Video has become a key pillar in the digital marketing space. If you want your brand to be in front of its ideal audience, you need to invest some time and money in creating compelling content. The actual substance of the video can be as simple as walking around your office with your phone, or you can work with a professional company like Pretzel Logic Productions to make something much more produced. But once you have that video, you need to come up with a plan to make sure people see it.
Creating content isn’t a marketing strategy in and of itself; it’s merely the first step. Don’t worry, it’s easier than you might think. Here are five tips that will help you take your strategy to the next level.
1. Create Effective Thumbnails
Your thumbnail is likely the first thing your audience will notice when encountering your brand video. It’s also likely the thing that will convince them to watch it or not. Even if the content you’re making is relevant and engaging to them, an unappealing thumbnail might deter someone who is the perfect target for your video. That’s why it’s crucial that, instead, you create a custom thumbnail that both clearly communicates the content of your video as well as draws your audience in. It’s a proven strategy too, as 90 percent of the best-performing videos on YouTube employ a custom thumbnail.
You don’t have to spend too much time working on it or hire someone to make it for you. Just follow some simple design guidelines. Try to use bright colors to make the image leap off the screen. If you have a consistent color palette you use for your brand, even better. Don’t make the thumbnail too busy so only include a few key images and relevant text. A viewer should be able to understand what the video is about at a glance. With a great thumbnail, your video will capture the interest of anybody who happens to notice it.
2. Provide Captions and Transcripts
Captions and transcripts have a twofold value. First, they make your brand video more accessible to a wider audience. Captions allow you to reach any viewers you have who might be hard of hearing, as well as anyone who might be watching it in a loud environment or with the sound off entirely. With a transcript, viewers can review the content of the video at their own pace, and it gives you the opportunity to repurpose the content of the video to create a blog post.
In addition to increasing your accessibility, including both captions and transcripts helps boost your SEO (search engine optimization). When search engine crawlers find your video, they’ll see the text and index it accordingly. By using text that includes relevant keywords, you’ll rank more favorably. It’s a win-win, giving you the opportunity to make more inclusive content while making a smart marketing decision at the same time.
3. Promote Brand Video Content through Multiple Channels
When you spend hours creating an exciting, professional-quality brand video, you might feel like it can promote itself. Unfortunately, no matter how good your video is, that isn’t the case. While sites like YouTube do let people subscribe to your content, you can’t rely on that to spread the word whenever you have a new video to post. If you have an email newsletter, that’s a perfect place to let people know. Anyone invested in your brand enough to sign up for your updates is likely going to engage with your video content.
Make sure you share it across your social media as well. You’ll be able to inform both your existing audience and potential new viewers of your video. You don’t need to post the entire video to your Instagram—just some compelling clips that will get someone interested enough to watch the full video. You’ve just invested your time and money into making something that really captures your brand’s image so don’t be afraid to sing its praises to anyone who will listen.
4. Incorporate User-Generated Content
A key element of any effective brand video is a sense of connection. There are plenty of examples of major brands that have shoveled money into huge, elaborate spectacles, only to have the video fall flat because there’s no human element. People don’t want to feel like they’re just having products and services waved in front of them; they want to feel a personal connection. One of the easiest ways to reach your audience on an emotional level is by incorporating user-generated content (UGC) in your video marketing strategy.
While a sleek, professionally made video can help boost your brand, viewers are more likely to trust the opinions of everyday people who have had a positive experience with you. Share any success stories or personal testimonials from satisfied customers, encourage people to post videos of themselves using your product with a specific hashtag, or even work with online influencers if they’re fans of your brand. It all helps establish your image as trustworthy, relatable, and ultimately human.
5. Watch the Analytics and Adjust to Improve
Of course, your marketing strategy should never be in a fixed state. You need to constantly be updating and improving, making tweaks to consistently up your game.
First, you need to decide how you’re going to measure “success.” Are you trying to boost your subscriber count? Your number of views? The traffic to your site? With a specific, quantifiable goal in mind, you can utilize your analytics to gauge whether or not you’ve achieved it.
After you share a new brand video, monitor the numbers and see how it performs. If you notice people are dropping off at a certain point or your view count is plateauing, you can adjust your strategy and see if things improve. Your marketing strategy needs to be mutable, ready to adapt and change in order to meet your audience where they are. As time goes by, you’ll home in on and understand the kind of content they want to see and boost your brand’s visibility before you know it.