Video Marketing Tips

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Video Marketing Tips

Today’s search engine results pages offer a constantly evolving opportunity and challenge to anybody or any organisation with a website. Alongside the ever-changing algorithms search engines are now able to display many different types of files and content in the search engine results. Also webmasters are finding that some types of content can increase the levels of engagement of web visitors with their content and can be particularly effective at getting the message across, thus leading to increased conversion rates. Google’s development of its own ‘Google Videos’ and its subsequent purchase of YouTube highlighted the importance of video as not just a ‘fun’ aspect of the Web, but as an important Web Marketing medium.

Why Use Videos in your internet Marketing?

Some of the good reasons why you should use videos for example on the pages of your website, blog and Facebook Page are to:

• Increase engagement and provide a dynamic element to your Internet Marketing.
• To achieve more search engine rankings, and to increase conversion.
• Building ‘automated’ relationships i.e. you can build relationships with many viewers of the same video over time – the process is automated once you’ve made the video.
• Put across a lot of information in a short space of time and in a small physical area of space e.g. no need for lots of reading and scrolling.
• Drive behaviour i.e. direct or cause a viewer to go and do a specific thing e.g. download something, sign up to something etc.
  Help explain technical information / give instructions by showing, demonstrating, and or combining teaching tools within the video e.g. animated diagrams, moving pictures, text etc.
• Help project the ‘personality’ of your company and brand, thus making you / your company more distinct, familiar and identifiable. Building ‘personal branding’ can be particularly valuable where ‘you’ are the service deliverer / your knowledge and information is the basis of your product / service.
• Increase re-assurance, trust and liking in your audience e.g. when featuring a company representative / yourself in the video. People buy from people they like and trust.
• Make more of a connection with and build a deeper relationship with your target audience(s).
• Indirectly build up levels of social proof e.g. through comment about and recommendations of your video.
• Save time and resources / save to opportunity cost of trying to put the same amount and depth of information across using different media e.g. text on the website, email marketing etc.

How Easy is it to Produce Your Own Video?

In theory and for many people making a video for use online simply requires the use of a quiet area e.g. the office or a room at home, and the use of a reasonable web cam, Flip Cam, or other Digital Video camera e.g. with a USB connection so it can be plugged directly into your computer. If you are planning to talk e.g. presentation style, it may help to have a tripod to steady the camera, perhaps another person to operate the camera (although you can do this yourself), and perhaps an additional light or a well lit space. You may need to edit your video so you need access to software e.g. Windows Movie Maker. You can also use / combine other well known programs as part of the video e.g. PowerPoint.

Producing a Good Video

Since videos provide another way to feature in the search engine results a good first place to start would be to conduct keyword research and to give the video a title based on the keyword / key phrase you want to rank highly for. Including ‘benefits’ in the video is also a popular tactic, as is basing the video title on a popular question in the search engines.

You need to have a clear and specific target audience in mind for your video, and make the video specifically for that audience. There is no such thing as an average or general type of person so your video should have a clear target at its heart. Different videos can be made for different target audiences if you have several.

With this clear target established you then have to make sure your video’s message is clear and relevant to the target as possible. Put together a bullet pointed outline of the main points you need to make in the video.

Viewers of your video online will have limited amount of patience and time and therefore you need to design your video so that the main point(s) you need them to remember is featured within the first 30 seconds – perhaps within the first 15 seconds.

As with your web pages your video needs to have a clear call to action in it i.e. there must be a behaviour / something you need your viewers to do which links into your sales ‘funnel’ and contributes to your conversion e.g. click on or download something, go to an opt-in form, buy something etc. As well as featuring the call to action in the video you may also want to feature it as a credit. You should also try to give people a clear and obvious reason for watching the video i.e. make the benefits of watching the video clear.

If you are featuring yourself / a person talking in the video make sure you relax, be yourself and look straight into the camera. Looking straight into the camera this way is the equivalent of looking into the viewers' eyes and is a sign of trustworthiness.

Distributing the Video

YouTube is a an ideal place to post your videos because it is owned by Google, it is free and easy to do so, it’s the largest video platform, you can set up your own channel on YouTube and thus help build your fan base, and you have the opportunity of revenue from placing ads on your videos. Putting the YouTube hosted videos into your web / blog / Facebook pages is also an easy operation which involves just the copying and pasting of ‘embed’ code.

You can also gain wide distribution and dramatically increase the numbers of viewers / potential viewers by using popular video networking communities e.g. Traffic Geyser.

A good, relevant video can keep on delivering visitors form a variety of places over a long period of time with no extra promotional cost need from you.