How to Create a Video Marketing Strategy for 2022

In the ongoing effort to win the attention span of consumers, video has become increasingly popular and essential as a marketing tool. There are many reasons why the use of video should be part of any savvy marketer’s strategy. In this blog post, we’ll look at the importance of video to marketing and how you can develop a successful content strategy for 2022.

Why Use Video?

When done right, video is an entertaining and extremely effective form of content, so it naturally lends itself to use as a marketing tool. Probably the biggest contributing factor to the effectiveness of video marketing has been the growth and popularity of social media. Despite this, many marketers still ignore video in their digital marketing campaigns or just are not obtaining the most effective outcomes. There are some great benefits to incorporating video into a well-planned marketing strategy. The most obvious of these is the fact that video is captivating, and isn’t that the goal of all good marketing? To enchant the viewer? A good video can also improve SEO, is easily shareable, and ultimately can lead to increased conversions. All-important metrics, any marketer worth their salt would agree.

Plan Your Strategy Before You Begin

If you want to increase your business by utilising the power of video content marketing, then it is advisable to first develop a comprehensive video marketing strategy. The usual steps for developing any marketing campaign apply to video marketing too, including identifying your target audience and its interests, goals, and challenges.  Once you have this information, you can put together a video strategy that will help your business reach these targets. An effective content marketing strategy should focus on your audience, what it is they want out of a business like yours, and how you can provide that. It would also be helpful to include the goal of the video in your plan. Once you have this information, you can begin research and put together an outline for the best way to achieve these goals with video.

One of the most attractive features of video marketing is its ability to change behaviour.  Viewers that watch a video are more likely to take action than those who read plain text. This is because we tend to remember visuals much better than plain text and video engages the viewer’s imagination.

Research

Prior to filming even one second of video, conducting some thorough market research is incredibly important. This will help your video marketing strategy by uncovering key insights that will inform your strategy for incorporating video into your overall marketing initiatives. It will also provide a comprehensive understanding of the market, your customers, and your competitors. This process will ultimately be the roadmap for your video marketing strategy and will also help identify new business opportunities.

Setting Objectives

The first step in this research phase is to set goals for your video marketing. The objectives should include specific, measurable, and realistic outcomes that can be attributed directly to your video campaigns. There are many factors that need to be considered when creating this goal, such as target audience demographics, location, industry, culture, and psychographics.

Define Your Audience

Defining your audience is the best place to begin when setting your objectives as it will assist with identifying goals for your video content strategy. After all, the most important aspect of video marketing is to make sure your videos are getting in front of the right audience. Once you’ve defined who your target audience is, you should research how they use social media to understand where they are spending time online. This can help you find out what type of videos are working for your competitors and what type of content is being shared the most.

Analyse Current Content

Conducting an analysis of your existing content is also an important step. What can you learn from this? Subscriber demographics, what they like and don’t like, engagement levels for different types of content; basically, all essential information that will help design your marketing strategy and determine where video fits in best.

Competitor Content Analysis

If you are just starting with video or looking to expand your reach by uploading videos to new social media sites, then competitor content analysis is something you’ll also need to do. A thorough analysis will provide information about how others in your industry are using video and how they may be doing a great job of incorporating video marketing into their overall strategy. It’s also a good way to uncover gaps in the market and identify where you can fill those gaps with video content.

Once you’ve identified how your competitors are making video you can then determine how to make video that stands out from the crowd.  After all, your business is unique so your content should be unique. It’s essential to differentiate through your content creation in order to let prospects know why they should choose you.  We recommend looking at your values and culture and making sure that they shine through every frame of the video you create.

Often we find brands making video using lots of stock footage but this is a sure fire way to create generic content that could have been made by their competition.  Stock by its very nature is created to be as generic as possible. No matter what the voiceover says the video will not stand out from the crowd and with thousands of corporate videos being uploaded to YouTube and LinkedIn every day, your video will be camouflaged in a sea of blandness.  Instead you can look at what your competitors are doing and do the opposite! Be brave, be bold. It pays off in the end!!

Define Your Message

Are you trying to convey a specific message? If yes, then you should begin defining it before diving into video production. This is essential because the content of your video will support this message. Whether you are selling a product or service, or otherwise telling another story, knowing what you are trying to say will help frame everything about your videos. When developing your messaging, it’s also important to stick to one simple idea. In this sense, less is more, because you don’t want to confuse a viewer with multiple offers. Your audience should be able to recall exactly who you are, what you do, and how you can benefit them. Achieve this last part by always including a strong call to action in your videos.

Video Strategy

One of the most unique aspects of video marketing is it can bring your business to life. Video humanises and personalises content. It is easily digestible and often entertaining. It can educate, inform, and persuade in ways many other forms of content cannot. So, when you begin to define your video strategy there are some important aspects to keep in mind.

Decide What Kind of Videos You’ll Create and When to Use Them

There are many different types of video content that can be used for marketing, and it is important to understand when each type should be used. According to HubSpot, videos can be split into six different categories: product demos or how-to’s, explainer videos for new audiences, testimonials and case studies, video content for social media marketing, company culture videos (intro/outros), real-time events. Each has its own unique purpose.

Understanding the “Hero, Hub, Hygiene” Model

Another important aspect of how to use videos for marketing purposes is understanding the ‘Hero, Hub, and Hygiene’ model. This content marketing model was created by Google for YouTube publishers, but the concepts may be utilised in other types of content marketing as well. The overriding concept of this model is to embrace a well-rounded and consistent approach in your video marketing efforts as opposed to always chasing the elusive “viral” video.

A simple way to understand this model is:

The HERO: These types of videos show how your product or service can be utilised in the real world. They are usually more technical in nature and demonstrate how something works.

The HUB: These types of videos are like infographics in that they are informational, but they include videos instead of images or text.

The HYGIENE: These types of videos are what you might consider ‘promotional.’ They are usually shorter videos used to inform, but not educate.

Incorporating Video into Every State of the Buyer’s Journey

Once you’ve developed your video strategy, it’s time to start thinking about ways to incorporate video into every stage of the buyer’s journey. The first step would be to create videos for lead generation purposes, such as using webinars or infographics. Using the HHH model, the HERO video would be used here, as it is typically best suited for educating or informing customers about your product or service and showing them how it works.

After this comes product education videos, then social proof videos for your customers. This is a good example of where to utilise the HUB video when you have a lot of information to convey or want to focus on a specific area of your business. The HUB is also good for delivering simple messages about your company, industry, news and updates, and upcoming events/promotions.

The last step in the buyer’s journey, which should always include a video, is used to retain customers, and show what you can do next for them. Here you’d incorporate the HYGIENE video, which typically falls under the promotional category and is good for attracting and maintaining attention. It can also help spread awareness about you, your company, or products/services, but it doesn’t use the same type of tone as a HERO video which is more humanising and educational in nature.

Ideation

The ideation phase of video marketing is critical because it’s where all the research and planning begins to meet the creative process of video making. The goal of this stage is to pursue as many options as possible that may later be implemented. During this stage, the video production team must move from recognising and describing consumer issues to proposing solutions for those needs.

Coming up with Ideas

You can come up with video ideas in many ways — from brainstorming sessions to using mind mapping tools. There are also some key questions you should ask yourself at this stage. These include determining if your videos will try to solve consumer problems, explaining how your products/services work, or showing real-life examples of people using them.

Taking an Audience-First Approach

As discussed earlier, the entire point of video marketing is to put your organisation’s videos in front of the right audience. To that end, there is no point in creating videos if you aren’t taking an audience-first approach. This means going back to your research in which you defined your target audience, determined their needs and wants, and use that information to help develop ideas for video content that will resonate with them.

Storytelling

Storytelling is an art form that has been around for millennia. It’s how we connected as humans with each other and with the world around us. Storytelling in video marketing works in a similar way; it can make your business, product, or service more relatable to people and engage them on an emotional level. This is important because when you create content that appeals to one of your five senses, such as sight with videos, you’re more likely to keep them interested.

Planning

The planning phase of creating your video campaign is the next important step in your video marketing strategy. Whether you’re developing one video, or a series of them, taking time in the planning stage will keep you organised and on budget. This process is important whether your video project is scripted or non-scripted. Even a video that is non-scripted needs to convey the key messaging points to the audience. Taking this step will help you determine how to go about achieving that.

Minimum Quality Standards

Standards are an important part of any business. With video, there are three minimum standards that you need to set when creating your marketing strategy. These include video format, length, and lighting.

Video Format

The most popular video formats are MP4, which are compatible on mobile phones, Windows and Mac computers. MP4 is the most universal video format as it can retain high video quality while having relatively small file sizes. If you want to create something in really high quality or retain it for archive purposes then ask for a prores export.

Length of Videos

The length of your videos is another important factor for consideration when developing your marketing plan, and really depends on what you are looking to achieve with your video and where it will be distributed.

For example, if you’re looking to create a brand video to introduce audiences to your organisation, we recommend keeping videos short (around 30 to 45 seconds) and try to make it entertaining or rewarding to watch. This makes it easy to share on social media and direct traffic to your landing pages.

If you’re looking to create evergreen content for your website that’s aimed at answering buyer questions, telling a story, or explaining how a product works – longer videos (2 mins) is usually recommended to give your audience a good overview and give you time to effectively communicate your key message.

These values vary depending on the nature of your business, product(s), or service(s), but they’re angles to consider and will influence your brief, script and ultimately your budget.

Video Quality

When producing videos for marketing purposes, there are some basics that you should always follow. These include having proper lighting and audio and where possible, shooting in 4K to ensure high video quality. We recommend talking to your production team about how you can get the best production values in your video.

Choosing Your Video Platforms

There are multiple video platforms where you can upload your marketing videos. Each one has its own purpose and it’s important to choose the right one for your business goals and audience. Some of the most popular video platforms include YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Vimeo.

Choosing an On-Site Video Player

The video players that you use on your website can also play a role in video marketing success. In the coming years, these types of tools will become more interactive with options for your viewers to choose from or interact with as they watch your videos.   And there is another important reason for including an on-site video player on your website, and you need look no further than YouTube and Amazon for the reason why.

These companies go to great lengths (both financially and from a content-perspective) to keep visitors on their site. Keeping eyeballs on your website is one of the best ways to increase conversions, which ultimately can lead to sales. Where this factors into video marketing is the fact that the average internet user spends 88% more time on a site that contains video than one that does not. Research has also shown that video on a landing page increases conversions by 80%. When you consider that landing pages are directly tied to lead generation, it’s easy to see how important on-site video can be for revenue generation.

How to Produce Your Videos: Production Company, Agency, or Freelancer?

There are times when you may not have the time, resources, or internal manpower to create your own videos. There are different types of companies that you can work with for this purpose, including independent professionals or agencies. You need to choose which one is right for your business.

If you have a content marketing plan in place, then working with a video production company is likely your best solution. A video production company will focus on producing videos to meet your brief (such as an explainer video for a product). This is great if you have an in-house marketing department that is looking to outsource video production to work in conjunction with your wider content strategy.

An agency works with you to create your content marketing strategy, helping you produce all of your video ads, and essentially serve as an extension of your marketing department. The main benefit of choosing this method is having access to multiple talents and resources at once, including writers, designers, actors, social media marketers, and videographers. They can work with you creatively, pitch different ideas and look after your entire video marketing campaign.

The benefit of working with independent professionals (such as freelancers) however, is that they’re usually more affordable than agencies. This is one reason why many companies choose to work with them when doing video marketing. While it’s true that their fees are less expensive, you’ll still want to make sure their talent and skill level is professional enough to deliver the kind of videos you want to have made.

Making Your Videos Shareable

Video marketing success largely depends on the view count that your video receives. This means that it’s crucial to make them shareable so that people can find them online and spread the word about them. What it does not mean is not trying too hard to create the next viral video. There are some specific ways that this can be accomplished. First, always make sure when uploading video content to pay attention to your titles and video description. The keywords that you want your video to rank for (to help appear in search engine results) should be included in the title and description. Additionally, if you include auto-generated captions, ensure that they’re correct. YouTube and other search engines rely heavily on closed captions to understand what your video is about. This helps them deliver your video to viewers when they enter relevant search queries.

Making videos shareable simply means creating a video that your viewers will enjoy and speaks to their needs, interests, or challenges. If you can do that, your videos have a greater chance of being shared. This goes back to understanding your target audience.

Different Language Versions

Another important step in the planning phase is determining the language(s) in which you choose to make your videos. Again, knowing your target audience will help inform this decision. It might be a good idea, if your viewers are multilingual, to create multiple versions of your videos in different languages. Also, keep in mind that subtitles or voiceover translation can be beneficial for reaching an even larger audience.

Building Your Video

The final phase of creating your marketing videos is where all your hard work in the previous stages comes to fruition – creating your videos! Now, it’s time to put your ideas into motion and bring your video marketing strategy to life.

Customise Content

The first step in that process is to create content that’s appropriate for each social media platform in which your videos will appear. Each of these channels are unique so you need to make sure your video content is relevant and engaging for each one.

Optimise for SEO

This step is especially important. Optimising your videos for SEO must be a priority for your videos to be found by new customers and clients who are searching on Google and other top search engines. One of the most important ways to achieve this is through keyword ranking. The keywords that you want your video to rank for should be included in the video’s title and description.

You can also optimise your online videos by making sure your video content is appropriate for each social media platform. For example, if you’re uploading video content to Facebook, not only should the video itself be customised but also the descriptions and captions on that page should contain relevant meta tags or keywords.

Another good idea is to insert a video transcript to generate captions. This helps search engines better understand your video’s content. If you use auto-generated captions, just make sure they’re correct.

Especially for videos that you embed on your own website, make sure that the rest of the page content (where the video appears) is relevant to the content of the video. For example, if you own a pet store, you would not embed a video that discusses the best foods for your dog on a page in which the content is focused on how to set up a saltwater aquarium.

Specifically for YouTube, there are additional steps you can take to optimise your videos for SEO. These include making sure to use a great thumbnail, utilising end screens and cards, including keywords in the filename of the video, and adding tags appropriately.

Another great way to support your content strategy is to share the video in a blog post and write about the process, content creation, and how the video fits within your company culture. This will be a great behind-the-scenes look at your video and topic area.

Avoid Pitfalls of Video Advertising

There are some common mistakes that many marketers make when using video advertising. Fortunately, these can be avoided if you’re aware of what they are.

First, don’t make the mistake of making the video all about your own brand. Aim to focus on the audience, their challenges, and how you can solve them. Related to this, don’t make the mistake of trying to hard-sell your product or service. Over-emphasising this will likely turn your viewer off; nobody wants to have aggressive messaging pushed in their face. In a similar vein, try not to over-crowd your video with too many messages. Less is more.

You’ll also want to make sure you measure the right KPIs. It’s easy to get caught up in video views, but they won’t tell you whether your videos are actually working. You’ll want to make sure that you measure the right metrics to guide your marketing strategy.

We recommend using social media cut-downs of videos to lead traffic to your website – where your main video is housed. We call this “tent peg” marketing, where the tent peg content directs you to the tent pole primary content.

And lastly, don’t forget to include effective CTAs. If you’ve done all the work to create a quality video, but don’t take the last step of directing viewers as to what they should do next, all your effort will be for naught. Make sure each video you produce in your marketing strategy for 2022 isn’t trying to achieve everything, and instead focus each video on one key message directed at one stage of the buyer’s journey.

Measure Success

The final step in video marketing is to measure your video’s performance by using analytics. Knowing what metrics you need to track and how you’ll use this information to determine if your videos are working or not is crucial for success. This type of data will help demonstrate the effectiveness of all your other efforts and show ROI on your video marketing investment.

How to Analyse, Evaluate, and Learn

One of the biggest mistakes that marketers make in using video marketing is to stop after they’ve made their first few videos. It’s critical to continue your video marketing strategy by consistently analysing, evaluating, and learning from it. Some ways to do this include:

• Identifying the best- and worst-performing videos. This will tell you what’s working and where you can improve and will help you optimise future online video.
• Analysing your audience’s response. See how your viewers are engaging with your videos. This is another way to understand how your audience feels about your content and brand message.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of your channel. Look for trends in data related to your own channel and other channels as well.

Video marketing is an effective way to build relationships with your audiences. Using video on social media channels can enable businesses of all shapes and sizes to increase customer acquisition, build their brand, and generate more revenue from existing customers. Now that you have a basic understanding of what video marketing is and how to create a video marketing strategy, it’s time for you to get started building a video marketing strategy for 2022 to better help you achieve your business goals.