Content Marketing November 5th, 2015
Many businesses start out creating videos with an abstract goal in mind of pushing people to their website. While you may succeed in getting a few eyeballs on your videos and to your website in a roundabout way, a lack of focus will kill your ability to really drive traffic.
This guide will seek to show you how to establish:
There are a few shortcuts to achieving sustainable video marketing success. Gaining YouTube subscribers can often drive more success in accomplishing brand goals than having one or two viral hits. Follow these steps so that you can create a sustainable plan for your videos on YouTube, Vine, or Vimeo!
This is no time to sound like a cheesy self-help book. You need to clearly establish what it is you want your video marketing to do. There are countless numbers of goals:
This step has to be taken first as you must know what you’re doing before you can do it! Once you have this figured out and have a plan for it in your larger marketing strategy, you can start looking at who you want watching your content.
The key points of audience identification apply to video marketing the same as anywhere else. Identify their:
In the first part of this, you figured out what you wanted your video marketing to do. Now, you need to determine how you’re going to do that with your audience. Established businesses can look at their websites and social media marketing efforts for information on this.
One of your biggest challenges may be deciding on which platform to use, either YouTube or Vimeo. The two are similar, with Vine being vastly different, but knowing more about your target audience will help you figure out whether they’ll be found on YouTube or Vimeo.
You know what you want to do and who you want to market to. You have their interests and what they like to watch. This is where you need to come up with that clearly defined ‘hook’ for your channel. Every great video marketing brand has one:
What can you do that your viewers will remember you for? There are over 300 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute. With Vine and Vimeo only adding to that total, you have to stand out amongst that by specializing in some type of content or you’ll be forgotten!
Another hook that you can create is a catchphrase. Epic Meal Time have Harley, the host, says “Next time we eat a (something crazy)” at the end of every video. It’s fun, it’s memorable, and it’s something that makes your videos stand out. It also allows your viewers to look forward to the next video.
Who doesn’t have a link they want to promote? Even the million dollar making PewDiePie has a store where you can buy BroArmy merchandise. If you don’t have something like this, give your viewers something to click, even if it’s just your blog where you don’t sell anything.
Your links can be placed in one of three locations:
My personal preference is to see them at the end. This is because your viewers are going to do something once the video is over. It might as well be viewing some form of your content or visiting your landing pages. Links in the description are always welcome as well.
You’ll never reach your video marketing goals if you let it exist on its own. You need to have a plan for your videos on social media and part of your general online marketing.
To look at an example, we’ll turn to BMW. Their current feature video is the BMW 7 series car:
On their website, the featured car is the BMW 7 series car:
On their Twitter page you’ll see that header image is, you guessed it, the BMW 7 series car:
If you’re not making your videos a part of this type of all-out online push, you’re going to create a YouTube channel which isn’t as relevant as it should be. They use their videos as part of a larger push and every online platform benefits. Anyone who visits these different online properties will feel the connection, and learn the brand’s most important piece of information.
Turning viewers into customers is possible with the YouTube Partner Program, but if your goal is selling your own products you need to plan accordingly. Ways that brands have optimized their conversion strategies on YouTube include:
Even if you don’t sell a product you are still selling your videos for ad space. You can apply the above points to boost your subscriber rates and viewership numbers.
We’ve used sharing as a way to gain exposure for everything since well before there was a world wide web. Word of mouth is a powerful motivating factor. The difference is that we can now see how it spreads on social networks.
How you’ll get shares depends on the platform you’re using, but here are some examples:
Here’s the team at The Hillywood Show pushing their video through Twitter. The video is also connected to a contest, like we were talking about in the section above:
NEW VIDEO: We announce the WINNERS of the #SupernaturalParody Reaction Contest! ? WATCH: https://t.co/HNkDQW2v9X ? pic.twitter.com/XOAQVxZAF4
— The Hillywood Show® (@HillywoodShow) August 25, 2015
Anyone can push someone to watch their video or be found in a few video searches with good video SEO techniques. It’s those who get those people to stick around and continue watching via subscriptions that really build successful YouTube channels.
Few channels can rival Smosh for success. How they’ve built that success is on their push for every single video to get more subscribers from new viewers. Watch the end of this silly video to see how they do it:
They tell you to subscribe while a big, fat, pink button pops up on the screen! Auditory calls to action are an important part of getting subscribers and having a visual cue is another push. The button is also up there for around 10 seconds, giving viewers more time to push the button.
Video marketing requires lots of planning and determining how you want your content perceived by the audience. Let me know in the comments below any other tips you have for video marketing!
Feature image from Maksim / Shutterstock
4 Comments
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on
This is quite possibly the most comprehensive video tutorial I’ve seen. Furthermore, it’s compact, and easy to read. My question is: Does this work for all brands, or just certain ones? Products that target the elderly wouldn’t necessarily use these, or would they?
on
This advice was written to apply to the broadest possible range of brands. The second point I bring up in audience identification is age range. It’s going to be up to you to determine if you can find an audience in your age bracket on one of the video marketing platforms. If you can’t, I’d suggest you instead try to target those who are caring for the elderly you’re targeting. Get them fro ma different angle if you can’t get them directly.
on
Your article inspired me. Thanks a lot!
on
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it.