Alan DraperThere is no denying that video is a powerful tool. According to Forrester Research, 1 minute of video is worth 1.8m words. Video is a powerful experience as it provides a multi-sensory experience – an audio, visual and emotional experience all in one.
When done properly, video has the ability to change people’s behaviour, define your brand position and allow you to remain firmly in the mind of your target audience. To get the maximum benefit from your video follow these top 10 tips:
1. Know your audience
Before you start the whole video process, it’s vital that you are clear on your target audience for the video and that you understand them. Knowing and understanding your audience is required to truly inspire them to further engage and connect with you.
2. Emotional Engagement
Generating an emotional response is an important element of successful video marketing campaigns. People want to share experiences that stir their emotions. People feel compelled to share content that develops strong feelings like surprise and joy. Extracting this response is paramount to achieving genuine brand engagement and superior brand experiences.
3. Keep it short
Short videos are more engaging than long videos. The general rule is that your video should be no longer than 3 minutes. People have short attention spans, so it’s vital you put across what you want to communicate quickly otherwise you run the risk of people not watching all the way through.
4. Grab attention
People will decide whether to continue to watch in the first 20 seconds. Therefore your video needs to grab attention right from the start.
5. Call to action
So you’ve got the audience’s attention, but one common mistake is to leave out a call to action. Your video needs to clearly lead customers towards taking an action and/or making a purchase. Let them know what their next step should be after watching.
6. Integrate
A common mistake is to simply place a video in one location, such as on the company website. You should also share it on online video platforms such as YouTube, on your blog, in your email campaigns etc to maximise exposure.
7. Embrace social media
An important medium to share your video is social media as this allows you to engage with your online community of fans and allows them to share it with their network, which will increase the exposure of your video.
8. Make it shareable
If you upload your video to your website, give viewers the option to share it. Again this is aimed at increasing the exposure of the video and will help search rankings.
9. Optimise it
Any video on your website should be fully optimised as Google, and other search engines, put more search engine ranking value on online video. Forrester Research found that videos were 53 times more likely than traditional web pages to receive an organic first page ranking on Google. This means an optimised video can shoot your website up the search rankings.
10. Measure
As with any marketing activity, it’s important to measure the results of your video. This allows you to understand what content ‘works’ and what platforms are the most effective, so that you can focus more time and attention in the right places.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Alan Draper.
Learn how to publish your content on B2C
Join our Telegram channel to stay up to date on breaking news coverage
Add B2C to your Google News Feed
Neil, great post. Calls to action are underutilized in videos. I don’t see a ton of videos, even ones done by marketers, with a real clear direction of what they want the viewer to do.
Videos are definitely a powerful tool. These are all great tips, but we’ve seen that it is most important to know your audience. A video can be tailored in so many ways to reach the most effective audience, which can also lead to catching attention and emotional engagement if done right.
Good job Neil. If we could summarize what most videos are missing it is a strategy isn’t it? I find when I just ask a client what they want a visitor to do in their website, I hear silence on the other end of the phone. How can the visitor know what to do if the owner doesn’t know what thy want them to do?
Thanks for the kind comments.
I agree Anish, we are increasingly trying to create videos that emotionally engage with the target audience and this is especially important for social video. I also agree that it’s important you need to know what you want the customer to do – this is the clear call to action that some videos do not include.