experience and new information to work with, it will be easier to identify what needs to be improved. Gather all this information and prepare for your next video production project.
4. Rinse and Repeat
Your first video is just the beginning of your video marketing efforts. It’s not guaranteed that your very first video production would be successful. The production phase was difficult and you deserve a pat on the back but it might be good to find some fault with your project.
Conclusion
Having a video marketing strategy set in place is indeed very important for the success of your marketing goals. However, creating it is just the beginning. What’s more important is how you maintain it. Don’t allow setbacks keep you stuck on old and ineffective strategies. Let these 4 simple steps be your guide every time you have a video project.
At the same time, try to be on the lookout for more new and exciting technique to add to your video marketing plan. As we all have come to know, research is a very powerful tool even in the creation of a video marketing strategy.
And last but not the least, continue creating. Discover and experiment what works for your brand. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes instead, use it as a way to learn. After all, a good marketer is fearless – probably because he knows which steps to focus on.
Find out how you could improve your video marketing strategy. After all, it is better to be consistent with your video marketing efforts rather than depending all your success on one video only.
To jumpstart the process of creating an efficient video marketing plan for your business, contact us here.
Founder at LocalEyes Video Production | Inc. 5000 CEO | Emmy Award Winning Producer