7 Key Elements of Successful Video Marketing Strategies
The importance of having a video marketing strategy has been a hot topic for quite some time. If you are reading this, you probably already understand that video marketing isn’t optional.
As attention spans diminish and online audiences are bombarded with more and more content, video has emerged as one of the most effective ways to engage audiences.
Creating and executing a video marketing strategy can prove to be surprisingly challenging. Moreover, with hundreds of thousands of hours of video content uploaded daily, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the competition.
We have rounded up seven elements shared by some of the most successful video marketing strategies. Without further delay, let’s jump right in:
1. Clear Goals
Having a clear vision of what you want to achieve with specific marketing endeavors is critical to the success of any strategy.
Having a clear-cut set of goals will allow you to build and execute a focused video marketing strategy. You will know what “results” look like and will avoid chasing vanity metrics.
In other words, having a clear set of goals is the only way to later be in a position to measure the success of your video marketing efforts.
So what do video marketing goals look like? Your goal should be “SMART.”
- Specific: Your goals should not be vague. Instead of thinking, “I need to generate more leads,” think, “I need to generate 50 additional leads with my video marketing strategy.”
- Measurable: What good is setting a goal if it doesn’t allow you to measure success? Most specific goals are automatically also measurable.
- Achievable: Setting realistic goals will ensure your team’s morale remains high and your video marketing strategy doesn’t fade over time.
- Relevant: Your video marketing goals should be relevant to a particular stage of the buyer’s journey.
- Time-Bound: Setting deadlines for achieving goals ensures there isn’t a dull moment in executing your video marketing strategy. It also keeps everyone involved in the project accountable.
Here’s an example of a video marketing goal: “To produce 50 additional leads with video marketing in the next 90 days.” Besides deciding on a goal, you must take another important step before beginning to craft a strategy.
2. In-Depth Understanding Of Target Audience
This part is crucial to the success of any video marketing strategy.
A team that fully understands their target audience with their videos supports every successful video marketing strategy.
Businesses should produce content that communicates a clear message to their audience, which helps them build long-lasting customer relationships that will increase their conversion and retention rates.
Without knowing your target audience, creating and publishing any content is like shooting in the dark. There is very little chance of hitting the target market and, consequently, very little to achieve your SMART goals.
If you have been successfully using other marketing strategies for your business, then there is a good chance that you have a fair understanding of your target audience.
However, this isn’t always the case.
Many businesses target different audiences, and video may not be suited for all of them. That’s why, even if you know your target audience, reconsider your audience for your video marketing endeavors.
You can find out by creating a buyer persona if you don’t know your audience.
Define a buyer persona as a semi-fictional representation of your ideal buyer. It outlines their demographic details, their problems, the solutions that they have tried, and any other information that may be relevant to the product or service that you are offering.
In other words, buyer personas are like imaginary friends of your business.
You can source all of the required information by analyzing your existing customers. Whatever pieces are missing, you can make educated guesses to fill them initially. As you execute your strategy, the data you collect will help you make your buyer personas more and more accurate over time.
With buyer personas, it is essential to remember that creating them is not a one-time task. The more accurate your buyer personas are, the better your decisions and strategies will affect.
A fundamental, data-backed understanding of your ideal buyer will help your business increase sales.
Or, in the case of video marketing, it will generate more interest and engagement for your video content.
Get Your Buyer Persona Templates Here
3. An Editorial Calendar
Like most other marketing strategies, achieving success with video marketing demands consistency. You will need a plan to conceptualize, plan, script, shoot, edit, and post videos consistently.
While making high-quality videos has become easier, executing a video marketing strategy is still a lot of work.
An editorial calendar will ensure all the gears of your video marketing machine keep turning, and it keeps churning out high-quality videos to feed your strategy.
As you continue to produce videos on a schedule, the production process will become more familiar and, consequently, easier and quicker. This will give you room to conduct creative experiments, improve the quality of your production, and produce better videos.
Moreover, following an editorial calendar makes it much easier to grab moment marketing opportunities.
4. Engaging Stories
30,000 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s just one platform. The combined amount of video content floating on the web is beyond comprehension.
Yet, some video marketing strategies stand out and achieve success.
What are they doing differently? Well, in most cases, they aren’t focused on selling.
Remember, your audience does not consume video content with the expectation of a sales pitch. They seek entertainment. If you create a video that focuses on selling, there’s a good chance they’ll get lost in the noise.
Instead, it is important to view your strategy through an audience-centric lens and delight them with engaging storytelling.
Storytelling makes it easier for you to show how your product/service solves your audience’s problem and how it makes their lives easier. Make your stories about the specific issues and questions your potential customers face in different stages of your buyer’s journey. Step into their shoes. Help them see you’re the solution, and be relatable.
This Aldi testimonial video uses storytelling with incredible effectiveness:
It’s a simple idea, but it speaks right to their customer. The same can be done with explainer videos, product demos, creative expert interviews, how-to videos, and almost every other video type.
The best part is that you don’t have to stick to a single story. You can tell a different but equally relatable story every time you launch a new campaign.
5. Distribution Strategy
Knowing your target audience will enable you to figure out which platforms you should be targeting with your videos. However, targeting multiple platforms becomes a little more complex with videos.
This is because each platform is different, not just in its audience’s commannd but in the technical demands of videos. The resolution, size, time limits, and dimensions vary across different platforms. Even now, you can place a CTA depending on the platform.
On some platforms like YouTube and Instagram, there are multiple types of video formats that you can target, but they have different technical specifications.
The point here is that simply having a distribution strategy isn’t enough. It would be best if you weaved your distribution strategy into your entire pre-production and production processes.
For instance, knowing about all the platforms and video formats intended for a specific video will enable your editors to create different versions as a part of the standard editing process.
Small snippets can be shot during the shooting stage to introduce shorter versions of longer videos suited for TikTok and Instagram Reels. Similarly, on YouTube, your video may ask your viewers to “subscribe,” whereas, on Instagram, you may want to tell them to “follow” you.
Your main content can still be largely repurposed across different OTT platforms.
A sound distribution strategy will enable you to produce customized videos for different platforms. These will delight and engage across platforms, but in a way that matches audience expectations.
6. Data-Backed Decisions
Almost every successful video marketing strategy is built on data-backed decisions. Yet, failing to measure the impact of marketing videos is one of the most common mistakes brands make.
It is understandable why. Most of us have a very vague definition of success. However, you can easily define success if you have worked on creating your SMART goals. In turn, you can also determine the metrics that let you accurately measure your success.
For instance, if your goal is to generate more leads, the click-through rate may be a good metric. On the other hand, the number of views is an example of a “vanity metric.” Sure, it matters, but it doesn’t communicate your video’s success as a lead generation tool.
What metric is important to you will depend entirely on the goal you are chasing. In a different scenario, the number of views may not be considered a vanity metric.
It is also important to remember not to get too fixated on the goal-relevant metrics. Remember, you can use data to improve your strategy’s effectiveness in various ways. You can even use data from older campaigns to guide decisions for newer ones.
To do this, you must collect and routinely analyze the wealth of data videos can collect. Depending on the choice of platform, video marketers can see how their audience engages with their videos.
This information can also be used to create more detailed and more accurate buyer personas.
7. Clear Branding
Your business will be expending significant resources and time to create and execute a video marketing strategy. Naturally, you will want your audience to know that the video comes from your brand. Even if they don’t click on the CTA link (or take any other desired action) and watch the video, you want your brand to get noticed.
The only way to achieve this is with consistent branding on your videos. This is a bit of a grey area.
On the one hand, you have to maintain consistency, but on the other, you may have to customize your branding elements for different platforms and video format types.
An effective way to overcome this problem is to look beyond logos and banners when you think of branding. For instance, you can use a consistent intro or outro as your branding element.
Alternatively, you can always use traditional branding elements and customize them for use on different platforms. There’s a lot of scope for getting creative there as well. You can create customized thumbnails. You can reuse some elements you may have used for your Instagram account profile picture or YouTube channel banner image.
Here’s a look at how Slack maintains consistent branding across videos in specific playlists:
Discover Brand Guidelines Enforcer
Having clear and consistent branding on your videos will help brand recognition and recall. However, a relatively little-known effect of branding is creating a sense of community among the viewers. This effect will become apparent with time if you remain consistent with your branding and publishing schedule.
Bonus Tip: Secure Video Marketing Platform
Video marketing requires strong security, and to do so, you can keep domain restrictions, schedule video delivery, and secure your video URL with an SSL certificate. You need to purchase an SSL certificate to secure the site URL and restrict attackers from altering the content.
Sometimes, it may happen that sensitive content is made for a specific audience, and if hackers access them, they can modify it and harm it. To avoid such a situation, a video marketer can choose any type of SSL certificate that suits the video platform. Moreover, SSL providers can help you to choose the type of SSL certificate.
Conclusion
There you have it, seven elements that you will find in almost every successful video marketing strategy. If you have been paying attention, you may have noticed a pattern. Most of the elements mentioned in this list are not one-time tasks.
There are ongoing aspects of creating and executing a video marketing strategy. Incorporating these elements in your video marketing strategy will help you optimize it continuously. This, in turn, will help you produce better, more relevant, and more engaging videos and produce the desired results.
Author’s Bio
Piyush Shah is an affiliate marketer and has helped grow multiple businesses from nothing to making insane business figures. He is currently working as Head of SEO at Dukaan – an All-in-one eCommerce platform.
