Effective Branding Through Video Content Marketing

For many businesses, it’s an uphill battle to create a strong online presence and get a slice of online mindshare. While many are trying to find new ways to connect and to make the experience richer and meaningful for their audience, some are beginning to use content creatively and promote it through videos to brand their business.

Videos have become an excellent medium to engage audiences from all walks of life. Youtube alone is getting more than 6 billion views a month with 100 hours of videos uploaded every minute. Small businesses are going to Youtube because of the cost-effective means to reach a wider audience. More importantly it’s an exceptional opportunity to brand their business, in a most compelling way and find advocates and brand ambassadors, without needing to shell out a single centavo. Aside from that, big businesses are getting a huge chunk of the Youtube marketshare, as every big brand is creating their own video content. Proof of this is Coca-cola which recently released their 2-part series content marketing strategies from present leading up to year 2020.

PART I

PART II

These speak volumes about how powerful videos can be when you use it for marketing. However, there are many successful videos created by small, medium and big businesses, there are also those that created the opposite effect.

So the question is: what makes effective video content marketing for business branding?

The primary purpose of creating a video is to make the audience feel your brand. They must find something that will make them say “this brand understands my needs”. Video content can do that because people are more keen to believe things that they see and hear rather than just read.

What your audience actually sees and hears creates a more compelling perception in their minds. Unlike what they only read. Furthermore, people are most likely to connect with real people showing real or perceived to be real emotions. That is why rich content like videos and images are staggeringly becoming a favourite content snack of many netizens. It is engaging the audience by creating an emotional connection.

To engage your audience and brand your business, your video must contain the following elements:

It Must be Interesting and Entertaining

Most videos that are getting the top spot for viewership in Youtube are music videos. These videos do not only provide entertainment value, they are also interesting because people are able to relate to the words and emotions, even if not necessarily to the artist. The same thing applies to your business branding. Your video showcasing your product or service must appear to be interesting or entertaining, in a creative manner to your target audience so that they will remember it.

It Must be Educational and Answer the Pain Points of Your Audience

Another kind of video that are getting the views are those that educate and teach the audience how things are done. How-to videos are valuable to an audience because it directly provides a solution to their problem. Some videos provide a showcase of how actual things are done. That makes it easier to follow compared to a text-based instruction.

It must be Able to Evoke a Reaction from Your Audience

Whether the reaction is a positive or a negative one, a video that evokes a reaction means that it effectively hits a chord in your audience’s psyche.

A powerful video and the most viral ad of all time is the Dove Real Beauty Sketches.

The video shows women being too critical of themselves compared to how others actually see them. It’s an interesting video to many women and men because they can relate to it. Second, it answers the biggest pain points of many individuals – self-confidence. The message resonated with millions, who probably felt a loss of confidence at least once in their lives. The powerful emotional response was also staggering as published by the Dove survey which says that “over half (54%) of women globally agree that when it comes to how they look, they are their own worst beauty critic, which equates to a staggering 672 million women around the world.”

The Dove Beauty Sketches has also surpassed all previous viral ads and has gotten a widespread attention in almost all countries and all media channels by including all these elements.