Did you notice the influx of video content on different platforms and digital channels? Posting an online video for marketing purposes is almost a must for every marketing campaign. According to recent reports, 86% of digital marketers use video as part of their marketing efforts. In addition to this, 84% of marketers say that videos are effective in generating quality leads.
As more and more marketers are shifting their focus from simple blog posts to entertaining video content creation, it’s important to know what exactly it takes to create an effective and successful video marketing strategy.
Guide To Starting A Video Marketing Campaign
Step #1: Identify your video marketing goals
The first step in building an effective video marketing plan is to determine the campaign’s goals. It is important for any marketing team to have a good understanding of its objectives and to have a clear sight of what needs to be done. Creating a list of the video marketing’s goals provides a way to marketers to visualize their goals as well as measure their progress, efficiency, and success. Generally, marketing campaigns are designed to meet at least one of the following objectives.
Brand visibility and awareness
The first objective is to increase the market’s awareness of the brand, product, or service. This emphasizes the need to boost online visibility and build quality impressions. Because of the attention and interest video content can create, it can be an effective and efficient marketing tool to reach broader audiences.
Under this premise, the success of the video marketing campaign is gauged through the number of videos, the quality and frequency of social media mentions, as well as the quality of brand recall and recognition. To do this, video content creators need to take close attention to their content style, tone, and delivery to figure out the right format suitable for their target audience.
Lead generation and conversion
The second marketing goal revolves around generating quality leads and boosting the campaign’s conversion rates. A business’s marketing campaign is often tied to its subsequent sales efforts. After all, every company’s dream is to increase sales and revenue crucial for business success and growth.
But how can video content creation affect lead generation and conversion rates? This objective emphasizes the need to provide relevant and valuable content to the market. Video content types such as explainer videos, product reviews, and testimonials can encourage and convince potential customers to complete a sale. This objective is typically measured by the campaign’s lead count as well as its impact or influence on overall sales opportunities and conversion rates.
Community engagement and interaction
Establishing a solid and secure customer base or community is a crucial element for a successful business. This objective uses videos as a tool to communicate, interact, and relate to their target audience. The videos serve as an effective medium that allows the audience to resonate with and build a form of connection with the brand. One prime example of this is the use of social videos to elicit a particular reaction or establish a link with viewers.
A solid community or loyal customer base can do wonders for any business. It can be used in expanding customer reach, boosting online presence, as well as increasing actual sales. In video marketing campaigns, community engagement and interaction are typically measured by the quality of online engagements, average watch time, and the number of reactions, comments, and shares.
Step #2: Determine your target audience
Source: Pexels
Identifying a specific target audience is essential in creating an effective digital marketing strategy. The target audience serves as a market and a guide on how you should design your content’s styles, format, tone, and delivery. A targeted marketing campaign can make sure that you are directing your marketing efforts to the right or suitable demographic.
Ideally, your target audience should align with your marketing objectives. Regardless of whether you want to boost brand awareness, generate quality leads, or build a solid community. It’s important to consider and identify a target audience to be more effective with your efforts. Large-scale and broad campaigns can help advertise and promote your brand to an equally broad audience. However, many considered this strategy inefficient.
The principle behind identifying your target audience is simple. Unless you sell something like oxygen or water, it is safe to say that not everyone needs your product or service. Given the different niches in the ecommerce marketplace, it’s important to consider the particular group or demographic you want to know more about your brand, product, or service.
For example, an automotive company would want car enthusiasts to know more about their goods or services. Generally, this market would consist mostly of men between the ages of 18 to 35 years old. From there, marketers can make the necessary changes and adjustments in their video content and content creation process.
Step #3: Create a video content framework
With your marketing goals and target audience set in place, the next step would be to come up with your unique video content framework. This includes elements such as the characters, the storyline, the background, the setting, and more. These would serve as the foundation of how your video content will be designed and created long-term in order to achieve your marketing objectives. This step answers the question of what your videos are going to tell as well as how to deliver it to your target audience effectively.
Step #4: Establish a video marketing budget and content timeline
Source: Pexels
After brainstorming for your video content framework, it’s time to come up with and settle the budget appropriate for your marketing plan. Typically, your budget would set the tone for the level of production involved in your video creation process.
However, a smaller budget does not automatically mean that you would produce lower-quality videos. There are different types of video content that can be used for different marketing purposes. Some require fewer resources to create compared to others. Regardless, the goal should always be to produce valuable content in a manner that is suitable for your target audience.
Along with setting a marketing campaign budget, establishing a content timeline is also an important part of building a video marketing plan. The timeline should include everything from planning, production, and distribution. While it’s always important to strive to meet your content timeline, there may be times when some steps of your content creation process take unpredictably longer than usual.
When you’re struggling to meet your content deadlines, consider hiring an extra pair of hands such as a virtual assistant (VA). VAs can do more than just simple and mundane administrative tasks such as answering phone calls and providing customer service. There is a wide range of virtual assistants with different skills that can help with your content creation process. You can find someone that can help with the post-production, manage live videos, or even help create content themselves. Always be on the lookout for a quality virtual assistant that you can hire full time to provide crucial support on your video marketing campaign.
Bottomline
Effective video marketing is more than just posting video content online. In order to meet your marketing objectives, it’s crucial that you follow the steps involved in creating an effective video marketing plan. Identifying your marketing goals and objectives helps visualize the effort needed for the campaigns.
Typically, the grander the goals, the more time, resources, and strategies are involved. A part of this includes determining the target audience for your video marketing campaign and creating an appropriate content framework. Aside from that, finalizing the campaign budget and content schedule can help marketers keep track of every element of their marketing strategy. In the end, it’s important to keep in mind that every decision involved in your video marketing campaign should contribute to meeting and achieving your goals and objectives.
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