Mar 27, 2021

8 min read

Essential Guide To Video Marketing 2021

Video Marketing: The Essential Guide

The landscape of online marketing has certainly evolved in recent years. While text-centric content remains an essential part of it, visual materials such as videos and infographics are dominating the scene. And considering our unbridled attention to basically anything that delights the eye, it appears that visual content is here to stay.

With 30 million YouTubers streaming 5 billion videos every day, businesses of all sizes have learned to embrace this strategy and incorporate it into their campaign endeavors. Though optimizing content for Google is still a smart strategy for any marketer, you may be throwing away an opportunity to be seen by the 1.3 billion users of the second most visited website in the world-YouTube.

Today, you will learn about video marketing. Continue reading below or click any of the following links to skip to a specific section:

What Exactly Is Video Marketing?
Creating a Video Marketing Strategy
Choosing the Right Type of Marketing Video
Producing Your First Video
Selecting Tools for Video Production
Sharing Your Video

What Exactly Is Video Marketing?

For starters, video marketing is most definitely not about going viral. It’s also not as simple as turning your text-based content into videos, uploading them to YouTube, and calling it a day.

Producing videos and putting them up on the Internet isn’t what video marketing is about. This practice requires a strategic approach to creating and sharing video content for the purpose of attracting new audiences, engaging with them, and converting them into your loyal band of consumers.

If you haven’t heard, well, traditional ads, sponsored posts, and the like are passé. Consumers want content that matters to them, content that they can actually engage with. When you’re creating a video, keep in mind that audiences are more interested in hearing the message, not the sale.

Creating a Video Marketing Strategy

To produce an impactful video, you should let your marketing strategy power your story. First, determine what you want to achieve. This way, you can keep your content cohesive and geared towards accomplishing your goal.

Building the foundations of your project can be overwhelming. So that you can focus your efforts and resources towards achieving your target, start this marketing endeavor by setting SMART goals.

Specific: What do you want to accomplish?
Measurable: How will you determine that you’ve achieved your goal?
Attainable: What will you do to achieve your goal?
Relevant: How does the goal tie into the overall marketing strategy? How does it fit into the long-term vision of what you’re trying to achieve?
Time Limited: When exactly do you want to achieve your goal?

Choosing the Right Type of Marketing Video

Once you’ve set those SMART goals, choosing the type of video for your marketing campaign will be so much easier. Of course, the type of video you choose must be what’s best for advancing the goals you’ve set.

How-to videos fall into this category. This type of content is designed to teach audiences something new or to supplement their knowledge on certain areas.

Animated Explainer videos are focused on helping audiences realize why your product or service is something they need. This format typically revolves around a fictional story about a challenge that the company’s ideal audience is facing and how they overcome it by purchasing the business’ product or service.

Another way to inform consumers about how capable your product is of solving certain problems is through customer testimonial videos. In these videos, actual paying customers appear on camera to explain the problem they faced and how the company provided solutions.

The core goal of brand videos is to enhance brand awareness and to attract target audiences. Content highlights the brand’s vision, mission, and/or products and services.

Demo videos are all about showcasing how products work. This format is great for giving viewers a sneak peek of a product’s best features and its uses.

Whether it’s through streamed interviews or live presentations such as webinars, this video format is perhaps the best way to engage audiences online. It’s also inexpensive to produce live videos since virtually every social media platform provides a live streaming feature where you can interact with audiences in real time.

Recording a personal video for audiences who, for instance, didn’t respond to an email or didn’t attend a live event, is definitely an awesome way to catch their attention. It should get them to reconsider or encourage them to engage more.

Producing Your First Video Marketing Project

Step 1: Writing the script

Start your script by making an outline. Unlike the typical blog post, video language is relaxed, conversational, and straight to the point. Complex sentences must be avoided along with highfalutin jargon. Write in the first person to establish that connection with your audience.

Don’t wait until the very end to deliver the point of the video. Especially for educational and explainer videos, you should hook the audience from the very beginning.

Step 2: Understanding your camera

How are you going to film your video?

If you want to use a smartphone, make sure its video recording capabilities are high-end. In this digital era, marketing with low-quality content is criminal. That’s why you should also avoid zooming in as it tends to make the video look pixelated.

If you’re using a DSLR, it’s best if you fully understand its key settings: focus, frame rate, ISO, aperture, etc. Take a few online courses if you still can or look for photography tutorial videos online.

Step 3: Setting up your equipment

Tripods are a must for shoots because they keep the camera stable. They also make it easier for you to take shots that are in focus. These, however, may cost you a lot. Ultimately, the price depends on what camera and lens you have. But if you don’t want to spend so much-thank Pinterest because the platform has a few DIY hacks that you most definitely can put to good use. The same goes for lighting. Pinterest should be able to give you a few lighting hacks to maximize natural light or to build your improvised setup.

Step 4: Building an in-office studio

When you’ve got all the equipment you need, it’s time to find a good studio. Preferably, you should have a designated studio so that you won’t have to set up and take everything down for each shoot. A simpler alternative is to find a conference room, one with big windows where natural light can come through.

Place a few chairs or a couch in the studio. Bring in whatever furniture you want to fill in space and to reduce the echoes in the room. Also, take note of the air conditioning system. If the hum gets too noisy, turn it off whenever the camera is rolling.

TIP: If you don’t have the budget or time to set up a shoot, you can always turn to stock websites where you can get video footage, audio clips, and music for free. Other platforms have niche-specific videos and may require you to purchase the clips.

Selecting Tools for Video Production

These days, you don’t need to buy an expensive camera or top-tier editing software to produce a polished video. Here are some of the best video editing software you can get for free:

Lightworks: You can download Lightworks for free and get advanced tools, real-time effects, as well as a peculiar-looking interface that might not be what you’re used to but is still far more convenient than most. This software was used to produce The King’s Speech and Road to Perdition.

Hitfilm Express: The basic version of Hitfilm Express is available for free. It comes with a handful of professional-grade tools, but you can opt to purchase more such as color correction, filters, and split screen masking for at least $10.

DaVinci Resolve: DaVinci Resolve has premium-grade tools for editing and audio mastering, but its color correction editor is definitely superior. It allows you to adjust an entire video or pick out specific parts. Not to mention, it has HDR support and it enables you to edit raw files from your camera.

Sharing Your Video

YouTube: Apart from its massive audience, YouTube offers several features that can help you optimize your videos for search. By hosting content on users’ individual channels, YouTube allows brands to build their own audiences. New content is also more likely to be seen because subscribers are notified whenever videos are added.

Vimeo: Though Vimeo has a significantly smaller audience compared to YouTube, it is still the world’s second-largest video hosting platform. Compared to YouTube, they do host higher quality videos and have fewer ads and commercials.

Wistia: This video platform is specifically designed for businesses. Instead of driving traffic back to their site, they will help you lead audiences to your website. Plus, the player interface is customizable. You can tweak its look to fit your brand.

Final Thoughts

As the industry continues to transition from branded content to video content marketing, there will be significant opportunities for brands to become a contender in their respective industries. So drop the usual practice of building your content marketing strategy around driving sales. Instead, start brainstorming on ideas for content that your target audience will find valuable.