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Over 78% of people watch a video online every single week. And in today’s world, more video content is being uploaded to the internet in 1 month then TV has produced over the past 30 years. So, it goes without saying, a video has a huge opportunity to reach your target audience. But there are some things you need to think about before you go rushing to make videos for your company.
Below are some of the key do’s and don’ts of video marketing that you need to take into consideration before trying to develop the next killer video strategy.
73% of videos published in 2019 were under 2 minutes long. Why? Because short, easier to digest videos often outperform longer videos for a whole collection of reasons. One of which is our attention span as human beings. As digital technology and social media has made consuming content easier, we as human beings now have a short attention span than goldfish (8 seconds for us verse 9 seconds for goldfish according to a study by Microsoft Corp.)
Video is a powerful medium to deliver a message in a short amount of time, but it is amazingly easy to ramble on or try and cram too many points into a single video.
Like any marketing channel, the video content you produce for your company represents your company’s brand style and personality. And you want your content to resonate with your audience, which is why it needs to feel like it has been made by humans for humans whilst being a representation of your brand and messaging.
Like email, social media, landing pages etc., you will want to play around with different things to see which video techniques and styles get the most traction for your audience. It is easy to fall for the trap of doing something because “that’s how everyone else does it” or “that’s how it’s also been done”. But those who excel at marketing push the boundaries and play around with new channels, styles, and messaging tactics.
You should not be producing video content for the sake of producing video content. It should have a clear Call to Action that you want people to follow. As such, when you are reviewing your video’s traction, you need to look beyond the view counter and look at what people are doing after viewing your video content.
Video marketing is simply a content medium which should be used in a much bigger multi-channel strategy. Corporate videos are often one of the more expensive content pieces to produce, and as such, you should be promoting them properly across all the different channels you have available to you.
85% of videos viewed on Facebook are viewed without sound. Make sure you think about this when considering which platform, you want to post your video on. It is also worth thinking about adding subtitles or written text into your video, even if you have it on your website. Written text in a video helps to keep the viewers focused and can help you to emphasise key points.
There is an abundance of video content on the internet these days. Far too much for anyone to view it all. In 2019 over 500 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute, which comes to 30,000 hours of content every 1 hour. So, when I say, do not go uploading video for the sake of it. I mean it. Having videos for the sake of having video content is not a strategy. Do not go posting random videos that do not align with your marketing goals, improve the quality of your brand or the needs of your target audience.
Following on from the above point, do not go creating content that does not help your target audience. It is great that Doris is seeing her grandchildren this weekend, your target audience does not care all that much though. Make sure that the content you produce, whether it is a video or otherwise, has value to your customers and target audience.
So, a prospect has just watched a 2-minute clip around how you can boost their sales, now what? Like a blog or email, in your videos, you need to clearly outline the next steps for the viewer. That could be to arrange a meeting, download a guide, watch the next tutorial, it does not matter what it is, you need to tell them what to do next.
It is great having a video go viral, it gives a huge boost to your brand awareness. But, for most of us in marketing viral unicorns are something we can only dream for. Do not get too disheartened if your video content is not producing millions of views. It takes time. A great thing to do here is to plan out what you want your video growth to look like over 12 months.
I hope you have found these basic Do’s and Don’ts of video marketing to be useful. If you are interested in incorporating your video content with another powerful medium, the phone, reach out to us here.
