Creating Tailored Video Content for Your Marketing Campaigns

In 2016, it’s easier than ever to create video content and place it on a multitude of devices and streaming services that will reach your audience. If you haven’t been utilizing video for your business or marketing needs, now is the time to start.

Video Marketing Is Growing

  • Most devices, ranging from smartphones, tablets, phablets and beyond, are optimized to deliver high-quality video content to your customers in an instant.
  • Video is now highly accessible on mobile devices. It’s incredibly simple to advertise video content across various mobile platforms to reach your audience.
  • Video content engages an audience quicker than almost every other form of media and is more likely to be shared socially. In fact, video is so effective on a landing page that it is likely to increase conversions by 80%.
  • Video is an effective way to explain a product or service on your website or through social media.

Now that you have some reasons that reinforce why you should be creating video content, below are some tips to help guide you in the right direction.

Know Your Audience

Before you get started with creating video content, you have to know who you’re making the content for. A window installation company isn’t going to have the same audience as a comic book store, so the same type of video content won’t resonate with each other’s audiences. Really understanding this simple, yet key concept will make sure your videos are unique and drive healthy engagement rates.

There are a couple of ways of finding out more about your audience:

  • Apply market research. Look at what your competitors are doing and how they’re reaching their audience with video. Determine how they approached their demographic, what problems their customers faced, and how they provided solutions to those problems with their video content.
  • Ask your customers. Seems obvious right? There’s no harm in being straightforward with your audience. Conduct surveys, send out newsletters with questionnaires and inquire about what video content they would like to see. 

Analyze and Interpret

This is part of knowing your audience, but here we apply it specifically to video content. The type of content your audience will consume depends on their shared interests. In addition, content that explains the solution to a problem or provides answers does very well in regards to views and impressions.

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Different industries will benefit from different types of video content. Here’s a few examples of how content may differ from industry to industry:

Window Installation Business

  • Uses how-to and DIY videos
  • Benefits from in-depth, step-by-step videos detailing how to do window work
  • Videos will be longer in length
  • Audience will most likely be older homeowners

Comic Book Store

  • Uses short-length videos
  • Benefits from quick overview types of videos
  • Uses list videos and top ten format
  • Increase virility with movie industry tie-ins
  • Younger demographics

People searching for window installation videos, repair videos and educational videos will be willing to watch a longer how-to video, whereas comic book fans will be searching for quick snippets, considering 35% of people watch less than 3/4 of a video.

Video in Your Hands

What’s so exciting about technology today is that it puts the possibility to create content in the palm of your hand. An iPhone or Samsung smartphone with a decent HD camera can provide you with quality good enough to get started with your video marketing campaigns.

Gone are the days of expensive cameras, lighting, and microphones. Now anyone can create content, publish it online, and share it through their social media channels.

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Develop the Purpose

So you’ve figured out the perfect content for your company, narrowed down your audience, and you’re ready to start making some videos. The next step is to figure out the purpose of the video.

Do you want to inform, persuade or dazzle your viewers? Maybe all three? Determining the goals and desired outcome for your videos will help you connect with the right audience.

Going back to our trusty ol’ window company vs. comic book store example, as a window company, you’re going to want to nail down just what you want to dish out to your audience.

A how-to video on installing a French door set will be much more valuable than a ten-minute dissertation on the materials and history involved in the manufacturing of weather-proof vinyl covering.

Consider adding excitement and humor to the video, this can often make a video more light-hearted and receptive amongst your viewers.

If you need some inspiration, check out Hubspot’s examples of great video content marketing.

Apply Your Marketing Strategy

Just having a great video these days doesn’t cut it. You need to consciously add your marketing sciences and practices into the mix. All the same marketing questions apply for your new videos:

  • Who’s your target?
  • What is your budget?
  • What are your distribution channels?
  • What’s your measurable goal?

These are just a few of the questions that need to be addressed for your videos.  Of course everybody wants their videos to go viral, but to catch on socially, you need to know and use your digital channels.

More so, as video content changes to become more interactive, so should you. Forbes has a great list of what to expect in the upcoming year from video content.

So there you have it, six tips on getting started with your very own video content. Using these tips, you’ll be able to get a kick-start on reaching audiences that matter to your business and engage them with some solid video marketing campaigns.

Menachem Ani ()

Online Advertising and eCommerce Expert with over a decade of success developing high-impact marketing strategies for online retailers and lead-generation clients.