6 Ways To Properly Market A Video

When people talk about the importance of video marketing on the Internet, they aren’t kidding. Video really is one of the best ways you can spread word about your business, and of course, there’s the always-present chance of the video “going viral” and making you a hit.

However, you can’t do this with just any video you have lying around. The best examples of marketing a video all involve a clip that was intended for the Internet. Just as when you’re dealing with films any other medium, you have to consider your audience and their desires for best effect.

We’ve got plenty of experience in helping people market their videos, so take a seat and read on for a few ideas on how to make the best marketing videos you can.

Six Strategies For Marketing a Video

• Reinforce, reinforce, reinforce. Ask any teacher the best way to teach a concept, and they will almost certainly say “reinforcement.” You should boil the idea of your video down to a single message, even if that message is simply “Eat at Joe’s,” and make sure it’s repeated several times in different forms. There’s an art to this, of course, since you can’t be too heavy-handed. But, consider 2-3 repetitions of the message to be the bare minimum.
• Comedy sells. If our hypothetical teacher above didn’t say “reinforcement,” they’d say “make them laugh.” It’s well-established that humor directly aids learning. For some reason, the cognitive dissonance that humor exploits also opens up a mind to be more receptive to new ideas. If you’re in doubt about the best way to push your message, you can rarely go wrong with being funny.(As long as it’s actually funny, anyway. You’re on your own if you hire Rob Schneider.)
• Budgets: If you can’t go big, “make it work.” I’m not going to say that budget doesn’t matter, since many of the most famous ads in history had ridiculous budgets. However if you don’t have millions of dollars to blow, look to leverage a small budget in clever ways. Remember Chuck Testa? That’s a perfect example of how to make a small budget work for you. (And reinforcement, and comedy…)
• Invite social involvement. Many marketeers don’t understand that a viral video is truly a collaborative effort. People at large need to have a reason to want to share your video with their friends. Speak to them and make them want to share it. This is yet another reason comedy works so well. Either way, your video should have plenty of options for sharing it on every social site you can think of. You can even embed apps for sharing directly in the video to make it easier!
• Music really matters. It’s easy to overlook the sound and music when marketing a video, but you shouldn’t. While there’s no “magic bullet” for creating a viral hit, having catchy music seems to be a significant factor. (It helps explain why Americans loved a snarky K-pop parody, anyway.) Don’t skimp here; take some time browsing around stock music libraries or Creative Commons works to find a good companion piece to your video.
• Remember the metadata. Before your marketing video goes live, make sure you’re leveraging the metadata in its file and its tagging. These should all be rich with keywords, while still being human-readable. This metadata helps search engine spiders catalog your work, as well as making it easier to find while using a variety of web searches. This is the “invisible” touch that can really enhance your video marketing, especially considering that popular YouTube videos instantly get a top spot in relevant Google searches.

Marketing a video online is remarkably easy, all told, and with the right video you can really spread word about your business while putting your message in front of viewers.

Oh, and did I mention reinforcement?

Read more:

• How to Harness Video for Business to Get Measurable Results
• 5 Video Editing Software for Small Businesses to Improve Video Marketing