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What is video marketing?
In a nutshell, it is a marketing strategy that integrates video into your digital marketing plans and campaigns to achieve various goals, from brand promotion to business profitability.
In the period of 2016-2020, more businesses started using video as one of their core marketing tools, increasing from 61% to 86%. This type of media is believed to play an important role for both B2B and B2C.
Video marketing has many ways of manifestation. Here are some more common categories based on their specific purposes.
Accounting for more than 70% of all types, explainer video is used to explain a concept or idea behind a product or service.
Another is tutorial or how-to video, which is more about hands-on practice than theory. Therefore, it’s generally longer than explainer.
Depending on platforms, a promotion video about one product may take different forms.
In this category, the most popular is commercials. Its longer form is called infomercial, which is usually about tangible goods, may be presented by celebrities and broadcasted on TV. Others are product launch, product demo and in-store video.
Testimonial and case study or success story video helps build trust of potential customers in the brand. You may have watched another type of testimonial – employee testimonial, but this is more about a recruitment or company culture promotion campaign.
Un-boxing or product review is another type to reinforce trust in a brand’s products, but it can also be made by users or Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs). This user-generated content usually gains more popularity and credit.
On the other hand, customer support video aims at helping current customers resolve certain difficulties when using the product. This is somehow similar to a tutorial, but more specific to a problem.
Brand video is arguably the most common type in the company culture category. It showcases a company’s mission and values, sometimes their history, and usually belongs to a larger advertising campaign to build awareness, intrigue and attract new audiences.
Event video can be both formal (corporate events, etc.) and casual (year-end parties, etc.). It is good for building connections and promote a company’s resources. Sharing on social media, such as by Facebook Live, is a common practice here.
Other types to promote company culture are company Vlog, recruitment video (in an employer branding campaign) and behind-the-scenes.
Webinar: can be set up as a general educational session of a certain topic or training for customers.
Internal communication video: often used for onboarding, internal training or official announcement.
Livestream: a more tricky type because it can be used for all purposes, be it to promote company culture or advertise for a certain product. With the unique feature of high interactivity and in real time, livestreams provide a more immersive and authentic experience to the audience.
What should companies expect to gain from video marketing?
Video marketing is one preferred approach by many businesses due to its numerous and lasting benefits. Here are 4 direct gains you can expect:
Video provides a higher feel of reality than other media. The convincing feeling of “seeing is believing” stimulates more emotions and actions.
Compared to a long list of customers posted on your home page, one testimonial video with a few real customers advocating your product will hit the spot.
One of the factors for SEO efficiency is dwell time or on-site time. And with more compelling and relevant video on your site, users will be more likely to stay longer. Also, if you produce tutorials, it’s more likely to appear on the top of Google’s SERPs as users input a related search.
Social media also receives great benefits as people like to share things that are pleasant to see and easy to digest, and most of the time, videos stay on their list.
Do you know that 55% of consumers use video to make their decisions because it helps boost their confidence, especially when they’re drowning in a sea of brands.
And with the right techniques, posting video on your landing pages can improve conversions by 80%.
Many agree that this is the ultimate goal for all business investment. In a 2021 marketing survey by Wyzowl, 78% agreed that “video has directly helped increase sales” and it provides attractive ROI.
When this type of media becomes easier and easier to produce yet its benefits haven’t stopped raising, this is a worthy investment for any business in any industry.
What should NOT be done to keep your video production effective?
Many have fallen prey to purported recommendations of how to make the best video. Let’s take a look at some more common ones and the reasons they harm your brand more than help.
Every good thing needs moderation, and exceptions don’t apply here. For example, when making an educational video, you may want to share a lot of information. But most viewers are not patient enough to stay till the end of a “stuffy” albeit useful educational session.
Make it easier to digest by breaking down the big topic into smaller chunks, each for one topic. In that way, it’s also more convenient when you want to edit, add or remove some content for information updates.
Creativity is great, as long as it doesn’t hinder the process or waste resources. Creativity is best in pre-production. After that, making changes on a whim will not only slow things down but also cause frustration.
Try to follow closely the process and if you really want to change it, consider thoroughly pros and cons of these two scenarios.
DIY provides the benefit of full control of the process and is usually praised for having the quality of authenticity. So for some content types, DIY is the better choice, provided your related skills pass the minimum bar.
However, in some certain cases, such as product launch, brand and commercial video creation, professional services of a reliable marketing agency or production house are usually the go-to choice for your company.
And outsourcing doesn’t mean you lose all control. It means you have a helpful hand to do jobs requiring specific skills that you don’t have to (or don’t want to) develop in-house.
Call-to-actions are not just “Buy Now” buttons. They are a way to measure performance, so they can be an invitation to subscribe to the channel, to follow, like, share, comment, or divert to other related content.
Including CTAs shows viewers relevant and helpful next steps. So make good use of it for higher engagement and conversion.
Unless you possess extensive resources of personnel, equipment, expertise, budget and time, this is not the best way to go.
Selective collaboration with other brands and KOLs will better utilize the collective power to create an edge in this fierce competition.
How long should a video be for highest marketing results?
Each type has a range of “Goldilocks length”, depending on its purposes and expectations from viewers. You can’t expect people to keep watching a mid-roll commercial ad for 10 minutes, but that length is acceptable for a tutorial.
Remember to check the allowed and recommended length before posting on any platform, as each has their own rules. It means you should not “utilize” one same video for all platforms because the results will likely not be as you expected.
You may have heard of the “max-2-minute golden rule”, but it really depends on the situation.
- Explainer: 30-90 seconds. This equals to around 200 words of script.
- Tutorial: It depends on your topic, but it should be less than 20 minutes. If you can’t stuff all necessary information in that frame, consider breaking it down into a series, with each staying at 3-6 minutes.
- Commercials: Usually less than 30 seconds, depending on where it is posted. Commercials can be as short as 5 seconds as in mid-roll ads on YouTube.
- Testimonial or case study: 10 minutes at max.
- Product video: It depends on how complex your product is, but try to keep it at maximum 3 minutes.
- On landing pages: 30-60 seconds.
- Facebook: 5-10 seconds for ads, max 90 seconds for in-feed and 5-10 seconds for story.
- Instagram: A general video may last 30 seconds, while ads stay best at 15 seconds and stories at 5-10 seconds.
- LinkedIn: Ads perform best at maximum 15 seconds, while in-feed video has a much wider range: 30-300 seconds (5 minutes).
- YouTube: If it’s skippable, make it flexible. If it’s non-skippable, maximum 6 seconds.
How to measure your video marketing effectiveness?
The most commonly used metrics, it includes shares, comments and likes.
Engagement rate on Facebook and Instagram will affect your organic reach, as these two platforms believe similar audiences will like similar compelling content. So as long as your content resonates well with followers, rest assured that they will be treated more favorably by the platforms.
This is usually measured by view count, which is used to assume brand awareness and PR effectiveness. But because view count is a shallow way to measure those two, consider combining it with engagement.
Different platforms have a different way to count the number of views, whether it includes replays. For example, Facebook counts a view after 3 seconds of watching. YouTube counts views by their own rules to monitor closely for fake views.
This is the percent of viewers who click on the CTAs and visit another site. It is generally measured by links on landing pages, PPC clicks, email links, Facebook and Instagram ad clicks, and so on.
The higher the watch time, the higher the relevancy score. Targeting and content quality are two factors contributing to watch time.
This metric is easier to measure for sponsored ads because it is linked directly to the purchase decision.
Besides common metrics, you can consider the number of re-watches, replays, subscribers, play rate, bounce rate and dwell time.
With different purposes, your company may settle on more specific metrics.
What are potential gains from video production and marketing for businesses?
Apart from apparent benefits listed above, many aspects of video marketing remain underexplored. One of many new trends is undoubtedly watching livestream on mobile devices. But we still have more to come:
More formats are on the horizon. Shoppable video known for higher engagement rates will be more popular, while social media platforms expand their list of acceptable formats.
This is the perfect opportunity for SEO to shine, so review your current SEO strategies and put more focus on video content to prepare for this favorable change.
Video, whether pre-produced or livestream, have weeded out many barriers in the process of learning and training by presenting concepts and new information in an easier way to digest.
With more user-generated content to increase brand credibility, your company can invest less effort on creating new content and more on repurposing content for higher impact. However, you need a thorough plan to manage and utilize all content, no matter who made it.
Livestream virtual events transcend geographical limits so they reach a much bigger audience, while real events are argued to bring a more realistic experience. With continuous development of virtual meeting and conferencing apps, online events will become mainstream, which means more opportunities for companies with less resources to make their names known.
Can video marketing benefit other digital marketing strategies?
Of course. Video marketing is great at supporting and boosting their cousins in the digital marketing family. There are 4 main areas that enjoy direct benefits.
If your brand has a lot of user-generated content, this is a good source to enhance your credibility.
As long as you know how to effectively manage your social media, adding video content will surely bring you nice surprises.
It’s even better with livestream optimized for mobile where potential customers can ask questions directly and make the purchase on the spot.
