How To Create Great Videos That Boost Your Digital Marketing Strategy

So, you’ve got a digital marketing strategy in place. You’re getting content out there, the website’s looking great, your blogs are going out regularly, and your social media game is top notch, but what’s the next step? How can you take your marketing to the next level?

There’s a simple and obvious answer, and it’s taking the internet by storm: video. Video is everywhere, and companies who are utilising it are seeing huge gains in all aspects of their business, not solely in their marketing.  

The internet is becoming an increasingly video dominated place, but don’t just take my word for it, we have the stats to back it up. HubSpot says that video can increase your conversion rates by over 65%, while Vidyard suggests that ‘Marketers who are using video are seeing 49% faster growth in revenue’. Forbes claims that ‘64% of customers are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video about it’, and Cisco estimates that by 2019, video will make up 80% of all internet traffic!

So, there’s no denying that video is great and it has a clear impact on companies marketing efforts. But how do you start to get involved in creating lead generating, sales-boosting, brand-defining, incredible video?

Well, the first thing to do is sit down and plan exactly where video’s going to fit in your current strategy. It’s no good using random marketing tactics that don’t fit in with the rest of your efforts. So treat video exactly the same as you do your blog or social media posts. Make sure you have a consistent message, you’re making the information as easily accessible as possible and include a clear call to action.

Whilst you’re still at the planning stage, it’s vitally important to consider where exactly these videos are going to live. Of course, your website should be the number one selling tool for your company; but that doesn’t mean you should exclusively be posting them on there. You could also be using them in clever ways to bring people to your site.

Social media is the perfect example. Social media channels are improving the way video performs on their platforms with every update. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, even Linkedin are all optimised to show off video content and if you’re producing video that’s going to get high viewer involvement, comments, likes, shares, re-tweets etc. – this can be a great way of spreading your name, reaching a wider audience and attracting greater numbers of people to your site.

A few things to consider when making social media videos

Predominantly, the videos you post on social media will be targeted at potential clients at the ‘attract’ stage or existing clients at the ‘delight’ stage. So keep these videos short, informative and entertaining. People’s attention spans, when they’re scrolling through their Facebook or Twitter feeds, are increasingly short. They’re there for entertainment, and if you don’t pique their interest in the first couple of seconds, they’ll have scrolled on to the next post.

On a more technical note, different dimensioned videos are optimal for different platforms, so it’s worth doing a little research into the exact size of videos you should be using. Square videos will fill people’s phones as they scroll through Facebook, whilst rectangular 16:9 videos will offer a more visually appealing, cinematic quality.

A good idea is to take any longer video content that you create for your website and make a shortened, square video trailer that’s optimised for use on your social media sites. Then provide a link to the whole video, posted back on your website. This way you’re keeping your social media updated, you’re driving more relevant traffic to your website, and you’ll increase views on the original video.

Just because social media is optimised for video, doesn’t mean you should totally disregard having them on your own website, however. Why not upgrade your website with informative, brand strengthening video content? You could create a series of videos that cover some of the biggest pain points your clients face. Or produce videos that show off the services and products you offer. Maybe you could even be using video to strengthen your recruitment drives or to help educate staff on internal practices and procedures.

When creating videos for your website, here are a few things to remember

If people have clicked through to your website, it’s fair to assume that they’re more interested than casual viewers on social media. This means that your videos can be a little longer and follow a different format, viewers are actively choosing to watch these videos, so don’t be afraid to get more in-depth. Whilst you have these viewers on your site, why not try and direct them to another video or another page once they’ve finished watching this video, with a clear end goal, whether that’s to sell a product, capture their details or simply help them deal with a problem they face.

You can host videos through a number of websites including YouTube and Vimeo then embed them in your website. There’s also more professional platforms you can pay for such as Wistia, Vidyard and, excitingly, HubSpot have just launched their own product ‘Hubspot video’ which allows you to upload your videos directly into Hubspot. These offer you a number of benefits including in-video turnstiles, analytics and the ability to customise the video player.  

Once you’ve figured out exactly where your videos are going and the type of videos you’re hoping to create, it’s time to think about exactly how you’re going to make them!

Videos don’t have to be high-end productions with CG Explosions, equipment worth thousands and a cast of hundreds. Most people’s phones these days are capable of capturing a decent enough video that, with a little bit of editing, can convey messages to your target audience with surprising efficiency.

So, if you’ve decided to make your own videos, where do you start?

1. Start with a script. Just like everything else your company releases, the quality of your content needs to be top notch. People won’t worry about uninteresting backgrounds, the strength of your editing skills or the camera you’re using, as long as what you’re saying is genuinely useful to them. You don’t necessarily need to write what you’re going to say word for word, but as long as you have a  clear idea of what you need to include, you’ll be fine.

2. Next, set up your equipment. Whatever space you’re working in, no matter how big or small, you can find a way to film your videos, even if it means turning your meeting room into a film studio once a month.

3. The equipment you’ll be using is going to vary based on budget, availability, and a host of other factors but there are a few things that you can always do to ensure a certain level of quality is maintained.

• Use a tripod: having stable shots will dramatically improve the quality of your final video.
• If available, use lighting: daylight can look great but it is constantly changing and as you edit the video, those lighting changes are going to become obvious.

 4. If you have access to a microphone, chances are the sound quality will be better than what your phone or camera is capable of recording, so get it set up as close to your subject as possible but preferably out of shot.

5. Shoot your video. Whatever video you’re making, film, film and film some more. If there’s any doubt in your mind about how a line has been delivered, if the shot might have been out of focus, or if the lighting isn’t quite right – then re-shoot! You can’t have too much footage, but you can certainly have too little.

6. Editing your footage together. There’s a whole host of video editing software out there that offer different services with, of course, varying price tags. If you’re creating a quick video to post on Instagram, there’s no reason that you can’t quickly edit it in an app on your phone. For more long format videos for your website, you can edit these in free software that comes on your computer, or with slightly higher-end packages such as Final Cut or Premiere Pro.

7. Upload. Get your video out there, promote it, start an email campaign, get as many people watching it and learning from it as you possibly can, then sit back and see what happens.

It’s one thing to create content and post it online, but that’s not what a digital marketing strategy is about. You need to review what you’ve created. Did it work? Did you see an increase in leads? Maybe you’ve noticed that your Facebook campaigns are generating more leads since you’ve started using video there, perhaps a product that you’ve created a video for is selling better than those you haven’t. Maybe you’ve seen no changes, and video just isn’t the best way to target your buyer personas. The important thing is to learn how video is benefitting your strategy and to think more about how you can be optimising it in future.

This is a very brief overview of how you can be using video to boost your digital marketing strategy, but what if you want more? What if you’re already utilising videos and want to take them to the next level? What if you want something bigger and better than a quick video shot on your phone? Maybe you want animation or motion graphics, or perhaps you’re just looking for a few animated gifs to up your social media game. That’s where Klood comes in. We pride ourselves on creating quality video content but, more than this, we create videos that are tailor-made with your marketing strategy in mind. So get in touch and let us help you to boost your digital marketing with great video.