Every day we see dozens of videos pass by our social streams, Netflix, Disney Plus, and on the television (for those of you who still spend your evenings tuning in). Video is how we consume most of our entertainment, how we learn to setup products that we buy, how we communicate with our families across thousands of miles, and much more.
Video is also a data-proven marketing and business strategy. And like the bread sticks at Olive Garden, everybody wants a piece.
You’re likely no different. You’ve seen countless, amazing videos that help to capture the brand or message of a particular business and leverage sales. It works; likely it worked on you. You’ve bought products as a result of videos or opted into free offers. Now you want to make a video that’s awesome (and works!) for your business as well.
But here’s the thing – video does not just magically work: You don’t just produce it, put it out into the world, and the sales start rolling in.
Our goal at People Project Media is to help you make videos that work. What we really don’t want is for you to produce an expensive, time-consuming video, post it to social media, and get nothing but a couple well-intentioned comments on your Facebook page.
Because here’s the thing: Much of the success of video comes from thinking about video strategies up front. That’s why we created this article. We’re convinced that the return on investment (ROI) and quality of the videos that you produce goes up to the degree that you think through a marketing strategy before you shoot.
If you implement the suggestions in this post, you’ll likely increase the ROI of your video once it’s produced. You’ll see more engagement online, and you’ll also make a better video in general.
Set Tangible Goals
Rarely do people want video for the video’s sake. Instead, they want video to do something for them, like to get sales, generate leads, increase brand awareness, whatever. Shooting a video is cool and all – but what exactly do you want it to accomplish after it’s produced?
Thinking through goals will drastically increase the likelihood of them actually happening. That way when you go to produce the video(s) you can work with your media team or production company to tailor the video to your intentions.
Make your goals SMART: Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Don’t make them wishy-washy like a limp handshake, “I want my video to be, like, awesome!” Instead, make them concrete. That way you can set up the structures to make them succeed and measure their success after you’re done. For example, “6 months after we publish our video we’d like to see 27 sales generated as a result of customers viewing the video”.
Plan The Other Media You’re Going To Create
It’s a year from now, and you’ve produced your awesome video. It’s sitting on your hard drive, ready to distribute to the world. You upload it to Facebook, write a catchy description, click “Post”, and send it out!
Somewhere, one of your customers sees it. They watch the video, and their eyes are star struck. “What an awesome video!!!” They comment. They hit the like button… and scroll along.
Every one of your customers does exactly this, and you don’t get a single sale.
You wonder, “Why didn’t we get any sales?”
Well, we’ll tell you why: Video is useless to convert a customer into a sale or lead without the help of other digital media.
Video is great for catching the eye and grabbing attention. But if there’s nothing for your ideal customer to do after they’ve watched your video, they’ll simply scroll along, leaving you with nothing but a video with a couple likes and no tangible ROI to speak of.
Here’s our suggestion: Don’t spend all your money on video. Instead, spend half your money on video, and half your money on the other digital marketing structures to make that video succeed.
Some other media that you can use include:
A Landing Page
Once your ideal customer watches your video, you likely still have a long way to convert them into a lead or a customer. Video alone won’t do that – but a landing page is awesome for taking them the rest of the way.
A landing page is a web page where the customer “lands” after they watch your video. Once they’ve finished your video, they click the “learn more” or “buy now” button, and they’re sent to this page which accomplishes a couple goals:
- Talks more about the problem that the product/service solves
- Talks about the transformation that’s possible
- Explains the product or service in more detail
- Introduces them to your business or organization
- Asks them to take your desired action (e.g. buy, download a free resource, contact you, whatever)
- Answers any questions or concerns that they may have
If you’re fishing, your video is your hook, and the landing page is your reel. Customers buy emotionally first and logically second. If your video hooks their heart, your landing page has to reel in their mind. Once it does, they’ll be ready to convert!
An Email Marketing List
Statistics say that a potential customer has to see your offer on average seven times before they’re ready to buy. Sure, there might be a few one-off buyers – but generally speaking, if your video is the first time someone has learned about your product or service, you’ve still got a long way to go in order to convert them into a customer.
An email marketing list is an awesome tool to accomplish this goal, and it pairs incredibly well with videos.
An email marketing list allows you to continue to communicate with your leads after they’ve seen your video. A video connects the person with your cause, and then your email marketing continues to work at them until they opt into your offer.
For example, maybe you’re a nonprofit serving acid burn survivors and would like to use a video to increase donations from your American audience. To accomplish this, you produce your video, spend some money to boost it on social media, and as a call to action you ask people to sign a petition to outlaw acid attacks in a third-world country.
People feel like they’re doing good by signing, so they sign and give you their email. Once you have their email, you can continue to email them stories about the work you do and ways that they can help. Many will not donate, some will. But the only way you’ll identify those with a passion for your cause is if you continue to communicate.
And the best thing about email marketing? It’s pretty much free except for your time. There’s no printing costs and many email marketing platforms allow you to use basic services for free. It’s the digital marketing with the highest ROI, and there’s no reason you should not be using it.
Here’s a few providers if you’re interested
Personally, we use Hubspot around here. But be sure to check out the different platforms to see which one works for you!
Social Media
Another excellent digital marketing structure to think about leveraging is social media. Setting up your social media gives you some powerful ways to maximize the use of your video:
- Create an audience for your business and continually communicate with them.
- Advertise your video to specific demographics who you know are going to be attracted to your offer
- Gather emails using your video or redirect viewers to a landing page
If you have not created and aren’t doing even the most-basic upkeep of your social media, why not? It’s a totally free, effective way (when used right) to continue having conversations with your audience and leverage the videos you make. So, before you produce your video, think about how social will fit in with your strategy!
Think Through Your Distribution Strategy
Once your video is complete, what will you do with it? Well, let me tell you what you don’t want to do with it: Stick it on a hard drive and let it collect binary 1s and 0s dust.
Production of your video is just the beginning. Promotion and distribution of your video is a whole other essential part. Because unlike evolving amphibians, your video ain’t just gonna grow legs and walk out into the world itself.
Also, thinking through your distribution strategy is going to help you decide what type of video that you want to make. Different distribution platforms have different types of videos that work better and worse. Thinking through this is going to help you decide whether to produce a 30 second ad, a 3 minute feature video, or a 60 minute webinar.
But how do you distribute your videos? Well, here’s a couple options:
Show Your Video on Television: Produce a video for your local or national television channel. TV may seem like a dinosaur, but in many markets and with many demographics it still works. With a catchy video and the right call to action, a television ad can generate ROI for your business effectively.
- Ideal Video Length: 30-60 seconds
- Pros: Established audience, local people will see your ad, proven track record.
- Cons: Expensive, no ability to create an immediate call to action, no built-in way of tracking exactly who is seeing it.
Do A Social Media Campaign: Boost your video on a social media channel of your choice. Social media is becoming one of the quickest and most-effective means to distribute videos. If you’re looking for a simple way to get your videos out there, social media is a great option with many added features that help convert a viewer into a lead or customer.
- Ideal video length: 15-120 seconds
- Pros: Target your ideal customers in your local area, create immediate call to action, affordable.
- Cons: Poor performance if you don’t think through the customer journey, often you need a website, landing page, or email marketing list to close a sale or generate a lead.
Do An Email Marketing Campaign: Send your video directly to your email list. A great way to market if you don’t have a huge budget to spend, and for personalizing your marketing experience. Create a webinar or customized video series and send it right to the people you know are interested in your services.
- Ideal video length: Varies
- Pros: Complete personalization and a personal feel, people can simply email you back if they’re interested, goes right into people’s email inbox where they check every day.
- Cons: No demographic customizability, risk of loss of customer trust if executed poorly, oftentimes ineffective if only done as a single email.
Create A YouTube Channel: Create and maintain a YouTube channel that solves problems for your ideal customers. A great way to build an audience and customer trust for a relatively low cost. Awesome if you have an iPhone and know how to use it and are good at maintaining consistency in producing content for your audience!
- Ideal video length: 4 minutes+
- Pros: High-performing platform to create and communicate with your customers, perfect for educational and problem-solving videos, built-in means for a lead to “subscribe” to your content, easily direct people to other videos that they need.
- Cons: Need to have basic video creation skills, requires consistency, can get expensive if you don’t want to edit/upload your own videos.
I’m sure that there are more. But these are some of the most-popular, and more than enough to get you started thinking about distributing your video.
If you miss everything else in this post, just remember this: Producing a video without thinking through its distribution is like buying a car without buying any gas. Without a solid distribution strategy, that nice shiny video you just dropped lots of money on isn’t going anywhere.
Feeling A Little Overwhelmed? We’ll Help You Think Through This Stuff For Free
By this point you’re probably thinking, “Jeez, I didn’t realize making a video that works was so complex!”
The good news is that if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, we’d love to help you through this process completely free of charge. Through a free video strategy session, we’ll walk you through the process of creating a video strategy for your business. That way when you actually go to produce your video yourself, with us, or with a different production company, you’ll have a higher likelihood of the video succeeding in the end.
No obligation, no cost, and at the end of the session we’ll deliver a strategy document with all your information so that you can know exactly what you’re going to do after you produce your video!
Alright, friends! Thanks for reading! Until next time, your friendly neighborhood video producers at People Project Media!