The Benefits of Creative Video Production
Video marketing is one of the most powerful types of marketing available to businesses of all sizes. Companies that choose to forego video marketing are missing out on serious opportunities. When done right, utilizing a video first marketing strategy can increase your return on investment, engagement, reach, and general efficacy. Let’s take a closer look at those four terms:
ROI - The ROI on video marketing is high due to the increased engagement and reach, as well as the long shelf life of video content. Not only do videos circulate for longer on social media networks, but they can be repurposed for different uses. For example, a product video created for your webpage can easily be turned into a shorter snippet to showcase your product on your social channels.
Engagement - With the average consumer watching nearly 16 hours of video content each week, not sharing video content will put you at a disadvantage, since it’s exactly what people want to see. In fact, most consumers are far more likely to engage with video content than a static post such as photos or text.
Reach - Not only are people more likely to watch videos online, but they are also more likely to share video content with their friends and family. As a result, many social platforms have begun prioritizing video content in their algorithms. This means that video content is being pushed by both the consumers and the platforms you are sharing the content on.
Efficacy - With video ROI being as high as it is, it’s safe to say that video content is some of the most effective content you can create and share these days.
10 Ways to Take Your Creative Video Production to the Next Level
Video marketing may feel intimidating right now, especially as everyone seems to be integrating video into their own marketing strategies, but there are things you can do to ensure your video content stands out from the competition. To establish a standout marketing initiative, follow these tips to create videos that will connect with your target audience and establish a long-lasting relationship.
1. Focus on Storytelling
Video advertising best practices vary from company to company and industry to industry, but utilizing storytelling as a message-sharing method is consistently effective across the board. By focusing on sharing stories through your videos, people will gravitate toward your content more and more.
Stories are an integral part of the human experience. Stories entertain us, they help us connect with one another regardless of our differences, and they make us feel seen. Content that accomplishes one or more of these things will be more likely to keep viewers engaged, encourage them to share your video with their friends and family, and help establish a better sense of community within your consumer base.
2. Ditch the Salesy Talk
The best marketing videos don’t feel like marketing videos. In fact, one of the primary reasons video marketing works is that it doesn’t feel like marketing at all. Instead of selling, you should focus on connecting with your audience by either entertaining them or offering something of value. Depending on your brand and your goals, this may mean producing lifestyle videos, how-to videos, or answering FAQs. Regardless of the direction you chose to go in, the goal is to create content that feels value-add for the consumer.
3. Optimize the First 10 Seconds
The first ten seconds of any video are the most important. Attention spans are getting shorter and the amount of content available is increasing every day. In order to make sure your content is being seen, you need to grab the attention of your audience right away. If a video doesn’t capture the attention of the viewer in that timeframe, they will likely scroll past your video.
Therefore, short videos are generally more effective. However, shortening all your content is not the answer, as some content requires a longer format. If you’re working on a video that needs to be longer than 10 seconds to effectively get your message across, you should prioritize making those first 10 seconds eye-catching and engaging so the viewer will want to stick around to watch the rest of the video.
4. Always Consider Accessibility
By making your videos more accessible, you’re not only increasing the number of people who can interact with your content; you’re also showing them that you care about them and their experiences. By showing that you care enough to prioritize someone’s experience on social media, you’re also communicating that you would do the same if they purchased your products. This increases their trust in you and their willingness to support you and your business.
Of all the tips for video marketing included here, this is among the most important. This is because creating accessible content shows that your organization respects your audience and wishes to maintain an inclusive environment for all. To make your content more accessible you can:
- Include captions on videos for consumers who are hearing impaired or prefer to consume content without audio for whatever reason.
- Provide alternative text or a description of your content in the caption for consumers with visual impairments.
- Provide transcripts of any audiovisual content.
- And more!
5. Use SEO to Your Advantage
SEO, or search engine optimization, is an important piece of any marketing strategy. By optimizing your content, you’re ensuring that it’s seen by a wider audience. To optimize your content, you should follow these video marketing SEO tips:
- Pay attention to the details. This means including eye-catching and descriptive headlines, captions, and thumbnails. By outlining the content of the video, you’re giving search engines a better idea of what your content consists of, which will make it more likely to boost your videos to the appropriate viewers.
- Look at the bigger picture. Make sure that your entire page is optimized appropriately. This will help search engines get a better idea of what your content is like overall, as well as a specific video, which will also boost your SEO ranking.
- Don’t overshare. When you’re sharing videos to social media, you should try to pick one or two platforms to focus on, rather than trying to stretch your content too thin. When sharing on your webpage, don’t embed the video more than once. An overabundance of content will make it harder for the algorithm to know what to prioritize in search engine results. By minimizing the number of places that you share content, you’ll ultimately increase the number of views the video gets.
6. Always Include a CTA
A CTA, or call to action, gives the viewer an idea of what to do next. By including a CTA you’re encouraging your audience to follow your account, check out your website, or engage in another way. This engagement will increase your reach, bringing in a larger audience.
A few effective CTA examples include:
- Encouraging viewers to follow you or subscribe to see similar content.
- Directing them to your webpage for more information.
- Suggesting they share your content with someone who would benefit from it.
In addition to being clear in your messaging, it’s important that when writing your call to action, you ensure it’s visually appealing and well-timed. By prioritizing these elements, you’ll ensure the CTA feels natural, making the viewer more likely to engage and follow up.
7. Define Your Strategy & Goals
Without clear objectives or an established strategy, you’re less likely to make valuable strides toward reaching your goals. To ensure your marketing strategy is working, you need to determine benchmarks and monitor your insights and progress to ensure you are meeting those objectives.
Your video marketing strategy should include information such as your target audience, your chosen platforms, and your goals. These goals should be measurable and specific, so you are able to note how each piece of content is – or is not – working in your favor. Once you have used this information to identify your top marketing videos, you can prioritize that style of content moving forward.
8. Become One With Your Audience
One of the most crucial elements of the marketing process is identifying your target audience. Who do you want buying your products? To identify your buyer persona, consider information such as lifestyles, habits, and demographics. Consider who would most benefit from your products and work backwards from there.
Once you’ve identified a persona, you’ll be able to begin creating content targeted directly to them. Consider the following:
- Does your target buyer spend more time on Instagram or Twitter?
- Do they scroll as they sip coffee in the morning, or right before bed?
- What type of content appeals to them, and why?
Armed with this information, you have what you need to create and share great marketing videos that will be entertaining and useful for your audience, allowing you to insert your brand into their daily lives.
9. Choose a Few Channels
When you spend the time to create video content, you want to get maximum value out of it. In order to do this, you should establish a presence on multiple platforms and repurpose content.
While you don’t want to stretch yourself too thin by trying to create content for every social media network, it’s beneficial to post on more than one platform to maximize your reach. You should find a happy medium by determining which platforms your audience frequently spends their time on, and choose two to three to utilize.
Remember that each channel will have a slightly different audience, so be sure to pay attention to all your insights and utilize these tips for video marketing to customize the content for the intended platform.
10. Speak to Pain Points
Whether through entertainment or education, the best marketing videos ultimately benefit the viewer. This makes video marketing a perfect place to address pain points. Video allows you to talk directly to your audience. For example, a skincare brand can make a series of videos that outline the skin-type each product is best suited for, while a grocery chain could share recipes for the perfect snack to serve on Super Bowl Sunday or at Thanksgiving dinner.
Whatever your product or service, you can use video content to address any needs or wants your audience may have, and explain how and why your product is the answer they have been looking for. Using this strategy will fill a need for your audience while also resulting in increased views – which may turn into sales – for your brand.
Let the Experts Help You Create the Scroll-Stopping Video Content You Need
If you’re not investing in video marketing, you’re seriously missing out. Use these tips to create effective and engaging marketing video content that will increase your reach, develop a stronger sense of trust amongst your customers, and lead to higher brand loyalty.
If you’re interested in incorporating video content in your marketing strategy, but you aren’t quite sure where to start, consider reaching out to Charter & Co. We have you covered from concept to implementation and every step along the way, making sure you are set up with the best marketing video content for your brand’s unique needs.
