Incorporating Video into Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Video marketing can no longer be just a small piece of your overall digital marketing plan. Now, it must be central to your outreach and retention efforts. Video marketing can boost engagement, increase sales, and offer a return on investment that shouldn’t be ignored.

In fact, research shows:

• More than 50% of consumers want to see more videos from brands.
• Videos on landing pages can increase conversion rates by more than 80%.
• 90% of customers say videos help them make buying decisions.
• In 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic, 15x higher than it was in 2017.

Video has transformed not only the way businesses go to market and share their stories, but also how consumers shop and interact with brands. And while we know video is key, incorporating it into your overall digital marketing strategy can be tricky without having the right information and a plan.

Here are seven tips for integrating video into your digital marketing strategy.

Tips for Integrating Video into Your Marketing Strategy

Start With a Video Strategy

The first step to incorporating video into your digital marketing strategy overall is to create a video marketing strategy itself.

1. Start with your goals. What is it you want to accomplish with video? For example, do you want to build awareness? Increase consideration? Drive conversions? Improve retention?
2. Determine your target audience. Who are you creating the videos for? What does this audience look like? Where do they interact with your brand?
3. Figure out the story you want to tell. How will video tell this story? How can video support your company and marketing goals? What types of videos will tell this story best?
4. Develop a process for production. Include people involved, timelines, and budget.
5. Create a distribution plan. How will these videos be shared, and on what platforms? What do you need to support this?

Share Your Brand

Video provides virtually unlimited opportunities for your leads and customers to get up close and personal with your brand.

The flexibility in production allows you to share live videos, pre-recorded videos, professionally produced videos, or videos you’ve shot on your phone, showing viewers the personality of your brand.

Your audience wants to see behind-the-scenes content, watch videos that they can relate to or laugh at or that answer their questions or resolve their pain points. Video allows you to share your employees, products, services, and overall brand story in an engaging, entertaining way.

Regardless of how you share your brand, your audience will want to watch it. Don’t be afraid to think outside of the box for how you can best represent your brand via video.

Think Outside Traditional Commercials

Commercials are often a necessary piece of marketing, but also one of the most expensive tactics to produce and share. They are also usually longer (:30 or :60), while research shows the optimal digital video length is between 9-15 seconds.

However, commercials aren’t just on TV anymore, and they don’t have to be produced in the way they used to be. You can show commercials on streaming services, video platforms, or use them on social media. In fact, viewers pay 151% more attention to ads on Hulu than linear TV, making these audiences more attentive and more likely to convert.

Produce for Social

Research shows that four of the top six channels on which consumers watch video are social channels. For example, each day people watch over 1 billion hours of videos on YouTube, and users are watching more than 24 hours of content per month on TikTok.

Your video strategy for social should be central to your video and digital marketing efforts, especially since social platforms are primarily where people watch videos. These videos should be shorter (:06, :10, :15) and created specifically for social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and more.

Not only are these videos more fun, engaging, and designed to be shared, but they are also a great way to engage leads and customers and solicit two-way feedback.

When creating videos for social, pay attention to unique aspects of social media, like muted autoplay and video looping.

Match Video Styles with Placements

Each digital marketing channel serves different purposes for your audiences. It’s important to know your audience on each platform and balance that with the purpose of the channel so you can develop your video content for that audience and purpose.

For example, a :30 commercial developed for CCTV shouldn’t be used on TikTok and may not perform well on other social platforms either. A video developed for Instagram may not be suited for Hulu.

Also take into consideration the different nuances of digital marketing channels. For example, you may not be able to embed an entire video in an email, they should include closed captioning for social, commercials should have QR codes or vanity URLs, etc.

Put your Videos Everywhere

Once you create videos, they should be shared on your social channels, website, in emails, and everywhere else you can. Some of these placements can be free, but you may also want to consider paid placements. Also be sure to optimize your videos, especially those on YouTube, for search engines so they can be found easily.

Digital platforms were made for watching and sharing videos easily, so the more placements you can get, the more likely your videos are going to perform well and reach the goals you set for your strategy.

Try Different Video Types Until You Get it Right

Different video styles include:

Lifestyle

Mini-docs

Testimonials –

Narratives

Animations –

Demos –

Brand videos –

Event videos

Interviews –

How-to/explainer videos

Live videos

Virtual reality videos –

And more!

Do research into the different digital marketing platforms you use to understand what types of videos are supported, and what performs best on those platforms with those audiences. Don’t get stuck developing one type of video – create different kinds and carefully track KPIs to see what works and what doesn’t.

Contact Us

If you are interested in incorporating video into your digital marketing strategy, contact Dragonfly Digital Marketing today. We can help your business improve engagement and communicate a brand image that connects you with your target customer and expands your reach overall.