| Marketing videos: what are they, reasons to fall in love with them and how to create an irresistible strategy in only 8 steps

If an image is worth more than a thousand words, then a good video must be worth at least ten thousand.

Original and creative videos are much more than images and sound: they are a piece of content that impresses, excites, adds value and above all connects with your audience.

So if you have a business with Internet presence, and above all on social networks, you should first ask yourself: are marketing videos an important part of my social media strategy?

When you finish reading this article it should be, because marketing videos are attractive, generate emotions, increase virality, increase engagement, and are good for SEO, they don´t require costs or large investments (you can even create free videos) and your potential clients like them.

So, do you have a reason to not use them? You really don´t.

So, in order to take advantage of the power of videos, we are going to share all you need to know in order to create your own video marketing strategy in only 8 steps.

But before we do this, let us show you in detail what marketing videos are and some reasons why you should include them in your content strategy.

Ready to move away from your competition and make your business more cost-effective thanks to the audiovisual content?

What are marketing videos and why bet on them no matter what?

Marketing videos or marketing a video is the use of a video within a digital strategy to make known, position, promote and sell a brand, company, product or service in order to achieve the objectives set for your business.

This is called the present and the future of digital marketing and more companies, large and small, are betting on including marketing videos on their social network actions. The truth is that they don´t lack reasons for it.

Did you know that for example 78% of the content used on the network is audiovisual content?

Content videos are liked and attract because they are easy and fast to use and don´t require any effort, are entertaining and add value. But also because they are very effective for all kinds of businesses, acting as a springboard and accelerating the road toward your business goals.

In fact, 80% of the users remembers a brand or product if they have seen videos of said brand.

And not just this, but 57% of consumers are more prone to buy a product after watching a video demonstration.

In addition, 45% of consumers agree that after watching a video of a brand, their behavior changes to the point that 26% search for more information about the brand, more than 20% visit the corporate website and more than 15% arrive to the sales points or online and purchase the product.

Even companies the size of Amazon and Dell agree that after viewing a product videos the probability of buying said products increases approximately 35%. Almost nothing!

So, you are probably eager to start including marketing videos in your digital strategy, but there is still more.

Videos generate proximity, are easily shared, become viral more easily than the rest of the content, generate confidence, add credibility, offer visibility, arouse interest, offer better positioning, increase visiting times, increase conversion rates, humanize the company, foster interactivity and are starting to seriously compete with television since we spend more time on the Internet and less in front of the small screen—we even prefer mobile devices to watch series and content—.

And to all this we have to add that marketing videos don´t have to be expensive (you can even create completely free videos) and they have a type of content that have no expiration date and are always available for your potential clients so you create videos only once guaranteeing continued results.

How to design a video marketing strategy in 8 steps to save you hours upon hours of work

Absolutely everyone has shared or resent a video they liked at one point, but this doesn´t mean that you must limit yourself to create videos and cross your fingers hoping they are shared and that´s all, for them to be successful, they must be part or everything; meaning, they must belong to a previously designed, structured and defined strategy.

Here are the 8 steps that can help you design a strategy for your marketing videos.

1. Define your goals and objectives

What do you want to accomplish with your videos? You may want to attract more traffic to your website, gain more views, increase the number of followers, generate conversions, improve your brand´s image, reach more potential clients or get more sales.

Either way, if you ask yourself what your goals are and define them this will be essential so you can design a video marketing strategy that works and guarantees results.

2. Dedicate time and get to know your audience

How can you create videos your audience falls in love with if you don´t know who you are targeting or what your potential client needs are?

That is why you need to spend some time defining your buyer persona or ideal client profile, and you know as much as possible what their tastes, needs, challenges and concerns are. The more you know about your potential clients, the better you can connect with them and offer them what they need thanks to video marketing.

The Australian personal trainer Kayla Itsines, for example, knows very well how to do this. At age 23, she received her number 100 follower on Instagram without even noticing but now lives off of them and today has 1.750.000 on the platform, in addition to the 7.4 million on Facebook and 368.000 followers on Twitter.

She lives off the world she has built on social networks—in addition to getting anyone in shape who decides to follow her training regime using the pre-payment plan— and thanks to demo videos like this one:

3. Choose the type of video

Once you know what you want to achieve and who you are targeting, it´s time to decide what type of videos to include in your strategy—and later create a script to make sure you don´t forget anything important—.

Many ways exist to create marketing videos depending on what you want to transmit; for example, you can make corporate videos to improve your brand´s image, video testimonials to show your audience what clients are saying about your products or video tutorials to explain how a certain product or service works.

And although there are many video classes, here are the 7 main classes you should include in your strategy no matter what:

4. Select the right tools

If you are going to create videos on a regular basis, then you need some tools to help you with the process.

Paid tools and free ones exist, the most important thing is to choose those that you and your team are comfortable working with to make creative videos that reach your audience. There are many options!

For example, you have probably heard of Vine, an iPhone application that helps you create short six-second videos to share on several networks such as Facebook or Twitter and even helps you add hashtags.

Companies such as Samsung, Oreo or Amazon have decided to use these audiovisual minipills, known for their use and sharing. And they have done well by them. As them, hundreds of brands have gone onboard.

You also have other complete and dedicated tools for brands and companies who want to generate conversions that include many options such as these 10 we show you bellow:

Wideo, helps you create animated videos about product demonstrations, service explanation or informative videos.
GoAnimate, creates animation videos for brands with a professional touch.
Sellamations, creates original videos with a doodle format.
Stupeflix, creates videos using clips, images and music.
Vidyard, the perfect ally for those who want to earn money with their videos and get analytics at the same time.
Videolicius, create videos from smartphones or tablets.
Powtoon, for videos and animated presentations.
Prezi, for presentations in a video format with an interesting zoom function that adds a very professional touch.
Animoto, creates fast and simple videos by inserting images and videos and customizing the video with music and text.
Viddyad creates brand advertisements in 10 to 60 seconds.

Many other options are available so choose yours and even combine them.

5. Take advantage of the power of storytelling

Think of Coca-Cola. When have they tried to sell you their products by mentioning bubbles, the color of their soft drink or their varied containers? NEVER.

Because the brand bets on not talking about their product and instead they tell a story. That is storytelling, the art of telling a story to connect with the audience, and you should know that this aspect makes a difference.

When your clients buy a product or service, what they are really buying is the emotion they are feeling.

Quite recently, when Apple presented the iPod the first time, they didn´t speak about its storage capacity or the design, they told a story about the “1,000 songs in your pocket”.

Going back to Coca-Cola, this company ad is one of the best storytelling examples. When you see it you understand the concept perfectly:

6. Use as many channels as possible

The first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “video” is YouTube, and it´s normal. The truth is that having a channel for your brand on a platform is essential but don´t limit yourself to using your video marketing actions only there.

In fact, it´s true that YouTube is the third most viewed page in the world, but did you know that the second one is Facebook and it rewards companies for sharing native videos on this social network? The same thing happens with other networks such as Twitter with Periscope, Instagram with Instagram Stories or Snapchat to add some examples.

So investigate what platforms are used by your clients and be on them by sharing your videos on YouTube and also on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook.

7. Add value, innovate and use humor

Millions of videos are on the Internet every day so you have to make an effort and be different in order to stand out from the rest and that is achieved by adding value, innovating and why not, using humor.

One of the most well known videos, precisely for being innovative in the use of humor is the American brand DollarShaveClub.com who invested $4,500 dollars in a presentation video and obtained 12,000 subscribers (clients) in only two days for the service of monthly razor blades.

What was the key to the ad? As you can see bellow, the corporate video shows the company CEO walking around the facilities explaining the benefits of belonging to the club in an innovative, different, original and fun way.

Oh, and as a minor detail, it has more than 23.3 million views on YouTube.

Of course, you can get great results for less money.

8. Add a good call to action on your videos

Never publish or share a video without adding first a good call to action; meaning, a word, phrase or button that invites users to perform a certain action defined by you previously depending on the objectives you wish to achieve: visit the blog, comment, share on social networks, subscribe or use any other action.

To get your audience to do what you want, you need to ask them and this is what a Call to Action is all about.

In the following example, you can see the “subscribe” button in the bottom right corner of the screen. Access to the subscription is easier and more eye-catching. By simply passing the mouse over there, the author name of the video (a copywriter professional) appears and the larger subscribe button.

So now that you know how to create good marketing videos for your marketing strategy, are you going to get to work and start implementing video marketing actions on your social network campaigns?

Videos are a diamond in the rough and can change the direction of your business so start using them in your digital marketing strategy and join the brands that have started to get the most out of the audiovisual content potential.

Because maybe one year from now, you may have wished you started on this today.

And if this article on video marketing was interesting, check these other out to show you how to strengthen your videos on different social networks:

Oh! And don´t forget to share this article with all our contacts who you think can be interested in this so they can also take advantage of the video marketing benefits.

Postcron es el Arma Secreta de los Community Managers Probar Postcron gratis

Marketing videos: what are they, reasons to fall in love with them and how to create an irresistible strategy in only 8 steps