As more brands and marketers realize the importance and benefits of video marketing, it has become increasingly important to learn how to utilize videos effectively as well. A good video development strategy is imperative for your brand to maximize ROI.
It has become readily apparent that written content and images just aren’t enough anymore to appease the changing wants, needs, and expectations of the consumer market. But the knowledge that videos are both a more preferred medium as well as a more effective marketing tool isn’t enough.
To ensure that you create and publish videos that truly resonate with your audience, grow your consumer base, increase brand recognition and sales, and ultimately result in a strong ROI, you’ve got to develop a video strategy. The following steps will help you create a video strategy that works. You'll create and publish better videos in a more efficient and organized manner, significantly increasing your chances of success.
Know Your Audience
Understanding who you're talking to is critical to creating videos that resonate. As an established brand, you are already collecting ample data on your target demographics that you have used to create buyer personas. Incorporate this information to help you develop your video content, as well as determine what channels you will use to publish your videos. For example, if your buyer persona is a millennial professional, then create authentic visual that can be published on social media and video platforms.
Define Your Goals
What do you hope to accomplish with your video strategy? Do you want to increase sales? Grow your customer base? Improve brand recognition? Or maybe it's a combination of all of the above? While you don’t necessarily need to decide on a single goal, it definitely helps to know what it is you’d like to achieve with your video marketing.
Plan different videos accordingly for each goal on your list. Having more than one goal simply means you’ll need to produce more than one type of video. This works better than trying to cram too much into a single video.
Outline Your Content Ideas and Video Plan
There are several types of videos you might seek to create, including product films, corporate and branding videos, explainer videos, or testimonial videos. Regardless of which type of video you are planning to create, you need to ensure that they will effectively engage the intended viewers.
Nearly 85% of consumers said a brand’s video helped them make a decision to purchase a particular product. But that will only hold true if the video is specifically geared towards your audience.
When planning your content, consider what the story will be, as well as the tone and voice of the content. What questions will it answer for the consumer, and what will your call-to-action be? Does the video (or the product in the video) offer something of value? Does it meet consumer expectations?
Related Reading: Video Storytelling Techniques
After you’ve planned the content for each video, you’ve got to determine the length of each video, and also decide where you will choose to publish them and when.
Many brands and marketers have achieved great success with their video strategy by utilizing a video management platform such as Viostream. As a complete online video solution, Viostream can help brands more effectively manage, create, publish, and secure their video assets. Get started with a free trial today.
Pay Attention to Your Budget
You might have grand ambitions for creating amazing videos, but sometimes your budget will impose limitations on what you can actually do. While you can certainly create inexpensive videos with today’s technology, consumers expect professional-grade videos, and will respond more positively to those rather than videos that look like they were produced by amateurs. Remember that your competitors are also likely working on their own video strategy. If their videos look better than yours, consumers will choose them over your brand.
Overall, it’s important to remember to be realistic about your budget. Adjust your content plan as needed to fit the constraints. In certain cases, hiring a professional video marketing agency might be a better alternative than attempting to accomplish everything yourself, since an agency will already have the resources and equipment you need.
Publish Your Videos
Publishing your videos is always the most exciting part of your video strategy, but first you’ve got to know which marketing channels you will use. Your main website is a great place to start; here are some helpful tips for adding a video library to your site.Some types of videos will only be effective when published to specific channels, so you should have determined this in an earlier step.
Knowing your audience is also key, including what channels the use to watch videos or search for brand and product information, as well as the optimal time of day to post your video in order to reach them.
Related Reading: Best Video Hosting Platforms for Business
Finally, don’t forget to add SEO-optimized titles, meta tags, captions, and keywords in the description for every video you post. This will improve search engine rankings and searchability.
What happens when you run into problems with your uploads? If you're on a commercial hosting platform, you may not get the help you need. With Viostream, you have access to our extensive help library and dedicated customer support. Check out our Help page to learn more.
Analyze the Results
Take advantage of analytical tools to track the results of your video marketing campaign. For example, Viostream offers a host of analytical tools to help you determine how effective your video strategy is and enables you to see what needs to be refined.
It’s also a good idea to include some A/B testing as part of your video strategy. Doing so can provide you with great insight into what parts of your video strategy are more likely to help you achieve your goals.
Putting together a successful video strategy isn’t something that can be done overnight. But you can certainly get a lot of assistance and improve the process by using an advanced video marketing platform to create, manage, publish, and analyze your video assets.
For marketers that wish to improve and expand upon their video strategy and maintain an edge over competitors, Viostream is a secure, reliable, and intuitive platform that offers a wealth of features. Contact our customer support team to learn more about how Viostream's professional video hosting platform can help improve your business communications today.
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