When you’re embarking on a Video Marketing campaign there are a few basics that you absolutely have to get right in order to avoid wasting money and not getting the results you’re after. Much of this process is just common sense but (as they say) common sense is not always all too common and many people get them totally wrong.
Before we start looking at the five musts of Video Marketing let’s take a look at what the goals are of an online video marketing campaign. Obviously your targets will differ business by business and campaign to campaign but there is one axiom in marketing, no matter what the end goal of your campaign is – the first goal is reach. You need to start your efforts with reach in mind, you need to target that reach and you need to be very aware of the key data points you need to watch in order to make sure you get that reach.
What we’re going to take a look at in this post is the five things you must do in order to make sure that you get the reach that you need from your campaign.
The first thing you must do as a part of any video marketing campaign
To quote an old and overused adage. Failing to plan is planning to fail. The first thing you need to know is who you want to reach. Different demographics use different channels and watch different types of video. Different words and styles appeal to different age groups. Step one, before you embark on a video marketing campaign, is to know who it is you want to reach. Once you know who, then you’ll be able to start working out how.
The second most important part of executing a video marketing campaign
Once you know who you want to reach you’ve got to start looking at how you’re going to reach them. YouTube is an obvious part of the recipe of a successful video marketing campaign, but there are other sites that are equally as important. Don’t underestimate the value of sites like DailyMotion and Vimeo for instance. On top of this there are highly niched sites that are great for local video marketing campaigns such as LocalVideo.Tv, although many of them come at a cost they are well worth the investment.
Step three, you’ve got your market, now what about that video?
Not all videos are created equal and there are several ways to approach your video production. If you are all ready to get going on a full production then you’ll need to find a good videographer and probably hire actors as well as a post production team. This can very quickly run into thousands upon thousands of dollars. There are other ways to go about this though. Animation can often be done far more cheaply than a full scale production for instance. You might even want to look at a service like Trust Review Videos which takes your online reviews and converts them into professionally produced videos. Whichever way you go, make sure that the company you worth with has a track record – preferably with other companies in your industry or a related one.
Step four, it’s not just about the video!
How many times have you seen a beautiful video on YouTube with 2 views in the last year? It happens more often that you’d imagine – in fact, unfortunately, it’s the rule not the exception. There are 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every single minute according to the latest stats from Google. That’s a lot of video to stand out among. You need to make sure that you know and understand video meta data, the YouTube pay per click system and what you’re going to do about embedding, backlinking and crosslinking your videos. If you’re not an SEO expert then hire one, if you’ve just gone to the expense of producing your video then you don’t want to skimp at this stage.
Step five, watch and understand your metrics – closely – especially at the beginning
This is especially important if you’re paying for views. You must watch your numbers to ensure that your targeted reach is in line with your actual reach. If you’re running a car yard then you probably don’t want click throughs (that you’re paying for) from Rhianna’s latest video. Once the campaign is up and going then you need to be extremely proactive, especially in the initial stages, or you could be completely wasting your time.
Of course, you could always bring someone in to take care of all this for you! Click here to book an appointment.