This article will give you a step-by-step guide to getting started with your video marketing efforts.
You’ll learn how to create videos that get attention, convert viewers into customers, and that you can afford.
Here are the five steps:
- Find your target audience.
- Choose your video type.
- Prepare your video.
- Optimise your video.
- Promote your video on social media
Â
Step #1 – Find Your Target Audience
The first step in creating compelling video marketing for social media is determining your target audience. This may sound like an obvious place to start, but you’d be surprised by how many people and companies don’t take the time to develop a comprehensive understanding of who their customers are.
Let’s say you want to promote a new line of all-natural vegan skincare products; some made with locally harvested ingredients. What kind of person do you imagine will be interested in your products?
A younger, affluent professional living in a central metropolitan area?
A middle-aged mom who values health and wellness?
An ageing retiree on a limited budget?
Let’s assume that it’s a young professional – but why did we choose this person as our target demographic? Perhaps because they have disposable income and care about the environment, or maybe because they’re most likely to use social media. But these are just assumptions, there are other factors at play here! The truth is that there’s no way for you to know if your target customer profile is accurate until you research what motivates them. We’ll get into more detail about this later in the guide, but for now, remember that knowing what makes your target customer tick is key to developing an effective marketing campaign.
Step #2 – Choose Your Video Type
Next up: choose your video type.
As you’ll see in the examples below, each video type has a different purpose. For example, if you want to go viral, a dance challenge video will help you achieve that goal. If you’re going to educate your audience, an explainer video will help.
Here’s an overview of the most popular types of videos and what they achieve:
- Explainer videos are designed to educate your audience about a specific topic or issue in a simple way.
- Viral videos are designed to be shared across social media platforms quickly and easily. They usually contain humorous content and reference trending topics (like popular memes).
- Animation Videos are created using animation software such as Adobe After Effects or Blender3D. They’re often used for marketing purposes because they stand out on social media platforms (especially when done right).
Step #3 – Prepare Your Video
This is where you plan and write the script for your video so you are ready when it comes time to film.
The script for a social media video should be concise and to the point. It should be in a conversational style and not sound like an advertisement. Include a call to action (CTA) that tells people what action to take, such as visiting your website or calling your company. Your CTA also should include a hook that will grab attention and make people want to take action.
For example, you might include a statement at the end of your ad: “Get more information by calling XYZ Company now!”
Step #4 – Optimize Your Video
The final step of social video marketing is to optimise your video for search and online sharing. Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, here’s a quick refresher on what a video thumbnail is (and why they matter).
A thumbnail is a still image representing your video in the feed or search results page, this will be the Reel Cover on Instagram. It’s similar to how an article’s headline can inspire you to click through to read more. A compelling thumbnail can entice clicks on social media and search engines.
You may have noticed that we briefly touched on this topic when we talked about using captions in Step #3: Use Captions. While it might seem like there’s an overlap between these two steps, they each deserve their section because each serves its purpose:
- Optimise your video for search – Use keyword optimisation and thumbnails to ensure your videos are found by viewers looking for specific topics or keywords
- Optimise your video for sharing – Make it easy for people to share your videos with others by optimising them for sharing on Instagram, Faceboo, Twitter, YouTube, etc. This will increase views which will lead to more shares.
Step #5 – Promote Your Video on Social Media
It’s not enough to post your video on social media to reap the benefits of video marketing. It would be best to share it with as many people who can help you promote it, such as influencers who share your video with a broader audience and relevant websites that link back to yours.
To recap, here’s the list of things you should do after publishing your video on social media:
- Share it on all of your other accounts (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest)
- Share it in an email newsletter
- Embed it on your website and blog posts (especially those where the video is related)
- Share it with online community groups like Reddit and Quora, where you have an active presence
Social media is an excellent platform for video marketing, with growing popularity in social video consumption.
Social media is an excellent platform for video marketing, especially given the growing popularity of social video consumption. Social media is a place where people share videos, and it’s where people spend most of their time online. It’s also one of the best ways to connect with your audience. It’s, therefore, a great way to get your message out there.
If you’d like to start using video marketing but aren’t sure how to get started, we can help! Contact us today for a free consultation on how we can help increase engagement on social media and drive sales through video content.