Everything (& More) You Need to Know About Video Marketing

What Is Video Marketing?

Use simple context clues and you’ll be able to easily define video marketing—we sum it up as any marketing or promotional messaging that uses video as the primary communication method. And if recent statistics are any indication, this trend took off in a major way over the past few years. In 2022, internet users spent a minimum of an hour and 40 minutes a day watching videos online. So it’s unsurprising that 87% of marketers report a worthwhile ROI when it comes to video content, and the revenue of marketers using video content increases 49% faster than those who skip it. It’s become particularly important since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic when 96% of consumers started watching more videos.

Of course, understanding the definition of video marketing is useless unless you have a strategy in place to make it work for your business. A solid video marketing strategy begins with a specific action plan that steers the creation and publication of video content. Sound simple? It actually requires great attention to detail as you follow these steps:

Define your organization’s goals.
Pick two or three video platforms.
Determine what types of videos best suit your brand.
Dive into production.
Engage in an interactive post-production process.
Schedule, publish, and boost your new videos.
Track insights as they roll in.
Pivot as needed to enhance your original strategy.

In order to fully understand video marketing and everything it encompasses, there are a few basic terms you should understand. Check out our comprehensive glossary of all things video marketing!

Online video marketing: Enlisting the internet to disperse your videos in a way that captures audiences who might otherwise be missed.
Digital marketing: This also uses the power of the internet, but it encompasses media beyond just video, such as email, social media, and other web-based ads, along with text and multimedia.
Video-first marketing: This marketing approach simply prioritizes video over more traditional means of marketing with the understanding that it can be much more powerful as both a means of engaging customers and relaying info.
Video marketing strategy: This is an action plan that steers the creation and publication of video content.
Video personalization: Custom-tailoring videos to target specific audiences.
User experience: A term that includes everything a user experiences (thoughts, feelings) throughout its interaction with a company.
Audience targeting: Breaking down your audience into smaller subsets in order to customize videos and experiences that will speak to them more personally.
Distribution channels: The journey a product or service embarks upon from your company to the final consumer.
Brand awareness: The measure of how recognizable a brand and its associated services or products are to a member of its target audience.
Storytelling: The process of weaving a narrative that naturally draws in an audience without the overt feeling of being an advertisement.

What Makes Video Marketing So Powerful?

When cinematography burst onto the scene in the late 19th century, its sole purpose was entertainment. That changed around 1940 with the advent of the television commercial. The next major transition in the video marketing space was in 2005 with the launch of YouTube. In the many years since, online video content has only become more diverse and powerful—today, internet users watch up to 16 hours of videos every week!

That statistic alone proves how powerful video marketing can be, but it’s just one of many. When it comes to the return on investment, experts have determined that video content is 1,200% more successful than other forms of digital marketing. And those on the ground—the marketers themselves—agree, with 73% of B2B companies saying video marketing had a positive ROI. Nonprofit organizations also agree that investment in high-quality video has a positive impact on their organization long-term.

That being said, not all video marketing is created equally. Content created by expert artists like those at Charter & Co. will be more polished and engaging and ultimately generate a better ROI than videos created by amateurs. With consumers devouring so much video every week, they can easily discern if you’ve done your due diligence in crafting beautiful, engaging content or if you’ve haphazardly thrown together a mere commercial.

If you want a little more insight into how to build a strong online presence through top-notch video content, familiarizing yourself with these concepts is a great first step:

Nonprofit video marketing: Engaging and educating new audiences about a nonprofit’s work and mission.
Content marketing: Crafting quality content in order to draw in new audiences with the goal of converting them into active customers.
Video marketing ROI: The return on investment you receive from video content, as calculated using a ratio of net income: investment.
Brand authority: Consumers’ belief that a company is a primary expert when it comes to a certain product, service, or field of interest.
Brand credibility: An audience’s trust that a brand will transparently describe and deliver products or services up to expected standards.
Brand authenticity: The extent to which an audience believes a brand is faithful in achieving its mission and supporting its customers on their own journeys.
Engagement rate: A measure of the percentage of consumers who interacted with your content after first viewing it (as calculated using the ratio of engagements per post: reach per post).
Cost-per-engagement: The price a brand pays for each engagement with marketing content.
Organic video marketing: An approach that involves videos that can be shared organically using the innate capabilities of any media platform.
Mobile video optimization: Designing video content that can be easily viewed on a mobile device without any disruptions in the user experience.

Benefits of Video Marketing

So now that you’re an expert on video marketing, you might be wondering: How can it help my organization? Glad you asked!

Video marketing boasts countless benefits, but we boiled down some of our top favorites here:

Move you up the SEO ranks. Quality video will likely enhance your website’s SEO standings, which will drive more traffic.
Extend your reach to a bigger audience, organically. When you make a video people love, they want to share it! This will expand your reach with minimal effort.
Give your sales a big boost. More eyes on your video equals more eyes on your website, and as a result, an increase in sales.
Enhance your credibility and brand recognition with new leads. If you’re wooing a potential new client, a slick video might just seal the deal.
Tell your unique story quickly (and widely). Every brand has its own compelling origin story; a video helps you tell it.
Reach audiences with shorter attention spans. Conventional advertising doesn’t always work with modern audiences, but engaging, bite-sized videos can help to bring them into the fold.
Harness the power of your existing social media channels. If you have a big following online, your video distribution platform is already set up. Make the most of it!
Put you at the forefront of cutting-edge marketing trends. Video marketing is only continuing to grow in popularity—and you won’t want your organization to be left behind.

Want to learn more about the benefits of video marketing? Start by checking out some of our ground-breaking work, and then study up on these need-to-know terms.

Corporate video production: Crafting video content for an organization in order to market externally or inform internally.
Brand video: A video narrative that dives into a brand’s origin story and mission.
Brand story: The backstory of a brand.
Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors to a website or app that follow through on an action, out of the total number of visitors.
Click-through rate: The rate of users who followed a link or ad to a website’s homepage or another landing page.
Page dwell time: The amount of time a consumer examines a website before backtracking to a roster of search engine results.
Search engine ranking: Where a URL lands on a page of search results.
Shareability: The willingness of consumers to organically share a piece of media or marketing.
Omnichannel strategy: An approach that aims to integrate every aspect of a user’s experience, from an organization’s brick-and-mortar location to its website.
Email marketing videos: Video content shared via email.

B2B Video Marketing

If you’re in the B2B (business-to-business) space, you probably already understand the key differences between this type of organization and a B2C (business-to-consumer) company. It’s pretty simple: B2B companies sell to other businesses, while B2C companies sell directly to consumers. As video marketing first rose to prominence, these different business models also spawned different types of video content—in particular, B2B video content tended to be dry, and functional, appealing to a business’s rational desire to boost their bottom line, while B2C video played on a consumer’s emotions to get them to engage and ultimately click “buy.”

But that’s all changing. At Charter & Co, we understand that there are still people on the other end of B2B marketing campaigns—which is why we create B2B video content that’s just as engaging and compelling as B2C marketing. The major differences are just that B2B marketing may make use of different platforms to disperse the video, and the focus will likely still be on the gap that your organization fills with some engaging storytelling sprinkled in. When you let Charter & Co design video content that both informs and excites, you’ll leave leads impressed and build stronger relationships with existing clients.

Here are a few key definitions to keep in mind along the way:

B2B video marketing: Visual content designed to showcase a service or product provided by one business to another.
B2B product videos: Videos created specifically to highlight a product that one business can offer to another.
Corporate video production: Crafting video content for an organization in order to market externally or inform internally.
Viewer experience: A term that refers to the thoughts and feelings a consumer experiences upon viewing a piece of video content.
Buying journey: The journey a customer embarks upon as they choose to buy a product or service.
Sales funnel stages: The breakdown of a client’s journey from top to bottom, starting with the initial contact through the closing of a deal.
Top-of-funnel content: The first point of contact with an audience; content that aims to address common questions and educate, not to sell overtly.
Mid-funnel content: The second stage of content delivery, which bridges the gap between broader concepts and the specific value a product or service can provide.
Low-funnel content: The last step in your marketing campaign, delivering content specifically designed to get a consumer to buy or sign on.
Action triggers: Prompts in marketing created to get consumers or clients to take the next step in engaging or purchasing.

B2C Video Marketing

On the flip side of B2B marketing, there’s business-to-consumer or B2C marketing. As we mentioned, B2C content relies heavily on emotionally engaging content to drive sales—but it no longer has a corner on the market! Regardless of the size of your business, a B2C approach can play a pivotal role in your video marketing strategy.

That’s because B2C video presents an opportunity to tell your story, your way. You can dive into the history of your brand and highlight its ongoing mission in a way that tugs on the heartstrings but takes only 30 or 60 seconds to do so. It’s easy to convey a big message in a short amount of time and get consumers on board with your business quickly.

In order to make the most of B2C video, make sure you master these concepts.

Video marketing campaign: Engaging audiences with videos that educate and promote a brand, service, or product.
Dynamic video marketing: Designing videos that can be adapted depending on the needs and desires of an individual user.
Narrative: A compelling story.
Product demo video: Video (stylized or impromptu) that shows how a product works by having someone actually use it.
Paint point: A concern that’s highly important to a specific lead, client, or consumer.
USP: A declaration of what really sets apart an organization, product, or service from competitors.
VSP: Video-sharing platforms (think YouTube, TikTok, etc.).
Influencer video marketing: Enlisting a well-established social media influencer to sing the praises of a service, product, or brand to their existing audience.
Unboxing videos: A type of influencer video marketing that depicts said influencer “unboxing” a new product or collection of products and explaining the benefits of each.
Brand collaboration videos: Paying an established content creator to make a video (or series of videos) using a specific service or product.

Types of Video Marketing

Just as video content can vary in terms of its target audience, there are also many different types of videos we can create in order to reach your business’s goals. For example, there’s the explainer video—this type of content showcases how to use a product, register for a service, or complete another action, step by step. Then there are product videos, which specifically showcase the aspects of a given product. Depending on your organization’s specific offerings and goals, you might find different types of videos useful.

This primer will give you a taste of the many different types of videos available to your marketing team, from live-action to motion graphics:

Promotional marketing videos: Video content created specifically to spread the word about an event, a sale, or a similar special occurrence.
Product marketing videos: Crafted to highlight the ins and outs of a given product.
Explainer marketing videos: An intro to your product or service, walking them through various aspects step by step.
Product demo marketing videos: A product video, but in which the product is actually shown in action!
Event marketing videos: Content that highlights an upcoming event in an engaging way that makes the viewer want to attend.
Educational marketing videos: AKA a “how-to” video, a primer on your service or product.
Interview marketing videos: A sit-down interview (or interviews) with anyone inside your organization to show off your expertise in the field and add a human touch.
Testimonial marketing videos: These essentially capture positive reviews but, again, in an engaging interview-style format that draws in viewers with an emotional response.
Live stream marketing videos: Content that engages viewers in real-time to provide info about an organization’s products or services.
Landing page marketing videos: A video that serves as the focal point of a business’s website, taking high priority on a landing page in order to elicit a positive response from a visitor.

Video Marketing Tips & Examples

Producing a video is obviously a big part of this marketing approach, but it’s not the only important aspect. If you choose the wrong focus or enlist a distribution platform that doesn’t make sense, even the highest quality video won’t live up to its potential. Follow these hot tips based on our expertise to make the most of your video marketing:

Choose the right channels. If you’re primarily interested in B2B marketing, then uploading an informational video to Facebook might not make quite as much sense as launching an email campaign. However, if you’re interested in connecting directly with the consumer, a brand video on your Instagram could have a huge impact—like this one we made for Fryingpan Bacon.
Got reviews? Use them! If your customers or business partners love you, make sure everyone knows! Incorporate great feedback into your video content by interviewing consumers directly or using motion graphics to relay positive quotes.
Foster long-lasting relationships through transparency. The coolest thing you can do through video might be to build relationships with clients or customers you’ve never met. By coming to them with authenticity and honesty, you’re taking the first step. Interviews can be helpful here.
Make how-to videos engaging. Even without live-action, how-to videos can still be engaging. Using motion graphics or animation (or both), you can replicate a user experience in a way that’s equal parts informative and helpful. Check out the animated software video we made for Transeo.
Don’t take it too seriously! Viewers are more likely to engage with content that’s familiar and lighthearted, while also expressing knowledge and expertise. Keep that congenial-but-professional vibe to hook potential customers.

Want to learn more about your options? Here we break down the aspects of promotional videos that can give your content that extra boost.

Closed captions: Text displayed on the screen to complement a video or make it accessible to the hearing-impaired.
Vlogs: Blogs that enlist usually long-form videos to express a point as opposed to the written word.
Expert interviews: A means of bringing credibility to a brand by conducting an interview with an internal expert in a given field.
Behind-the-scenes (BTS) videos: Snippets of film that may not make the final cut, but can help to convey the spirit of a team or a company.
Call-to-action: A prompt created specifically to convert a viewer to a customer.
Negative brand image: A poor consumer perception of an organization, often developed when a brand fails to meet expectations.
Video SEO: The process of driving traffic from search engines to your video, ideally through organic means.
Hook: The part of a promotional video that snags the viewer’s attention and makes them want to continue watching.
3D motion graphics: An element of graphic design that incorporates movement to make it pop.
Animation: Moving graphics primarily used for art or entertainment purposes.

What to Look for in a Video Marketing Agency

If you’ve been tossing around the idea of video marketing, but you haven’t quite taken the plunge yet, what’s holding you back? Maybe you think it’s not in the budget, or it could be that you don’t feel like you have the time to sit down with a video production team. Or perhaps you don’t trust the ROI would be worth the investment (of both money and time).

According to the freshest statistics available in 2023, a whopping 92% of marketers say video has a good ROI. Of course, that’s only if you choose a production team that knows what they’re doing. Here’s what to look for:

Expertise and passion. Charter & Co’s work (and positive client feedback) speaks for itself.
A team that truly cares. At Charter & Co, we’re happy to spend as much time as you like discussing your vision and making adjustments. But if you’re super busy and want to limit meetings, that’s fine, too! We’re here for you and we truly care about creating valuable content that you love.
Reasonable financial investment. Given the demonstrated great ROI of video content, we hope you’ll see how reasonable our rates are. The investment means you can delegate the entire video production process to us without purchasing your own high-end video equipment or scouting locations and hiring actors. We do all of that for you.

As you consider Charter & Co for your video production needs or weigh your options, understanding these terms will help you make an important choice.

Creative philosophy: The artistic approach a company takes to creating content for its clients.
Portfolio of work: A body of a company’s existing work—you can see our work here.
Client testimonial: Direct quotes from clients that describe their experience working with an organization.
Creative stakeholders: Anyone with a vested interest in the outcome of a creative project—such as our clients here at Charter & Co.
Collaborative creation: When stakeholders come together to design and execute a creative project.
Key performance indicators: Specific metrics that tell you how effective a marketing approach has been, such as the number of website visits or the conversion rate.
Video marketing budget: The financial investment an organization is willing and able to pour into video marketing.
Creative brief: The road map for a creative project! It’s a succinct summary of a marketing venture’s goals and the steps and details needed to meet those goals.
Scope creep: Changes made to a project, sometimes broad in scope or uncontrolled, without the proper checks and balances in place.
Talent portfolio: A web page dedicated to showcasing a company’s best finished products.

Level Up Your Video Marketing Content & Maximize Your ROI

By now, it should be obvious that video marketing shouldn’t be an afterthought, but rather an integral part of your company’s approach—maybe even the most important part. And with Charter & Co’s team of passionate professionals, cutting-edge equipment, and years of experience bringing brands to life, we can help you get started.

Level up your video marketing by answering a few preliminary questions so we can get in touch with you ASAP. The sooner we connect, the sooner your organization can begin reaping the benefits of high-quality video content.