Some Things you Need for Effective Video Marketing Campaigns
Video marketing campaigns are essential for your advertising strategy. Audience engagement with video on social channels is at an all-time high, and experts believe it to be a vital part of modern marketing plans. If your business isn’t creating video content as part of its marketing plan, you could well be falling behind the competition.
Luckily, advancements in production technology make it the perfect time to get started with your video marketing campaigns. A combination of good planning and execution will result in an effective campaign with measurable benefits. Here are some of the most important things you need to take your video marketing campaigns to the next level.
A plan
Just like other forms of marketing, you must prepare a plan to figure out your goals and how to achieve them. Start by working out who your target audience is and how they’re likely to discover and interact with videos. This could be through television, online or through social media.
Set up meetings with the other decision-makers on the campaign and make sure you’re all in agreement. You need a clear understanding of your goals, whether that be raising brand awareness, selling services, or launching a new product. Create a timeline and set your budget around it, taking into account the length and scope of each video and the channels it will be posted to. At this stage, you should also think about the requirements of your videos, including any specialists you may need to bring onboard and any potential roadblocks that could arise.
When forming your plan, don’t forget to take into consideration how you’ll measure your success. This could be as simple as the number of video views or something a bit more complex like the percentage of viewers who proceeded to buy a product. Other popular metrics for measuring success include social media comments & shares, time spent on a video’s web page, and video completion rate.
A posting schedule
Before you even get around to hitting record, you need to think about the long-term success of your campaign. Posting videos at random times is going to be confusing to your audience and may result in them disengaging. If you’re filming a TV commercial, you need to understand when your target audience is watching. One of the best things you can do to achieve a successful video marketing campaign is to create a posting schedule.
To plan your posting schedule, consider some of the following things. If the goal of your campaign is to ensure a successful product launch, you may want to space your videos out to create a level of anticipation before the release date. Creating ongoing stories between your videos can also be a good way to build brand recognition and keep your audience engaged. Your posting schedule should include all of your channels, whether that be social media, video sites, or TV.
Scripts
With the possible exception of live streams, you’re going to want a well-written script for each of your videos. Stumbling through an explainer video or winging it with unplanned interview questions isn’t going to inspire much confidence in your business. Even if you want your videos to appear natural and unplanned, you should still prepare a script to save time on editing.
A method of scriptwriting that’s often used in TV is the two-column script. Create a document and insert a table. By typing out your script in the left hand column and your visuals in the right, you’ll be able to get a reasonably good idea of how the final outcome will look and sound.
The right equipment
You can film 4K video on your smartphone these days, but the results will never be as good as professional or high-end consumer equipment. Renting out or investing in a DSLR camera will give you control of your frame rate, color balance, focus, aperture, ISO and more. For a good lighting setup, you’ll want a key light at a 45 degree angle of your subject, a fill light on the other side, and a backlight behind and above the frame. Of course, there are certain campaigns (particularly on social media) where a video filmed on a phone will be a better fit, so use your best judgment.
Video is only half of the overall experience, and the importance of your audio equipment shouldn’t be ignored. Internal microphones on cameras tend to be relatively poor quality, so consider the following options instead. A lavalier microphone clips to your actors’ shirts and provides high quality wired or wireless audio at the expense of a visible microphone in your shots. Another option is a shotgun microphone, which can be costly but provides natural sound while staying out of shot. If you’re using a DSLR, you can also find some cheaper mics that mount directly on top of your camera.
The talent
Assembling the right people to make your video campaign take shape is a crucial step and will vary greatly depending on the type of content you’re creating. Unless you’re very fortunate and have staff in your business with excellent screen presence, you’ll want to hire professional actors to ensure your campaign doesn’t end up looking like a high school film project.
It’s not just the on-screen talent you’ll need to source; consider bringing in a professional camera and lighting crew if your budget allows it, as well as an editor to bring your clips together. You may want to go in a different direction entirely and create an animated video campaign, for which you’ll want to bring onboard voice actors and (of course) animators.
SEO
It’s easy to get caught up in the creative side of a video campaign, but don’t forget that this is all part of your brand’s marketing. Google indexes YouTube videos, so it’s important to use search engine optimization to rank high on the results and get your videos seen by as many viewers as possible. Instagram actually blocks search engines from indexing your videos and images, so you’re better off optimizing your profile instead.
To optimize your YouTube videos, you should include keywords in your video descriptions or on the external page where your videos are embedded. The description is also a useful place to include CTAs with shortened links to your website. Finally, add some relevant tags so that your videos show up on the ‘related video’ sidebar when viewers are watching similar content.
Ready to get started?
A great video marketing campaign can make a world of difference by attracting new customers to your business and boosting conversions. Video production can be a difficult task if you have no previous experience, which is where Spot On Media comes in. Our agency of storytellers and strategists are here to help you with every step of your video production and marketing. Get in touch to see what our professional team can do for your company.
