It’s no secret that video has proven to be a powerful tool to captivate audiences all over the globe. Video can bring a visual, audio, and text element all in one cohesive content piece. Due to this, video has become the main source of how most individuals learn and seek entertainment.
Video platform websites such as TikTok and YouTube have boomed in popularity and have brought fresh content to audiences all over the globe in new and exciting ways. These sites allow users to view and interact with the content and creators more than ever before.
It should be no surprise that businesses are now seeking out video content to increase their marketing strategies.
Video has brought a more robust way to reach wider audiences to tried and true marketing practices. It can be a powerful marketing tool to grow your brand. Let’s dive into how video content marketing can be an effective tool to boost marketing your business.
What is Video Content Marketing and Why it Works
When you think about marketing, you may envision paid ads or content trying to get an immediate purchase. On the other hand, content marketing creates a more natural marketing approach.
Content marketing allows you to approach consumers as being the solution to their challenges without appearing sales-driven. It’s not a one-click ad-to-sale conversion; it’s about building an organic relationship with your audience and customers.
The advantage of utilizing content marketing videos is that you can create an audience on top of customers.
Your video content can educate and inform your audience that may have not originally known of your business.
Using video in your business also gives you the ability to put a face and name to your brand. It creates a greater rapport with viewers while also having the ability to convert them into customers.
Types of Video Content Marketing to Implement for Your Business
A report released in 2020 stated that 86% of video marketers had increased their website traffic by using online video content marketing. While it has proven to increase traffic, the types of video content for your audience matters.
Here are four video types that you can utilize to market your business with video content:
Live Video
Live streaming can be a fun yet effective type of video content to implement for your business. With live video your audience can interact with you in real-time and ask questions.
Many viewers enjoy this type of video because it allows them to experience a more personal and direct viewing experience. It shows more authenticity and that their presence on the live stream matters to your business.
The best platforms for live streaming are YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.
The overall impact of using social media for live streams can be endless. In addition to real-time interaction with your viewers, these platform algorithms tend to push notifications more to viewers when you are live or just recently went live.
While live streaming video content as part of your content strategy can be highly effective with your audience, when you are live does also matter to your audience. According to Coschedule.com, primarily 80% of all of the U.S. population resides within the Eastern and Central time zones.
Source: CoSchedule.com
These time zones combined are only 1 hour apart versus nearly 3 hours’ time difference from coast to coast. Adjusting your live streaming time around where the majority of your audience is can greatly increase viewership.
In order to optimize live streamed video content with greater views and engagement, it is important always to conduct market research on your audience.
What platform to use, what time to go live, what topics to talk about, what matters to your target audience, and what works best for your industry matters when it comes to boosting your business visibility with live video.
Product Demos, Tutorials, and How-To Videos
Consumers typically know when a product or service is being marketed to them. They don’t want to feel like they just are being “sold” a product or service.
Focusing more on helpful content versus a sale allows for more authenticity with your audience.
If you look at some of the top-ranking YouTube beauty channels, you will see many of them have had exponential business growth when providing a tutorial, how-to, or demo of a product or service that they sell.
Using product demos, tutorials, or how-to videos for your business gives audiences a chance to see precisely how your products or services work and how they can best use them.
Your audience wants to see the results of how your products or services will simplify their life or solve their job to be done. Demonstrating them in a video and with content related to everyday usage will allow your audience to feel confident that they can use it themselves without issue.
One method to do this is to provide your audience with instructions and a how-to of your products or services.
What are some content ideas for these types of videos that I can utilize for my business?
The content you utilize for these types of videos should focus on how it fits in with your product or services and is relevant to your business.
Here are a few ideas that can be successful for your business:
- You can also provide your audience with exclusive videos of releases or launches for new products and services. These videos can be pre-recorded tutorials or how-tos, in which you can stream the launch and demo them for your audience. Doing this can increase the visibility of your product or services to your viewers.
- If you provide service to your customer without direct products, try sharing products you use as part of completing your service process. For example, if you are a web designer, share a simple video of your favorite programs for web design and how you use them to service your customers.
Regardless of how you develop the content for your videos, the focus of your content should seek to provide answers to questions your audience may have about the products or services of your business.
When creating this type of video content for your business, there should be three primary questions that your content needs to address to your audience about the products or services you will provide to them.
1. What are the benefits of purchasing products or services from your business?
You will want to begin these types of videos by sharing the benefit of your product or service to your audience. Discuss what it does and how this can help them.
Consumers are more eager to buy if they can see the value and return on their investment in the product or service they purchase.
Also, explain in the video content how your product or services will provide a direct solution to the challenges they may be facing. This can dramatically increase the value of your products or services for your audience.
For example, if your product or services can help save your customer’s time or streamline a necessary process more simply for them, then emphasize this point in your video content.
2. How can people best use this product or service?
Consumers want to not only hear the value of your product or service, but they want to see the tangible results of what it will provide for them.
Aim to inform your audience about the most common uses for your product or service without overwhelming them.
One method to do this is to reach out to your current customers and ask for feedback on how they best use your products or services. Take this feedback and information by turning it into a step-by-step how-to or tutorial video. This shows potential customers how they can replicate the same results for themselves.
3. How can they purchase your products or services?
Making the purchasing process easy for your customers with simple and direct instructions.
Create video content for your products and services by ensuring your content is easily accessible to viewers and aim to keep it short, simple, and direct.
Whether live streaming demos or producing tutorials and how-to’s, ensure you source some best tools and methods you can locate to create your video.
Also, you can script your videos to make sure the content stays on track for your audience. Doing this also allows you to control more of the style and tone of the video content.
Reviews and Testimonials
The content you create for your business should provide more than just the products and services that your brand offers to consumers. More emotionally-driven content is far more likely to be shared and viewed.
Your viewers do not only want to learn about what your products or services do. They want to know how it can make their lives better.
They also want to see the results and success from other viewers and customers. Creating videos around stories of successful customers will show potential customers that people like them have found a solution to their problem through your brand’s solution.
Here are a few ways you can do this:
- Provide a video presentation of any reviews that customers may have written via your website or social media by integrating them as part of your testimonial video.
- Don’t use hired actors. Reach out to current customers and ask them if they would be willing to share their experiences of your products or services on video. If necessary, offer them an incentive to provide their testimonial.
- Make sure your reviews and testimonial videos from your customers answer questions for your audience. Gear these questions towards what encouraged their decision to purchase, what their results were, and what they enjoy most about their purchase.
Webinars and Interviews
Virtual events, such as webinars, interviews, and panel discussions, provide a way to inform and educate audiences on your brand’s industry and the challenges they may be facing.
These types of videos can also be live streamed or pre-recorded.
There are several benefits to webinars and interviews:
- These types of videos don’t require consistent production. Therefore, you can create a quarterly, semi-annually, or annually virtual event for your audience.
- These videos allow you to utilize other business connections and connections in other industries than your business while providing new topics to your audience by interviewing or having a panel interview during the event.
- Have an open Q&A time allotment during the event or interview so that your viewers can ask questions to the panel of experts and yourself about the topics discussed. This also allows your audience to directly engage and interact with you and the experts, which in turn can boost your visibility.
Utilizing other industry experts in different fields can also bring a fresh perspective to your audience, and it can also drive a new audience to your brand that you didn’t have before.
Hosting a virtual event with other industry experts within and outside of your business niche can boost the visibility of your video content.
Best of all, you can run a virtual event at a far lower cost than an in-person event and reach a much wider audience. Check out our thorough guide on setting up your own virtual events.
Increase Visibility with Consistency and Engagement
Your audience wants and needs a level of consistency with your video content they watch.
If you set a direct schedule of content or utilize a content calendar, this creates an expectation with your audience on how often and when they can expect your new video content to launch.
Consistency does not mean you need to post daily or “x” amount of times per day. It should reinforce the expectations of your audience of when to expect new video content releases.
Alongside consistency, you should also take out time to actively engage with your audience either during or after your video content has been released. While most social media platforms will boost video content over text or audio, their algorithms favor engagement above all else.
Source: mention.com
Most video content that goes viral tends to be a blend of great content and a high amount of engagement.
If you are creating quality content and being consistent, but you are not actively engaging with your audience on a regular basis, your content will often get lost in the abyss. Engage with your audience regularly, answer your viewer’s questions, and address any other comments or concerns they may have.
Measuring Effectiveness of your Video Content Strategy
Utilizing quality video products, upload and editing video platforms, and also using more specific types of video content can be effective to boost your video content visibility.
While keeping all these topics discussed in this post in mind, it’s equally important in your content marketing strategy to regularly review your videos’ effectiveness.
Some helpful ways to regularly measure the effectiveness of your video content are:
- Develop a content tracker to keep track of all your video content posted.
- Review viewer insights on the platforms that you posted the video content. You should be able to see total number of views, engagement rates, shares, and time spent viewing.
There is no definitive right or correct method to utilize in your video content marketing strategy, but not measuring what works and doesn’t work for your content strategy can make growing your visibility challenging.
Also, be willing to review and address areas of improvement that are needed and adapt your plan to optimize your strategy more effectively.
Video content for marketing is a powerful way to increase your business visibility and grow your audience and customer base organically.
We hope these tips can help you increase your visibility with video content marketing. Remember that your audience is also your business’ customers and that building an authentic rapport with them matters.
Implementing these strategies can help you boost your video content visibility for your business to new heights.
