If you’re under the impression that content marketing is confined to the written blog posts on your website, think again.
It’s more important now than ever before to integrate video into your content marketing strategy. Don’t believe me? These video marketing statistics speak for themselves. A few notable takeaways:
- Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and image content combined.
- 55% of people play close attention when consuming video—more than all other types of content.
- Including video on landing pages can increase conversion rates by 80%.
If you’ve been toying around with the idea of including more video content in your marketing strategy, look no further. These eight tips will help you incorporate video effectively and ensure you see positive results.
Here’s how you can integrate video into your content marketing strategy
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Integrating video into your content marketing strategy takes more than just uploading a video to YouTube. Careful planning and execution will ensure your video projects see the results you want. Everyone loves a good ROI.
1. Determine scope
The first step to implementing any change is setting goals. Do some research and determine exactly how much video you’d like to integrate into your strategy. You should decide what type of video content you’re creating, how often you plan on creating video content, and how much you wish to invest in creating video projects. It may be useful to hire a videographer to help with video production in order to achieve a high-quality end result to share with your audience.
2. Start small
It’s important to come out of the gate strong, but a poor launch could mean the end for the integration of video to your content marketing tactics. Begin with video content that will suit the largest audience and the least common denominator. A short video advertisement or a welcome to your product or service is typically a great start and shouldn’t require too much effort or money.
3. Post videos on your website
One of the best practices for your landing page is to include video to immediately engage visitors. Your website is designed to be the hub of your online operations. As I mentioned earlier, it can increase conversion rates by 80% resulting in more leads or sales for your company. Additionally, visitors to your site may be hoping to find product demonstrations or testimonials to learn more about what it is your company does. Video content ensures all your visitors get the most out of their visit to your site.
4. Include videos in emails
Think about how many emails you receive on a daily basis. We’ve become so conditioned to skim through text, picking out the important information we need and not much else. Including a video in your email campaigns ensures that the recipient is getting the intended message in a way that sticks. It can also drive views by notifying your email subscribers that you’ve published a new video they could be interested in.
5. Stay mobile friendly
Over half of all video is viewed on mobile platforms. Keep this in mind as your planning the creation and distribution of your video content. If you want your content seen, don’t make your audience come to you, find them where they’re at and optimize your videos for mobile viewing.
Square-shaped videos perform especially well on most mobile devices so do your research and keep factors like this in mind when putting forth your video marketing strategy.
6. Do it live
Live video is bigger than ever. There’s incredible value to “doing it live” and you can leverage that to create long-lasting content for later viewers. Live video streams will allow you to engage and interact in real time with your audience. It can also drive a ton of buzz around important announcements and updates, but don’t forget to record these live videos for later viewers.
7. Product demonstrations
If you’re marketing a specific product or service, having videos of how users can properly utilize what it is you’re good at. An incredible converter of sales is using video content on Amazon or another ecommerce platform. Take this example from Remix, a SaaS product targeting city planners. It’s creates value for interested parties who may want to know exactly what they’d be getting if they purchase the software.
8. Testimonials
We trust our peers more than we trust companies, so why not leverage your already excited base to provide a testimonial of how your product or service benefited them. Many brands already do this through finding influencers that are willing to share with their networks just how much value they find in a product. It works across all levels though, like in this video from Aldi containing an employee testimonial to help in its recruiting efforts.
Press play
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No matter how you choose to integrate video into your content marketing strategy, you’re likely to see measurable results. Video is growing like crazy, so it makes sense to incorporate it as soon as possible. The audience is primed and ready for content from you. It’s time to give the people what they want. What are you waiting for?
About the author
Derek Doeing is a content specialist at G2 Crowd. G2 Crowd is the leading B2B software and services review site with over 670,000+ reviews.