Undoubtedly, more and more social media giants are launching video platform apps to cater to the growing video marketing trend. So, if you know nothing about video marketing and you work for a company that still doesn’t have a video marketing strategy, the best time to start is NOW.
Videos continue to dominate every online user’s activity. In fact, 78% of people watch videos on different online platforms each week. So if the company you work for still doesn’t have a video marketing strategy laid out, you may be missing out on a lot of audience reach and engagement – or worse, you may be losing leads and sales.
Video Marketing in Numbers
Let’s take a look at why video marketing has seemingly skyrocketed to a marketing channel that you simply cannot afford to ignore.
- Each day, 33% of tablet owners spend at least an hour watching online videos.
- Every week, 78% of people watch online videos from different platforms.
- On Twitter, 82% of users watch all sorts of video content every single day.
- On Facebook, 500 million people watch uploaded videos every day.
- On Snapchat, 10 billions of videos are being watched by Snapchatters daily.
- Click-through rates increase by 65% on videos.
- 67% of digital marketers found video marketing somewhat a success while 18% found video marketing very successful.
Stats are taken from HighQ’s infographic and I’m sure you’ll agree the facts and figures are pretty compelling to warrant more of your marketing effort.
So What Are The Tangible Benefits of Video Marketing?
The fact is that when you ask your boss to allocate budget to video marketing, they will unlikely be satisfied with a load of stats – they will want to understand the business reason for dong it. Video marketing isn’t always cheap, especially if you are going for ‘high production value’ videos, so coming up with examples and evidence of how your video marketing will drive sales, create new leads or build the brand for your company is a good idea. Have a think about how video marketing could:
- Increase traffic: Because people are more drawn to videos rather than long paragraphs of text, videos tend to generate more traffic. In fact, this year, online videos are predicted to account for 74% of the entire web traffic.
- Increase return on investment: 52% of marketing experts consider video as the type of content that yields the best Return on Investment (ROI).
- Drive more clicks (higher click-through rate): When videos are included in emails, the click-through rate can increase by 200-300 percent. The mere use of the word “video” in an email subject line has been known to increase open rates by 19%, and reduce unsubscribes by 26%.
Video Marketing Tips and Tricks
To take advantage of video marketing’s continuous growth and to reap the many benefits it can give your business, here are 4 platform-specific video marketing tips and tricks you can put to work to impress your boss!
1. Using Instagram for Video Marketing
Instagram used to be a mere photo and video clip sharing platform and is now so much more. It’s making a wave in social media today with Instagram Stories. At present, many renowned personalities and brands are utilising Instagram Stories to reach new audiences and test out their content ideas.
How to join in on the Instagram-Stories trend:
- Share a more in-depth background or behind-the-scene story on every Instagram photo post.
- Be creative in using the in-app text and drawing functionality of Instagram Stories so your audience can consume your content in fun way.
- Build a more personal connection with you or your brand by taking your audience with you whether that’s a tour, an adventure, or even just your daily activities.
- Bring your online and offline audience together by sharing clips of exclusive events that some of your followers can’t attend due to location or schedule.
- Share sneak previews and teasers of your upcoming products or services and launch them via Instagram Stories.
- Take advantage of Instagram Stories’ new feature – the full-screen photo and video ads.
Airbnb Instagram Story from Instagram for Business on Vimeo.
2. Using Twitter for Video Marketing
Although Twitter is really more of a platform for sharing bite-sized information through a 140-character tweet, it is also now being used by marketers for video marketing. In fact, there are 82% of Twitter users who watch video content from Twitter.
Airbnb took their followers on a 360º video of London via Twitter’s Periscope
How to get started with Twitter video marketing:
- Since Twitter is mostly used by brands and businesses for customer service functions you can create quick ‘how-to’ videos to respond to customer questions. By replying to customers with video explanation, communication is more personal and easier to follow.
- Create video shout-outs during birthdays of prominent personalities, special events, and holidays. Tweet the one you’re greeting and join the trending hashtags as well.
- Shoot short product demonstration video teasers and include links to your other social media profiles within one tweet to increase engagement and interaction.
- Invite influencers or experts you can interview and shoot a video with. After that, share a teaser clip on Twitter, mention the influencer, and add a link to your website or blog where they can watch the full video to drive traffic to your main website.
- During special events, invite your followers to mention you on Twitter along with video clips of their event experience and incorporate a customised hashtag. Doing this may help you trend and encourage interaction and engagement with a wider audience.
Walking into Lush Oxford Street like… pic.twitter.com/MfHv9ADqYo
— Lush Oxford Street (@LushOxfordSt) December 5, 2016
3. Using Facebook for Video Marketing
Despite being a mere social networking site where friends from all over the world can connect, Facebook is also now making its way to place as one of the top live streaming platforms with its Facebook Live feature which launched in April 2016 that is now being used by many people.
How to engage more audiences via Facebook Live:
- Think of engaging and valuable video content (tutorials, interviews, Q&As, product demos, breaking news, behind the scenes, etc.) where your audience can easily interact through comments, likes, and reactions.
- Invite renowned personalities (but only those related to your brand or business) in your Facebook Live broadcasts to make it more appealing to the audience.
- Bring a special event to your audience’s desktop or mobile device when they can’t make it to your special events, etc. through live broadcasts.
- Always create a compelling and interesting live broadcast title, so your audience will already have a gist of what they’re going to watch.
- Never fail to acknowledge your real-time audience as they comment, like, or react to your live broadcast. Make them feel noticed and valued.
- Make sure your audio is clear, and your video is well-lit and in focus. Avoid having live broadcasts in places where there is a lot of background noise.
Tastemade’s Tiny Kitchen Live Video
4. How to use Snapchat for Video Marketing
After launching in 2011, Snapchat took the world by storm by allowing its users to share in-the-moment and real-time interactions between people. At present, there are over 150 million Snapchatters (and the numbers are still growing) who use Snapchat daily – worldwide.
How to leverage Snapchat effectively for your brand:
- The same as with the platforms mentioned above, make sure you show your audience direct and exclusive access to special events to keep them updated, no matter where their location is.
- Tease your audience with snaps or videos of your new products or services to create a buzz and build up anticipation and curiosity in your followers.
- Get to know your audience through Snapchat’s metrics and figure out which type of content they are most likely to view and engage with.
- Design customisable on-demand geo-filters (especially in special events, etc.) that your followers can use to decorate their Snaps with. By using your geo-filters or band logos, your followers will effortlessly increase awareness for your brand.
- Make your followers feel special by offering exclusive discounts and coupons through your Snaps. Snapchat works best when announcing and hosting flash-sales events or product launches.
- Let all your social media profiles work together by promoting your Snaps through Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter posts and vice versa. Cross-promotion and pollination of your social activity is key!
This list isn’t exhaustive as there is no one-size-fits-all strategy to video marketing. And often it’s the original, brand new ideas that get traction. So if you have one, go for it and test it out. Hopefully this list of tips will give you a head start when you’re first starting to think about video marketing.
If this blog post has whet your appetite, why not take a look at The 5 Social Media Marketing Challenges That Graduates Face?