The popularity of social media and the opportunities these platforms provide for brands – in particular, the rise of Instagram and Snapchat – has seen the use of video as a marketing tactic become an integral part of the strategic conversation. With Facebook’s billion-dollar push to become a major hub for video, this trend is set to continue. Did you know that 43% of people want to see more video content from marketers and that 51.9% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI? (HubSpot, 2017). Exactly.
Introducing video content to your marketing mix can seem a daunting prospect for many marketing managers, but it doesn’t have to be. The trick is to start by looking at what you’re trying to accomplish from an overall content perspective, then determine how you can use video to complement your efforts. This way, your videos won’t end up as an isolated set of assets with narrow goals, but instead, you will be able to harness the full power of video – to tell a story, build trust, convey emotion and to share lots of information – as part of your overall marketing strategy.
Where to get started? Here are seven types of video content your brand can produce:
1-4: Explainers, Product Demos, How-Tos and Testimonials.
According to Vidyard (2017), these are the four most common video types, and it’s likely that these will become essential content within your strategy. Each of these are great examples of ‘show, not tell’. These types of video help brands build trust, explain complex offerings succinctly and, ultimately, help foster a memorable audience impression.
5. Promotional videos
Promotional video typically encapsulates traditional forms of advertising content such as sales promotions but they can also be used as personal video invitations to pitch company events, conferences or webinars. Doing this helps provide your audience with a feel of your brand and its personality.
6. Social videos
Social video can either drive traffic to your website or simply live on your profile to help build brand awareness. They could encapsulate any form of branded content that helps serve a brand’s marketing objectives. For instance, is it a video teasing the release of a new product you hope will go viral, generating likes and shares to build hype, anticipation and awareness around its launch? Or is it simply a video wishing a brand’s audience a happy holiday? The possibilities are endless. Regardless of your goal, make sure you are clear on what the viewer will take out of it.
7. Company culture videos
These are a great way of letting your customers see who you are behind the scenes as both individual employees and a collective company. There’s no better way to connect with your audience than by giving them a behind-the-scenes peek into the goings on at your office. Not only does this provide a face for your brand, but it’s also great for recruitment purposes as it helps show potential employees what your work environment is really like.
Instead of building a video marketing strategy, the key is to build video into your marketing strategy. The most recent statistics show that video content isn’t just effective but the demand for it is growing at an impressively rapid pace. Cisco estimates that video traffic will account for 82% of all global internet traffic by 2021.
The use of video as a marketing tool should be embraced as an increasingly powerful way to communicate your brand story, explain your value proposition and build relationships with your customers and prospects. So, let’s get started!