Tips for Creating an Effective Video Marketing Strategy

As the trend in visual content continues to grow, it is clear that video marketing is here to stay. In fact, 93% of marketers who use video say that it's an important part of their marketing strategy. Your brand can’t afford not to create a video marketing strategy in order to remain competitive in today’s market.

Studies have shown that 85% of marketers use video as a tool to boost brand awareness and SEO. Videos create more traffic on the web, with as much as 81% of that traffic coming from video consumption in 2021, according to Cisco. With those statistics, incorporating video marketing into your content strategy is more important than ever. 

Video has become one of the most important forms of content marketing, and your success could be closely tied to your optimization efforts. In this article, we’ll discuss why you should create a video content strategy, how it affects SEO, and some strategies on how to optimize the effectiveness of your video strategy. 

Why video marketing is important 

When it comes to growing a business, content marketing is without a doubt one of the most effective forms of branding. A combination of blogs, podcasts, videos, social media, etc., all combine to objectively improve inbound marketing efforts, boost organic search results, and deliver SQL (sales qualified leads) and MQLs (marketing qualified leads).

But, in order for your brand to stand out, you need to create compelling, entertaining, and/or educational content. Video is one of the best ways to do that. Here’s why.

Increased time onsite

When users land on a web page, their attention usually lasts eight seconds on average. Not everyone is interested in taking the time to read lengthy written content—that’s where videos come into play. 

Videos can provide information about your business, product, or service in an informative and entertaining way. Videos are a great way to entice users to remain on your site a little longer.

Boost conversion rates

The only downside to creating video content is that it is not necessarily cheap to create, especially if you want a quality product. However, the end result may very well be worth your time and money. 

87% of video marketers in different organizations reported that videos gave them a positive return on investment (ROI.) That’s a pretty high percentage when it comes to lead conversion. Branded company videos are able to provide a quick overview of how a product or service can benefit your customers. This makes it easier for a customer to make a purchase decision, ultimately leading to a direct increase in your sales.

How to optimize your video strategy

We all know that the Google search engine LOVES videos! According to a study from Forrester Research, video is 50 times more likely to achieve organic page ranks in Google than plain text results. And as we mentioned above, Google loves rich media.

When you use video as a part of your SEO strategy, the key is to take the time to create high-quality content aimed at a particular goal. Video gives you a boost in rankings, which means more people will see your site and potentially clink on your link. 

Here are some quick tips when it comes to initiating your video strategy:

• Place videos in the right spot on your website such as an “About Us” page
• Give your videos “context” and consider adding a written transcript with keywords (more details on this below.) 
• Ensure that your videos are educational and answer user’s FAQs

But, these tips are just scratching the surface. Once you’ve determined what your end goal is with your video marketing content, the next step is to optimize your videos for SEO. But how do you do that? By following these steps, you will be able to best take advantage of SEO with your videos. 

Promote your video

So, you’ve created a high-quality video, but how do you promote it? This is equally important because you need to find ways to increase video views. 

There are many ways to promote your content including sharing your video on social media and sending it to your subscribers via email. The more you share your content and in more places, the better chance you have at enhancing your SEO efforts and boosting traffic to your page. This will ultimately improve your ranking on YouTube and Google. 

Create thumbnails

The reason you want to create stand-out thumbnails is that this is usually the first thing viewers see—whether on a YouTube page or Google SERP (search engine results page). Most video hosting platforms allow you to choose a thumbnail from the video itself or upload a separate image that best represents what the video is about. The key is to grab people’s attention and make them want to click on the video link. The right video thumbnail may be the difference between a viewer watching your video or moving on.

Transcript your video

I touched briefly on this earlier, and you may be wondering why it’s important. Transcripts can help search engines figure out what your video is about since they can’t “watch” video content. This provides context and a better understanding of the content, which means a higher ranking. By transcribing your video, it will also be more accessible to a larger audience, because some users prefer text to video. 

Incorporate CTAs

It’s always important to have a CTA, or call to action, within any type of marketing strategy, the same goes for video. Most video platforms allow you to add some kind of clickable link at the end of a video. Whether it’s YouTube’s end cards, or an actual text link on a Vimeo or Wistia player. (Wistia will even allow you to add a turnstile to collect email addresses).

But even if you don’t have a clickable link, it’s a good idea to add a URL, phone number, social media handle, or some other directive for a viewer to reference.

Add subtitles

By adding a subtitle to your video you will actually improve engagement and increase viewing time. That’s because subtitles help search engines better understand the topic or content of the video. The more information they have, the higher your video will rank with certain keywords. Services like Rev can transcribe your video and create the SRT files necessary to create your subtitles.

How to measure your results

So you’ve put in the work, created an award-winning video, and published it on your website? What’s next? First and foremost you need to ensure that your marketing strategy and efforts are actually working. 

There are ways that you can measure the impact of your video marketing campaign, starting with monitoring the number of video views, comments, likes, shares, subscribers, and watch time. 

You may also want to consider doing A/B testing. This is the process of testing two different versions of a marketing asset by making a minor adjustment to one of the components. It will let you know what words, phrases, images, and videos work best. When you know what is performing best, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions as it relates to your video marketing strategy. 

A/B testing for video typically measures the following: 

• Video length: This allows you to test more than one video length to see which one performs better. 
• Video title: You can choose different titles for different audiences and test them to determine what resonates best. 
• Video thumbnail: This allows you to test out different thumbnail images such as a screenshot, logo, or graphic, to see what your audience likes best. 
• Video on-screen text: You may or may not want to include on-screen text during your video. By running this test, you’ll be able to better direct your video editor. 
• Video music: Music can make or break your video if it doesn’t resonate with your audience. This is a great chance to see how your audience reacts to pop vs rock music for example. 
• Video CTA: We discussed the importance of having a call to action earlier, and testing which CTAs your users click most is pretty crucial to your success when it comes to leads and conversions.

Conclusion

Without a doubt, video content presents a great opportunity for you to improve your SEO and rank higher in search engines. In order to stand out among your competition, the key is to get creative and invest in high-quality videos. 

To recap, video marketing can greatly improve your SEO because Google values the quality of your content. When a user searches for content, Google looks for relevant content and you have the power to improve the quality by simply adding a video to it. And, if your video content is engaging, people will stay on your site longer. 

Video marketing will also help you generate more web traffic, which will result in a higher ranking of your site on search engines. Not everyone is interested or has the time to read a lengthy blog post, so featuring an informative and entertaining video front and center on your website can provide great value to your audience. 

“Video Marketing solidifies your online presence whilst building deep and meaningful relationships with your customers. It adds a personal touch to your brand whilst increasing your conversions!” – Lilach Bullock, business coach, tech influencer, and speaker

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Header image by Chris Murray on Unsplash