Between the years of 2013 and 2018, a change occurred. Of course, online videos were popular and used in marketing prior to 2018, but by that year, viewers were logging 32 percent more hours per month watching them.

Although the motivation behind this change is unknown, videos have rapidly evolved from novelty to necessity. In the right hands, they evolved into a potent instrument for helping businesses differentiate themselves from rivals and entice new customers.

By the year 2020, 92 percent of all internet users had been reached with online videos. Picture yourself able to share your video with the vast majority of the web’s population. Would that bring you more sales? How much more money could you make? Read on to find out why having a video marketing strategy for social media is so crucial for your business. 

Photo by Ariel Martinez

Set Goals For Video Marketing

Before you can start making videos for your social media marketing campaign, and definitely before you start making anything, you’ll need to set some goals. If you don’t know what you want your video to do, it will be hard to make a message that will lead people in the right direction.

You must ask yourself a few questions to help you come up with your goals. First, what do you want to happen with your video? What should you get out of it? How does it need to talk to the people you want to reach? How should the video fit into your sales funnel? Should it be the first thing your prospects see, the last thing they see before they click the buy button, or somewhere in between, maybe as a reminder of who you are and how you can help them?

You could have many goals for each video. But it’s often a mistake to set too many. It can be hard to keep track of everything, and if you try to reach all of your goals in a single video, your story will be hard to follow. Instead, think of no more than two or three goals and put all of your attention on them. This will help you stay on track and make sure your final video is clear and to the point, which is precisely what your consumer, no matter who they are, will applaud.

Which Platforms Will You Use?

Once you know what your video marketing goals are, you still won’t be quite ready to make your video and easily share it in the expectation that it will go viral. There’s one more step, and it’s a very important one: where will you put your videos?

If the first thing you thought of was “social media,” you need to keep thinking because that’s not enough information. You need to decide which social media site or platform you want to use to share your marketing video. Each one is different, and each has pros and cons that are unique to it. It’s important to know what they are and make sure your video is right for each one, since they all offer something different and have their own ways to market videos.

In order to choose the right social media platform, you need to know who you’re marketing to, what they want to see, and where they will see it. Once you know this, you can start to plan what your video will be about.

What Type Of Video Will You Create?

Once you understand who you want to talk to and where you want to get their attention, you can start thinking about what you want to say. Asking yourself what kind of video you want to make is a great way to get started. There are many different kinds, and again, a lot depends on who you’re trying to sell to. But there are other things to think about, such as the type of business you run, how formal it is or isn’t, and how much money you have.

One idea for your video could be to teach something. These kinds of videos are great if you want to get more people interested in your brand and bring in new customers. A video of what goes on behind the scenes can also work. As the name suggests, these will give customers and potential customers a look at the people behind the products and services. This will help customers and prospects learn more about the company. This can help make people feel like they belong.

There is also the option of interviews. Finding a guest speaker who is an expert in your market sector and asking them relevant questions is a great way to help establish your brand as an expert. Customers will feel like they can trust you because they’ll know you know what you’re talking about. After all, if an expert agreed to answer your questions and give you good advice, you have to be real.

Plan The Content Production

Even if you’re not making a feature film and your budget isn’t in the millions, you should still think about your promotional video in the same way you would if you were. If you just press record and hope for the best, you won’t get very far, and if you do end up with a completed video, it won’t help you market your business very much.

This is why you need a plan for how to make content. You can do this in any way that feels natural to you, from a storyboard on the wall to scribbles in a notebook to a full-fledged flowchart or spreadsheet with lots of details. It doesn’t matter how you get it as long as you have it.

Your plan needs to start where it needs to start and end where it needs to end. What does that mean then? It means you have to plan everything, from coming up with the first ideas for a story to making the last changes and polishing it. You might need to employ teams to help you, and if you have a plan, you’ll know what needs to be outsourced. You can also better plan your time and resources, such as knowing whether you need to use a Teledyne FLIR SIRAS drone, and make sure that your video is done by the due date.

Promote Your Video

At this point, we’ll assume that your video is finished. You have finished everything you can and are confident that it is now ready to be presented to the public (or at least your target audience). Now what?

It’s time to get the word out about your video. It’s tempting to hit publish and hope that your existing followers will see what you’ve done and find it interesting enough to share, but this is not an effective strategy. It’s sluggish and leaves too much to chance; your video may not even be viewed at all, depending on the platform you’re using.

Because of this, advertising is essential, and search engine optimization is crucial. Although search engine optimization (SEO) is most commonly associated with website copy, it is applicable to all forms of media. While search engines can’t index video content, they can index the marketing that surrounds it. Your video’s chances of being seen, watched, and shared can be greatly increased by making use of the right keywords in the post, adding hashtags, tagging people, and targeting your audience.

Keep in mind that your videos will remain online for as long as you choose to keep them posted. It’s possible that a video you made several years ago is still bringing you sales today, provided you pick an evergreen topic and use up-to-date SEO techniques. This is why it’s crucial to perfect your social media video marketing strategy.