Video is a huge piece of your content strategy. In fact, it’s bound to become the core of your marketing efforts. Are you prepared?
Here are six steps to create a video marketing content strategy that is effective, measurable, and within your budget:
1. Understand Your Audience
Knowledge of your target audience can be the difference between creating effective content on the first try...and just tossing something together and hoping for the best.
One of the best ways to understand your ideal buyers is to create personas. Personas help you establish a clear picture of your buyers: What are their demographics? Their backgrounds? Their interest? What’s important to them, and what are their goals?
If you haven’t created personas for your audience, check out this guide from HubSpot.
2. Determine Your Goals
The importance of goal-setting is no secret. You’ll need to establish trackable metrics to help you determine accurate attribution and engagement. To choose the right metrics to track, take a look at where the video appears within the inbound marketing funnel.
- Attraction: Video views, frequency of mentions
- Conversion: Lead count, CTA clicks
- Engagement: Duration of views
You’ll have varying stats available depending on where the video is hosted. Services like YouTube or VidYard offer varying methods of trackability, including shares, comments, likes, CTA clicks, subscribers, device info, and demographics.
Website metrics will also help you set and track your video goals, offering metrics like click-through attribution and landing page conversion rates.
3. Assess Your Competition
Do you have a close competitor who is ahead of the game when it comes to video? Take a close look at their strategy. What kinds of videos are they putting out? Where are they placing the videos? How are they being promoted? What keywords and tags are they using? Specifically for YouTube, apps like TubeBuddy or VidIQ can help you analyze your competitors.
4. Focus on the Buyer’s Journey
Your wheels are turning...what kinds of videos will you need? What will they talk about? What tone will they use? How long should they be? Where should they go?
The answers to ALL of those questions can be found within the buyer’s journey.
The buyer’s journey is comprised of three stages: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. The content, placement and length of each video should intentionally correlate with a stage of the buyer’s journey. Your videos should also include CTAs that move the buyer along.
Here are some examples:
i. Awareness Stage:
The buyer is just becoming aware of their need or challenge and is beginning to research it. How-tos, educational videos, and inspirational videos are helpful here. You’ll place them in top-of-funnel channels such as social media and your blog pages.
- Length: 90 seconds or less.
- CTAs: “Learn More,” email sign-up, e-book download
ii. Consideration Stage:
The buyer is aware of what solutions exist and is considering your product or service. Product videos, company culture/brand videos, and testimonials are effective in this stage. Place them in easily accessible areas of your website and social channels, such as your homepage.
- Length: 2-3 minutes.
- CTAs: “Speak with a Team Member,” “See Demo,” “Compare Products”
iii. Decision Stage:
The buyer is knowledgeable about your brand and offerings, and needs the “why.” Why choose you over your competitors? Side-by-side comparison videos, case studies, reviews, and videos containing promotional info work in the decision stage.
Place them where buyers are looking for purchase info, such as pricing pages and product description pages. These can be longer to include in-depth information.
- CTAs: “Buy Now,” “Start Free Trial”
5. Stay On Brand
Everything you create should align with your brand’s values, story, and personality. Effective branding will make your campaign cohesive throughout the buyer’s journey. When videos do not consistently align with your branding, you risk confusing the buyer and losing valuable marketing power.
Here’s an example: Your company sells organic toothpaste. The first video your potential buyer sees is a scientific, formal explanation of how your company’s organic ingredients improve dental health. The next video is a dark, ominous description outlining the perils of traditional toothpaste chemicals. Then the lead sees your brand story video...a lighthearted, quirky, humorous story about two best friends who invented their own yummy toothpaste solution.
Sounds confusing and disorienting, right? Would the viewer even understand that all three videos came from the same company? Would the viewer have any idea who you are and what you stand for? Probably not. A wasted opportunity (and wasted funds).
Here are two tips to stay on brand across your video strategy:
- Create a brand style guide that includes details such as voice, personality, fonts, colors, words to use/avoid, logo/icon variations, etc.
- Cross-check every video with your business’s core values. Each piece of content should align with your value statements.
6. Stick to Your Budget and Timeline
Video marketing is increasingly accessible to all budget levels. Some businesses produce videos in-house, many use their marketing agency, and others choose a local production house.
There’s no need to show up Steven Spielberg—you can make a video using an iPhone, user-friendly editing software like iMovie or Movie Maker, and a cast of colorful characters from your own offices.
Your budget should include strategy execution as well as production. Paid ads on social media, pre-roll ads on YouTube, and video hosting costs will all need to be accounted for within your budget.
And as with anything in marketing, staying on task and on time is imperative. You’ll need to ensure that videos are ready well ahead of new campaign launches and promotions. Keep the cameras rolling and the deadlines firm.
Whether you’re embarking on your very first video content strategy or trying to optimize your existing methods, a second set of eyes can help you identify opportunities and maximize your efforts. Reach out to the video experts at Tobe, we’d love to lend a hand!
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