Videos are one of the most powerful tools to include in your marketing arsenal. They allow organisations to convey complex thoughts, ideas or emotions through images, video, graphics and sound. With every social media platform, adding an increasing number of video-posting capabilities it is more important than ever to stay up to date with the latest trends and create videos to engage your audience.
Of course, the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of the uses of video content is of course marketing, but there are many other uses of video that’s primary purpose – seemingly – may not be promoted. Cue content marketing.
Content marketing is a technique specifically designed to attract and engage a target audience. This is usually done by creating and sharing content that is relevant to today’s cultural views and current trends. Content marketing is one of the best ways to market because it promotes brand awareness and helps get the target audience more interested in the brand.
While not all video marketing is content marketing, it has become an increasingly popular form of video marketing and one that should be kept in mind while reading through this article.
What is Video Marketing?
Video marketing is an incredibly powerful form of engaging your audience through a video marketing campaign. It means using videos for promoting and sharing your business with a target audience. It can be used to tell an audience about your products or services. One thing that is essential to remember is that video marketing, when done correctly, can help any business in many different ways. A few of the results that an organisation will see when a good video marketing campaign is executed are:
- Increase in Brand Awareness
- Increase in Traffic
- increase conversions
The key to making a good video marketing campaign is knowing your audience. Of course, there are a few other keys that can be found in our article Video Marketing: A Complete Guide. But knowing your audience and what they want to see is essential.
Uses of Videos for Your Business
Within your business video can be used for a number of different things. Generally speaking, when we consider getting a personalised video produced, it doesn’t always occur to us that having a promotional video that is released internally to staff members could be equally as effective.
Employees are a business’s biggest advocates, so having regular, interesting and fun communication will encourage them to promote your business through word of mouth.
Externally, videos can be used for of course educational or promotional purposes but can also be used to manipulate brand perception. Have a look at the list below of video content types and see what may work for your business.
Engaging Video Content Types
How-To or DIY Videos
How to or DIY-type videos are a wonderful way to educate your audience on something that you are an expert in or contribute to. There are definitely different types of these videos but let’s return to the primary point we mentioned above: What does your audience want to see?
Consider perhaps the industry that an organisation functions within and find something that could be helpful to your audience. An electrician, for example, could offer simple solutions to at-home projects. “How to change a socket” are helpful videos showing off expertise and providing value to the consumer.
How-to or DIY videos are an amazing way to build trust and improve brand perception by building a relationship with the customer through providing value.
Meet the team
People often forget that there are faces inside the office building. Why is this important to show? Well, a meet the team video can humanise an organisation and help it begin to build a relationship with its customers. It is also a wonderful way to recruit new employees.
If done correctly, a meet the team video can share a company’s internal culture, brand and what a day-in-the-office is like.
Zendesk made an amazing, fast-paced video to recruit new employees. It covers who they are, what they do and what it’s like to work there in under two minutes. It’s hard to watch this video and not want to be part of their community.
Case Study
Somewhere right now, at least some of your clients are watching videos. Rather than procrastinate on news or sports channels, imagine driving more of your clients, more often to behind the scenes stories and engaging client case studies? Case study videos can work for any kind of organisation that provides a professional service. Prospective clients love them because they find themselves empathising with the story at its beginning because they are currently in the same situation of:
- Identifying a problem they have in their business
- Exploring a way to overcome that problem in their business
Case Study videos present an understanding of the problem and real-life examples that demonstrate your solution. Effective interviewing and understanding of stories is key to successful Case Study stories.
Testimonial videos can be similar however should be thought of more as a five-star Google review for your business. The difference with case studies is that they take the viewer on the journey from the problem, challenge, solution and it is told from the perspective of your customer and their business.
Case studies can also be used to promote brand views or beliefs. If for example, an organisation believes in living sustainably, they could make a case study video about individuals who have chosen an alternative lifestyle to support this. Another wonderful example is from Dove, who created this case study to support their brand belief that all women are beautiful and should feel so in their own skin. The video isn’t outwardly telling the audience to buy their product or that their product made the subjects more beautiful, it is simply a video that supports the company’s beliefs and makes a connection with the audience.
Educational Videos
Educational videos teach the viewer something. Similar to the How-to or DIY video consider your audience and what industry your organisation functions within. In this case, however, educational videos can offer the audience knowledge on something they may not have even realised they should know.
Consider initiatives that your organisation participates in or a little-known need that it may meet. If an organisation has signed up to be a part of a clean-energy initiative create an educational video that quickly goes over why the initiative is important, why the organisation signed up to it and how it will benefit the community.
This type of video similarly to the above-mentioned creates good brand awareness and perception and can aid the community on its own by raising awareness for a certain cause.
A fun, educational and definitely memorable video is this Spanish male cancer awareness video. Entitled “Touch Your Footballs” it definitely leaves an impression while still getting its point across. Even for someone watching outside of Spain, it is still extremely funny and relevant.
Product or Service Promotional
Lastly, of course, is the product or service promotional video which is, of course, an important one for driving sales enquiries and delivering revenue growth. Just because the focus of this video is on a product or a service does not mean that creativity and company culture and values cannot be conveyed. A product or service video should introduce the service in a way that also lets the consumer know what kind of organisation it’s coming from.
This service video for Slack is fun, fast-paced and simply explains what their service is and its benefits.
By driving traffic to your landing page, a promotional video can drive interested prospects to click your call to action button. The great thing about promotional video content is that your prospects can view it 24/7, delivering your business new enquiries while you sleep. Ensuring you have an engaging story and effective call to action, your promotional content can deliver new leads for your sales team, before they start their workday. Doesn’t that make good business sense?
Another style of video commonly used are explainer videos. If you’re looking for an engaging way to deliver information, then explainer animation videos might be the best stylistic choice. Typically using 2D or 3D animation, these videos can educate your audience about your unique selling proposition in a persuasive and entertaining package.
If you find your staff spend too much time answering frequently asked questions, then an Explainer Video might just be the key to improving client education and staff productivity.
How to Create an Effective Video Content Strategy for Your Business
Understanding specific goals and needs that a video marketing campaign needs to serve is essential. Some key points to remember include:
- Audience
- Goals
- Branding
- Frequency
Of course there are many other points that should be included but for now, we’ll focus on these.
Audience
Video content that helps your business, starts with the audience. With constant access to just about any type of content, people will only watch things they want to see. This means that as well as the below points, an organisation really has to take into account what will entertain and interest their audience.
Goals
The more specific an organisation can get with their goals the better. In most cases, refining goals should be done through competitor research, target audience evaluation and of course, the general goal of the video. General goals could include, driving traffic, awareness, sales or educating the audience. Consider what the call to action is for the organisation. Every good strategy begins with goals.
Branding
Even if your organisation has never worked with video, maintaining branding is essential. The brand ensures people know an organisation, and if done correctly, there are certain sounds, colours and ideas that can remind them of their brand. Deciding how to present an organisation’s brand through video in the strategy phase helps to ensure that it shines through to its fullest potential. If the video is going to sit on an organisation’s landing page, then it’s essential it fits with the other content on there.
Frequency
In the strategy phase, decide how often you want your audience to view the video. This section includes what platforms it will be shown on. For example, if you target the same audience on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, consider promoting a post. The odds of your audience seeing it numerous times across different platforms are high.
Final thoughts
Creating a successful video marketing campaign is no easy task. There is a range of video types and styles to choose from. But when it comes down to it, creating video content that helps your business needs to be done through carefully mixing your organisational expectations and goals with something that provides value to the target audience. Videos should support an organisation’s brand and beliefs. Good video content can be a simple or complex subject to its story and concept design, however, creating it should always be a very thorough process.
Hiring a corporate production company that can help align ideas and bring them to life is the best way to make sure that an optimal result is achieved. Inspireworks is a small team that consists of passionate industry experts who excel at capturing brand identity and bringing it to life. With over 20 years of experience, Inspireworks will help you create an amazing promotional video that will make your brand all the more memorable.
Please call us today at Inspireworks on 1300 885 968 or send us a message for more information.