How to Create a Video Marketing Strategy to Boost Sales and Increase Conversions
Which would you prefer? Reading about how the NBA’s 2021 MVP Nikola Jokić carried, dribbled and shot a basket or seeing how the Denver Nuggets center did it? Most would prefer watching the action, right? Videos connect audiences with the material or an event, trigger emotion and bring the subject matter to life. Hardly surprising then that nearly 1 billion hours of YouTube videos are watched around the world each day.
Videos are a feature of the digital marketing space—81% of businesses are now using video as a part of their digital marketing strategy. One study has shown that having video on your landing pages can increase conversion rates by up to 80% and that 90% of customers say videos help them make faster purchasing decisions. With these powerful indicators along with strong growth forecasts, it’s clear that video marketing should be an indispensable component of your digital marketing strategy.
Creating video content that has impact is, of course, more than just slapping together footage, graphics, text, images and audio. It requires an understanding of the medium, your audience and your desired outcomes. This guide will outline how to create a video marketing strategy that boosts sales and increase conversions.
Decide What Type of Video Marketing Material to Use
It’s important to decide what type of video you want to create during the early stages of the planning process. Knowing what kind of video you want will help guide the entire process to ensure that all elements are aligned.
Here are some common types of marketing videos:
Expert Interviews
A powerful way to showcase your brand’s authority in its industry. Video content with industry experts and thought leaders earn the trust of your audience. It gives your brand gravitas. This makes audiences susceptible and more responsive to your marketing messages and increases customer trust and loyalty.
Event Videos
Event videos immerse viewers into the action. If your brand recently hosted an entertainment, fundraiser or conference, creating an event video is an effective tool to create awareness and build hype.
Demo Videos
For all the glitz and glamour of modern marketing content, there is still a place for demo videos. Smart demo videos offer detailed insights into how a product or service works. By clearly showing the benefits of a product, the solutions it provides and the difference it can make to customers’ lives, conversions are more likely.
Brand Videos
Rather than directly showcasing a product, a brand video seeks to build awareness around your company. This type of video aims to resonate with your target audience by highlighting the value of your brand and your company ethos.
Explainer Videos
Explainer videos usually depict an imaginary journey of the brand’s core buyer persona. It follows a common problem encountered by them and highlights how it is solved. This helps your audience understand why they need your product or service.
Customer Testimonial Videos
Customer testimonials are very effective at showing how your brand has benefitted a real-life customer. Audiences who are offered proof that your product or service is effectively addressing a specific problem are more likely to be assured they’re making the right decision to engage with your brand.
Live Videos
Live video gives your viewers a unique, behind-the-scenes look at your operation. It also draws longer streams and higher engagement rates—viewers spend up to 8.1x longer with live video than with video-on-demand. Live-stream interviews, presentations and events can also spur viewer engagement.
Augmented Reality (AR) Videos
In this video style, a digital layer is added to what you are currently viewing. For example, you can point your phone's camera at your living room and AR would allow you to see how a couch would look in the space. The IKEA Place app is a great example of this.
Each one of these approaches supports a specific aspect of your marketing strategy, so it’s important to know your goals and targets. Why are you rolling out your campaign? What do you hope to achieve from your campaign? How will you measure success?
Benefits of Integrating Videos in Your Marketing and Sales Materials
Video content has emerged as an extremely versatile and profitable digital marketing tool that can help you reach a wider audience in more ways than ever before.
A well-crafted video has many benefits. Video can boost conversions and sales, with one study showing that an impressive 74% of users who watched an explainer video ended up buying the product or service. This conversion rate means that video is worth the time and resource investment, with 83% of businesses reporting a “good ROI” from video content.
Another benefit of integrating videos into a marketing mix is that Google has a strong bias for the medium. As videos keep visitors on your site for longer, Google’s algorithm identifies the site as hosting beneficial and relevant content. In fact, Google has such a preference for videos that it’s 53 times more likely to rank your website first if there’s a video embedded.
Video appeals to mobile users in a big way, with 90% of consumers watching videos on their smartphones. With the trend being to watch videos on the go and the number of smartphone users exploding, the good news is your video audience keeps getting bigger and bigger. As such, it’s important to create videos that take into account the smartphone user experience.
Use Sales Presentation Software to Create Video Marketing Content
Cloud-based presentation software such as Ingage enables marketing and sales teams to easily create professional video content. Creators are allowed to focus on producing engaging material without the frustration of being bogged down by complicated tools.
Ingage’s intuitive and sleek interface is packed with professional templates and themes. These sample pages allow for smooth integration of video content that can be customized using drag-and-drop commands to grab attention, inform or entertain.
Leverage Video Marketing Strategy in Social Media
No marketing campaign is complete without an extensive social media strategy. Videos are an important part of this strategy. Each social media platform is different, so it’s important to have appropriate video marketing strategies for each.
Effective Twitter content is all about concision and clarity. Videos need to instantly grab attention. Of course, the amount of information that can be delivered in a short amount of time is limited, so consider focusing on posting videos that drive engagement elsewhere. You can use videos on Twitter to direct viewers to a new blog post, landing page or website.
Twitter is also a great platform to create highly personal, one-to-one videos. This is a great way to humanize your brand while building personal connections with your audience.
Facebook and Instagram
Short and sweet videos generally are still the order of the day on Facebook and Instagram, although these platforms do allow for longer content in the right context. If you think a longer video is what you’re looking for, make sure that you still grab attention and hold it throughout the video.
Consider that many people use Facebook and Instagram in public places such as commuter trains and restaurants. The proper etiquette is not to disturb other people in a public place, so your videos on these platforms need to be engaging even without sound. You can do this by adding interesting graphics, subtitles, effects and the like.
YouTube
Unlike Twitter and Facebook, people on YouTube are there to exclusively view video content. This means that the strategy is less about short, snackable content and more about creating a series of marketing videos speaking to a wider campaign.
YouTube is about the long game. Growing a dedicated channel of loyal subscribers takes time, so it’s important to create and execute a well-thought-out marketing strategy. To start, identify what kind of content you’ll be posting and who your audience is. With your target audience defined, you can start the process of creating high-quality content to satisfy demand and grow your following.
Video Is Here to Stay
Video remains one of the most effective and widely-consumed forms of marketing today. Creating impactful video marketing material requires an understanding of who you’re speaking to, what you’re trying to achieve and how to integrate it into your existing marketing strategy.
Ingage is a cloud-based presentation tool that enables marketing teams to create engaging videos without having to deal with complicated interfaces. The Ingage Suite’s intuitive design coupled with a wide array of tools, templates and themes means that brands can focus on creating immersive, on-brand videos that can be shared on any device and measure its impact through the rich, built-in analytics feature.
Register for a demo now and equip your team with the tools to compete.