There was a running gag in the early 2000s that mobile phones would get smaller as technology advanced. The joke was that, ultimately, phones would become a piece of plastic.
That didn’t happen.
Instead of getting smaller, new mobile screens accommodate one of the most modern forms of content on the internet: Video.
We design and use tools today with video in mind. This is why digital marketing efforts should regularly leverage video to reach goals, such as more backlinks, conversions, and brand awareness.
Video is significant and is still making waves in the digital marketing world. Take a look at the video statistics we know today:
- YouTube has more than 2 billion active monthly users or almost one-third of the internet. (YouTube)
- In 2020, online video is expected to account for 79% of all internet traffic. (Cisco)
- It is predicted that there will be nearly ten devices per household by 2023, and 47% will be video capable. (Cisco)
- “How-to” videos are one of the four top content categories watched by YouTube users. (Google)
- A massive 68% of YouTube users watch YouTube to help make a property decision. (Google)
- The amount of SMBs that advertise on YouTube has multiplied since 2016. (YouTube)
As a film student and professional at Rocket Driver, I know a thing or two about video marketing. Below, I share five strategies along with actionable steps on how to deliver results.
1. Social Media Is Built for Online Video Marketing
If your brand has a personality, it’s time to share it on social media through branded videos. A business presents itself through its interactions, posts, follows, and likes. That speaks more about the company than the “about us” section of a website. And video takes this theory to a whole different level.
Onward with showcasing personality, social media video marketing can bring life into an otherwise bland industry. As a pleasant exercise, I took a company that is well known for its spectacular visual content (Old Spice) and photoshopped out all of the visual content from their Twitter profile.
The result was dull and outdated. I encourage you to look at what their Twitter page seems typically like to see visuals at their maximum and more. Know what’s trending at this moment! Here are two kinds of video content for social media that work well for small businesses.
- Live-streaming – Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter all make it easy for a business to share its most distinctive and exciting moments with its audience in real-time. For offering “insider access,” this form of video content is excellent.
- Storytelling – Nearly all massive social media platforms have built-in tools to help you create and post visual stories temporarily. Businesses that take advantage of this are receiving rewards. Plus, there is room for creativity, humor, and experimentation because of the shortness of the content.
Actionable Step: Test with essential video-making tools on social media platforms. For example, use “boomerang” to film a video for Instagram and upload it as “my story.” Use the process to get cozy with how straightforward sharing videos on social platforms is.
2. Include Video Marketing on Your Website
If creating video for social media gives a business personality, featuring video on a website provides the business with a character of professionalism. Interestingly, it can usually be the same video content (context is everything).
With the effectiveness of video demonstrated, here are two forms to do it and examples of websites doing it correctly.
Embed Video into Your Homepage
What Rocket Driver does can be challenging to explain, but a video allows us to communicate that information instantly. For businesses that also live in industries that can’t be described in one sentence, a “welcome” video could be the ticket to notifying customers.
Mix Video into the Background of the Web Design
This is more common in creative industries, but I would drive businesses to think outside the box and start a trend amidst their competition. Now be careful; the wrong video can end up being confused by your message.
Consider adding video marketing services, too, if you’re offering web services. An excellent way to boost the effectiveness of your website and build client trust is to create a video option for your clients.
Actionable Step: If you present web services like design and hosting, get a good glimpse at your options for integrating video into your client’s products. Is it likely to have video backgrounds? How about just embedding a video on the homepage?
If your answer is no to one or both of these questions, consider extending your offerings with good video content marketing services. For example, WordPress gives the most options in terms of video integration into websites.
3. Video Marketing is Awesome for SEO
Video content is in action with Google’s main goal: Deliver deeply relevant content that enriches the user’s experience online. As a result, Google rewards the page that hosts it when seeing a video.
SEO video marketing improves your site’s metrics around page sessions and bounce rate, which helps a lot towards SEO.
The video makes your content more shareable, and shares lead to backlinks—the backbone of increasing your rankings.
Often SEO priorities and creative marketing ideas have difficulty aligning. Leaning too far one way, your content loses its essence, depending too far the other, and you won’t reach your target audience.
Actionable Step: If your clients plan on getting started with video, get them to create a YouTube channel. This gets them the quick win of the backlink for their website in the channel description also, additional backlinks with every video they post by adding their URL in the video description.
4. Video Email Marketing Campaigns
Luckily, using video in your emails not only boosts your ability to find an interested party but also gives you time to tell your story.
According to Supply Gem, an email with a video gets an enhanced click-through rate of 96%.
Actionable Step: View your previous email campaigns, and choose those that may have blown the mark. Translate the copy from the email into script format and describe how the message would look and sound if it were produced for video in as much detail as possible. Would it be a talking head? A voice-over with a photo slide show?
5. Video Content Marketing
We know that a robust content strategy is excellent for SEO. We’ve also shown how video can be a massive value for SEO. So it feels like creating a content strategy around producing video content is a match made in SERP ranking heaven.
While it’s valuable to create funny and witty videos, informational videos are viral among shoppers. YouTube users are 3x more prone to watch video tutorials than read instructions.
There are many forms of Video Content Marketing, but my favorites are making easy-to-follow how-to videos that allow the business to showcase expertise and earn consumer trust.
Actionable Step: Work towards answering these questions: What are the most visually impressive aspects of the business? List which features of the business are most challenging to showcase in writing?
What does the business do that’s most helpful to its clients? (This is not merely what the business sells). For example, a formal menswear company can give quick tutorials, such as tying a full Windsor knot or setting your pocket square.
By getting precise answers to these questions, a direction for video content strategy will start to reveal itself.
Video Content Marketing Wins
Like content marketing, video content marketing should be beneficial to your customers and add value to their lives. At Rocket Driver, we use videos for our customers because they favor watching videos. And we use it because Google loves it, too.
Whether you’re learning about video marketing services for your agency or would like white-label offerings for your business, we’ve got you covered. Rocket Driver offers white-label video marketing services for digital agencies and an entire Marketplace of digital solutions you can resell now.