5 Steps to Develop a Killer Video Marketing Strategy

Back in the day, when people wanted to find out what was going on in the world or entertain themselves, they would open up a newspaper or switch on the television. Now, people are crunched for time and want access to quick information, so they are turning to online video instead.

Video is huge now, and it’ll continue to grow. According to WordStream, 45 percent of people watch more than an hour of video on YouTube or Facebook every week, and 85 percent of the U.S. internet audience watches online videos. By 2022, online videos are going to make up more than 82 percent of consumer online traffic, according to Cisco.

Why Do Video Marketing?

Companies are using video marketing to connect with their audiences and promote their products and services. According to WordStream, 51 percent of marketing professionals reported that video is the type of content that delivers the best ROI, and marketers who utilize video grow revenue 49 percent faster than those who do not use it.

Video marketing can boost your SEO efforts, get you in front of new audiences, help you sell your product or service, humanize your brand, demonstrate your expertise and encourage those in the buyer’s funnel to take the next step toward conversion.

But before jumping in and creating videos of your own, you need to have a video marketing strategy in place. It’ll help keep you on track and show you what you need to do to reach your video marketing goals.

Here are five steps for developing a killer video marketing strategy for your business.

    1. Determine Why You’re Making the Video

A video can take a lot of time, money and effort. Buying equipment or hiring a crew to shoot and edit your video could potentially cost you thousands of dollars. Determining the “why” behind your video is critical prior to investing all that money and energy. Video marketing can help your business with the following:

• • • Selling a new product or service
    • Explaining to current customers how a product works
    • Drawing potential customers into the buyer’s funnel
    • Getting more subscribers for your YouTube channel

The list could go on and on. Above all else, your reason for making a video should tie back into a marketing goal. You may want to drive sales or conversions, widen your customer base, increase your online presence, establish your authority and much more. How you go about creating your video will ultimately stem from the answer to, “Why are we doing this in the first place?”

    2. Find Your Target Audience

Businesses usually have more than one type of potential customer they are attempting to reach. They have different customer segments, which they divide up into buyer personas. Before you start production, include finding your target audience for your campaign as part of your video marketing strategy. Use your buyer personas to guide you on what types of videos you’ll create, where and how you’ll promote them and what your goals for the video should be.

For example, let’s say you’re trying to reach Millennial Michael, a man in his mid-20s who has a limited budget but wants to potentially try your product or service. You would look at the platforms he watches videos on, what type of content he engages with and what video message would persuade him to purchase from you.

When doing your research, perhaps you find that he trusts influencers, he loves demo videos and he watches videos mostly on Facebook. That would tell you what content or star power to use for your video, what type of video you should create and where you should post it.

    3. Come Up With a Production Plan

In this next step of your video marketing strategy, you’ll want to write down your production plan. Are you going to invest in a camera like a Canon VIXIA HF M41 Full HD Camcorder or buy a DSLR? Are you going to go guerrilla-style and shoot it on your phone? How many days are you going to spend shooting your video? Are you going to create a storyboard and a script, or make it more off-the-cuff? What type of lighting and microphones are you going to use? Will it be live or recorded? Who will be on your crew? Knowing the answers to these questions is critical.

Another option is to hire a video production or digital marketing agency that can take care of the entire package and produce the video for you. You won’t have to buy expensive equipment you may only use once, and they will know all the best shooting, editing and promotional techniques for your video. When you’re writing down your production plan, you’ll include your budget, which will inform you on whether or not you can hire a marketing agency to help.

    4. Decide Where and How You’re Going to Distribute It

Once you’ve made your video, pick a platform (or a few) that you’re going to promote it on. Again, this goes back to your buyer personas. If you’re promoting it on Facebook, are you going to pay to place it within an ad for your business? How many times will a potential audience member see your ad? If you’re posting it on YouTube, what tags will you include, and what keywords will appear in your meta description? Will you pitch it to influencers or publications?

Maybe you’re going to email it out as well. What time of the day will you send that email and how are you going to embed your video? If you post it on your blog, are you going to repost it to social media as well? On Instagram, will you promote a quick snippet of it on a Story? Will you upload it to your company’s Facebook page?

Including promotion as part of your video marketing strategy is key to your success. If you don’t have time in your daily schedule, marketing agencies that offer email campaigns might be the solution for you.

    5. Figure Out How to Measure Impact

While many marketers claim that video has the best ROI, they can’t prove it if they don’t have Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) they use to measure their videos’ effectiveness. Some common KPIs include engagement, or how far into your video a viewer watched, how many views your video received, how many people took action after watching your video and how many people shared your video on social media.

Once you see how well your video performed, you can tweak your video marketing strategy for the next time around and continuously improve your campaigns. After all, being a marketer is not about achieving perfection but instead constantly testing, learning and achieving better results as time goes on. With a solid video marketing strategy at hand, you can do just that.