Video Marketing Strategies

Nov 26, 2021

Did you know that about 80% of all online traffic comes from videos? In fact, including a video on your sales or landing page can increase conversion rates by up to 90%! There’s no doubt about it; video marketing is a multi-billion-dollar industry and brands all over the world are realizing the power of video and investing in its creation and distribution.

From bloggers to established companies, videos are used to generate mass exposure, rapidly increase sales and create a memorable message that furthers your brand and establishes a strong relationship with your target audience.

That is the power of video marketing. In this special report, we’ll take a close look at how you can take full advantage of the unlimited exposure and brand-building power that video marketing provides.

Your Video Marketing Plan

Every successful strategy begins with a clear plan of action. This means that you’ll want to begin by defining your overall video marketing objective. This will help you stay focused and will ensure you set measurable and attainable goals.

Your video marketing plan will be what ultimately guides you through the entire process. From deciding on the type of videos you’ll create, and setting your production and marketing budget, to defining your timelines - a solid plan will keep you moving steadily in the right direction.

Depending on your business, there are different types of goals you’ll want to consider. The main two are:

Revenue-Based Goals & Brand-Based Goals.

Revenue-based goals involve directly increasing sales as well as lead-form inquiries that could result in future or follow-up sales.

Whereas brand-based goals would include things like building a targeted email list, increasing viewer engagement and overall awareness, and driving more traffic to your website or blog.

While revenue-based goals are designed to put more money in your pocket quickly, brand-based goals are equally as important because they are geared towards positioning your business for future, long-term success.

When deciding on your initial goal, you’ll want to be as specific as possible. Instead of thinking, I want to increase revenue, set a specific income goal amount or percentage that you are aiming for.

The same goes for brand-based goals. Rather than aiming to simply increase the number of email subscribers, consider a more specific goal, such as increasing subscriber rates by 80%, or adding 1,000 new people to your email list.

Setting your initial goal will also help you determine what kind of videos you want to create.

For example, if you are primarily focused on brand-building, your videos would likely consist of content geared towards engaging a new audience, introducing your brand, and creating awareness of the products and services you offer.

However, if your primary objective is to increase sales and you’ve already cultivated an audience in other ways, your videos might be geared towards the decision stage, where people are close to making a purchase and all you have to do is nurture those prospects.

You also want to make sure your goals are both measurable and achievable. One way to do that is to begin by creating a mission statement that outlines what your goals are, and then write down ideas as to how you will reach your objectives. Then, keep a pulse on your growth and overall progress every step of the way.

Knowing your metrics and paying close attention to your achievements are incredibly important. Not only will it help shape the way you create your video campaigns, but it will indicate, early on, what is working and what may need strengthening.

Regardless of your primary objective, you should eventually create videos that cover all the different stages of the buying process.

Someone new to your brand wouldn’t be in the same step as someone familiar with your business so you should create videos for different segments of your audience.

Here are a few ideas:

Create an explainer video to give your new website visitors an understanding of what your business does.
Create a detailed sales video, geared towards solidifying the sale.
Create an engagement video to build a better relationship and a deeper level of trust with your audience.

Different types of video content are also used to successfully guide your customers along their pathway from exploration to purchase.

According to Vidyard.com, this is the ideal video content mix you should be aiming for in your purchase pathway, based on what has already worked well for major brands:

Interest Stage: 15%
Learning Stage: 25%
Evaluation Stage: 40%
Justification Stage 20%

Most of your efforts should be at the evaluation stage around the middle of the purchase pathway.

Let’s take a closer look at the different stages:

Interest & Learning Stage:

This is when you would create a comprehensive video that covers a variety of questions about your product or service.

This allows you to position yourself as an authority in your market and helps people better understand your brand.

Webinars:

A webinar is a great way to move prospects down that pathway quickly. Repurpose your blog posts, e-books, and other guides into webinars that carry a strong message and guide viewers toward their next step.

Facebook Videos:

Facebook offers several types of video marketing, like hosting a live stream that provides a more personal touch and helps to quickly establish a relationship with your customers.

Another option is creating native videos. According to VentureBeat, Facebook’s native videos have 4 times more organic reach than YouTube videos!

Explainer Videos:

These are concise videos that introduce your product or service. You’d put this type of video at the top of your landing page to give prospects a quick sense of who you are, what you do, and how you can help them.

YouTube Videos:

The most popular video platform, YouTube makes it easy for you to rank for specific keywords that will drive fresh traffic to your content.

Interviews with Thought Leaders:

One of the best ways to build authority in any industry is by networking with established businesses or experts in your market.

By recording interviews with influencers in your industry, you can appeal to their existing audience and build your own following faster than ever.

The top of the pathway is meant to introduce your brand to potential prospects and solidify your place in your market. This means that you’ll likely want to structure your video content so it’s designed to convert a viewer into an email subscriber.

That way you can follow up with them later and continue establishing a relationship with those leads.

In the evaluation stage, your videos would likely include some of the following:

Product Demos:

If your company sells products, this is the stage where you send out an e-mail asking if the prospect would be interested in a product demo.

You could also create videos based on highlighting how your product works and how it benefits those who purchase it.

Client Testimonials:

80% of people trust recommendations from people they know over any other type of advertising.

This is why videos that include personal and genuine testimonials from clients are often used to persuade viewers to take action. They are incredibly powerful at spreading your marketing message.

In the justification stage of the pathway, videos can build trust, which in turn, will boost conversion rates. Video marketing content at this stage can overlap a little with some of the middle-of-the-pathway content.

For example, case studies, testimonials, etc. can also help close a new customer.

Video content at this stage of the pathway may also include:

FAQ Videos:

This is a great way to address any questions potential customers may have about your product or service. Some of these objections may include “I don’t need this right now,” “I can’t afford it right now,” and “I just don’t trust you yet.”

Use your FAQ videos to address these and other questions, while helping to move your lead into the final stage.

Instructional Videos:

One of a customer’s biggest fears is that after making a costly purchase, they might not get the support they need, or that they simply won’t understand the content.

A great way to demonstrate that you’re invested in their success after the purchase is through a series of instructional videos, provided to them for free or as a bonus.

You could also offer additional resources or avenues for support such as providing video-based content via a private YouTube channel.

Knowing Your Audience

Understanding your audience is a critical step in being able to create and distribute videos that garner attention and generate results. That’s why we’ve dedicated an entire section to this topic.

Once you’ve decided what stage of your marketing funnel you’ll be initially targeting with your video content, it’s time to determine exactly who your intended audience is.

If you create a series of videos without having a specific audience in mind, it will decrease your chances of your campaigns being successful.

To start, you should consider creating a buyer persona. This is when you map out who your ideal client or customer is. Normally, this is done before the product creation process, so that you know exactly what your product needs to include and who it will be designed for.

If you’ve never created a buyer persona before, it’s very easy to do. All it involves is identifying who your target audience is so that you can finalize your marketing strategy.

Some of these questions would include:

Should you create videos that are educational, entertaining, commercial, social content, explainer, lifestyle, or something in between?

Knowing your audience will help you learn how to create the most effective, highly engaging videos that answer their burning questions.

Who are your videos for?

This is your buyer’s persona.

What do you want your viewer to take away from the video?
Where does your target audience spend their time?

This will help you understand where to distribute your video for maximum exposure. You’ll want to be able to answer these questions before creating your videos.

Spending time researching your market will also make it easier to map out your buyer’s journey so that you can create videos designed to lead them toward the next step (subscribe to your newsletter, follow you, or purchase a specific product or service).

Finally, knowing your audience will also help you figure out what story you want to tell.

You’ll be able to quickly identify your customer’s pain point, understand how to effectively introduce your product, and create videos that align with your target audience while inspiring them to take action.

Video Rankings

It should come as no surprise that search algorithms are increasingly adding weight to web pages that contain video-based content. Note that 55% of all Google keyword searches will result in videos receiving priority over other results.

Not only are they incredibly effective at boosting your website ranking so it appears more frequently in relevant searches, but videos can also make the snippet of content that appears when you show up as a search result far more attractive and attention-grabbing.

The fact is, that Google rewards sites with video-based content and subsequently ranks them higher. So, if you are not yet hosting video content on your website, you’re losing out.

Before you start uploading your video content to YouTube or any other platform, consider including it on your website. You can do this easily by embedding the video on your homepage or featuring it on sales and landing pages.

The key is to embed the video around high-quality, relevant content rather than including it on an otherwise blank page.

This will ensure that search engine crawlers understand that you are providing highly engaging, multi-media content on your website, as well as other valuable and useful information.

You also want to make sure that the video you include makes sense with the type of content found on that page.

Consistency is also an important part of every successful video marketing strategy. The more often you upload video content, the easier it will be to maximize exposure and rank for various keyword phrases.

And of course, make sure you include important meta details that help improve SEO, such as video titles, detailed keyword-centric descriptions, tags, and annotations.

Your next step?

Distribute your video on the right channels so that you can maximize visibility, build a loyal following and generate ongoing exposure for your brand.

Video SEO Tips

Before you start uploading videos, you need to decide which search terms you’re hoping to rank for.

One strategy is to choose a search term that already has YouTube video results on the first page of Google.

Just by making sure you choose a search term that will result in YouTube videos showing up in the SERPs, you can work towards getting your video ranked on Google and not just in YouTube search.

One tool you can use is KeywordTool.io. This can quickly generate YouTube-specific keyword ideas that are relevant to your brand.

Start by searching for a variety of keyword strings that relate to your product or service type, and see what people are looking for.

If you don’t want to pay for a monthly subscription, you can just copy and paste the keywords into Google’s Keyword Planner to check the overall search volume.

Just keep in mind that your target keyword should get at least 300 searches per month.

Another good tool to use is YouTube’s Search Suggest feature.

Just head over to YouTube and start typing a word or phrase. YouTube then offers you a list of keyword phrases related to what you just typed in.

For example, type in “public speaking,” and you get “public speaking tips,” “public speaking training,” public speaking anxiety,” etc.

These are your suggested keywords, and these are all things people type into YouTube’s search bar, so there’s no need for you to wonder if they’re popular or not. If YouTube suggests them, they’re currently being used.

You can also visit any popular video in your niche and copy the keywords that the video is using. If a video is getting a ton of views, chances are it’s optimized around a popular keyword in your market.

Tip: Go to a channel in your niche and sort their videos by “Most Popular.” This shows you the videos that have generated the most views.

Another way to find keywords is to use your YouTube Traffic Source - YouTube Search report. This report shows you all the keywords that YouTube users have searched for to find your videos. Often, you’ve already found the keywords and used them in your description and tags, but sometimes you’ll find a handful of keywords you’d never have thought of.

Once you have a list of keywords, you’ll want to target the low-competition keywords, especially if your channel doesn’t have that many subscribers yet.

If you use high-competition keywords, your video is going to be buried in the search results. To find low-competition words, search for your keyword in Google and check out the “About Results.”

This number shows the total number of videos on YouTube about that specific topic. The higher the number, the more competition for that spot, so you want to target keywords with a low “About Results” number.

Most views on YouTube come from within YouTube’s platform, but your video can get two to five times more views if you can also get it to rank in Google.

The trick is to optimize your videos around keywords that already have video results in Google, as we’ve previously mentioned.

Increasing Retention

The length of time that people watch your video is called Audience Retention - and YouTube has gone on record stating that retention is a very important factor when it comes to ranking.

They have said, “Your goal is to keep audience retention as close to 100% as you can (because this means viewers are watching through your videos). And videos with consistently high audience retention and watch time have the potential to show up more frequently in Search and Suggested locations on YouTube.”

In other words, if your video keeps people glued to the screen, YouTube will rank your video higher in their search results.

After all, YouTube wants people to stay on their platform so that they’ll click on the ads, and if you help them do that, they’ll reward you for it.

So how do you create high-retention videos?

There are a few basic steps:

Start your video with a summary. Lead with the topic. About 20% of the people who watch your video will leave in the first ten seconds. Often, this is because the video didn’t do a good job of letting the viewer know they were in the right place.

Jump right into the content. Ditch the long introductions and get right to the heart of what your video is about and who it’s for.

Add open loops. This involved providing previews of what was coming up later in the video. This gets viewers excited about your content and encourages them to stick around.

Here’s how to extract the most SEO value from your video:

Say your target keyword:

You’ve probably already noticed that YouTube is now automatically transcribing your videos. So, by speaking your target keyword, naturally within the context of your video message, you’ll further optimize your content.

Video Title:

Your title should be at least five words long so that you can include your full keyword without “keyword-stuffing.” And like a blog post, you get a slight SEO boost by putting your keyword at the beginning of the title.

So, if you’re trying to rank for “Dog Grooming Tutorial” you’d want a title like “Dog Grooming Tutorial: How to Clip Your Poodle.”

Description:

Make your description at least 250 words and include your keyword in the first 25 words. Also, include that keyword 2 to 3 times in the description for maximum impact. This SEO-optimized description tells Google and YouTube what your video is about without being “spammy.”

Tags:

They aren’t as important as they used to be, but they do help. Your first tag should be an exact match keyword.

Also, include a few variations on that keyword or phrase. Finally, expand by adding a few tags that cover other key topics covered in your video.

Targeted tags not only help you rank for your target keyword, but they also get you to show up more often as a related video in the sidebar area of YouTube.

And don’t be afraid to use the same tags your competitors use - it’s a marketing strategy that has worked for years!

If your video tags match another video someone is watching, your video has a good chance of showing up in the Suggested Video section.

Distributing Your Video

Distributing your video on the right channels is essential for your campaign to be successful. We’ve already covered the importance of adding video to your website or blog in an earlier chapter, so now we’ll look at other ways to maximize exposure.

Social Media

This is a great way to organically grow your following and generate traffic to your landing pages. You should share your video multiple times across all social media channels to increase exposure.

In addition, since video generates 1,000% more shares than links and images combined, it’s one of the best ways to reach a larger audience quickly, and with no upfront investment required!

Paid Ads

If you’re looking to level up quickly, you’ll want to consider paid distribution through either paid social media or search ads.

With search ads, while they aren’t video-friendly at the time of this writing, you can use them to target high-traffic keywords and then direct that traffic to your video-based landing page.

Search ad marketing works in every niche and market, so all you need to do is set a budget and then split-test different ads to see which ones perform the best.

With paid social media campaigns, you’re essentially spreading your marketing message to the masses, targeting the same audience you would with organic posts but with a higher rate of exposure.

You can also consider native advertising which is when your video content is embedded into third-party websites in such a way that it doesn’t intrude on a user’s experience.

For example, with native ads, you might create a how-to style video that shows people how to cook a certain dish and then embed that content on a recipe-based website in an article about baking.

There are other ways to distribute your videos effectively, including sponsored content and influencer outreach.

Both strategies will help you gain access to a larger segment of your market, but they are positioned quite differently.

With sponsored content, you are paying for a spot on a company or brand’s website. Typically, you provide the content and it’s published on your behalf.

And just like native advertising, sponsored content doesn’t come in the form of a simple ad, but rather highly engaging content (either video-based or written) that is designed to provide incredible value.

With influencer outreach opportunities, you simply contact authorities in your market or personalities via their social accounts and hire them to share or promote your video content with their following.

While not all influencer marketing is paid (some will do it for free while others may trade services with you or simply a reciprocal mention), you’ll want to be prepared to offer monetary compensation for them promoting your videos.

The rates will depend on many factors, including their overall outreach, how likely people are to respond to their recommendations, and how often they are willing to promote your content.

Growing Your Following

YouTube uses user experience signals like subscription rates and retention to rank videos within their platform - and they weigh those two factors heavily.

So, if people are subscribing to your channel after watching your video, it demonstrates that you are dedicated to creating quality and highly engaging content.

Viewers “Liking” your content is another measure of the overall user experience, though it has less significance than someone subscribing.

A great way to build your audience on YouTube is to group your videos into playlists. Build a keyword-rich playlist that provides YouTube with a deeper understanding of the kind of content you’re offering.
Once you’ve uploaded 10-12 videos on your channel, you should be grouping them into playlists by targeted and relevant keywords.

Here are some other things to keep in mind:

Video Comments:

If someone leaves a comment on any of your videos, that sends a strong message to YouTube that your content is highly engaging. After all, it motivated someone to react by taking the time to leave feedback.

When Brian Dean of Backlink analyzed 1.3 million YouTube search results, he found that the number of comments strongly correlated with ranking highly in the search results.

So with this in mind, you’ll want to make sure to encourage your viewers to comment - and that you reply to any comments you may get.

“Subscribes” after watching a video:

If someone subscribes to your channel after they watch your video, that signals to YouTube that your content is effective, relevant, and highly targeted.

And the best way to get more subscribers is simply to ask viewers, so don’t be afraid to directly request that they smash that subscribe button!

Video Shares:

When YouTube recognizes that people are spreading the word about your video, they’re going to reward you by giving the content a boost in the overall ranking.

Click-Through-Rate (CTR):

When someone searches for your keyword on YouTube, do they click on your video or on someone else’s?

YouTube pays very close attention to user behaviour. The percentage of people who click through on your result is called your click-through rate, and obviously, the higher that number is, the better.

If YouTube notices that a lot of people are clicking on your videos, they’ll rank your content higher in the search results.

On the other hand, if people are skipping over the video, they’ll likely drop your ranking. And one of the best ways to boost your CTR is to create compelling thumbnails and titles.

Thumbs up/thumbs Down:

This is self-explanatory. The more “likes” you get, the better your overall ranking.

Video Length:

Quite simply, longer videos often rank better and hard data has proven this to be true.

For example, if you search on YouTube for the keyword “WordPress,” 3 out of the top 4 videos are over an hour long.

How long should your video be?

Don’t stress out too much about the length when you’re just getting started. Instead, focus on creating the best video you can. If that video is twenty minutes long, so be it. If your resulting video is awesome, people are going to watch it.

As you gain more experience creating high-quality videos, you can begin to extend them.

Last Minute Tips

YouTube also uses specific criteria to measure your video’s overall quality so it can effectively rank your content.

We’ve mentioned some of these points earlier in the report, but this will provide you with a simple checklist as well as additional optimization tips.

Video Retention: how much of your video do people watch before they switch to something else? The longer they watch your video, the better, so do your best to always focus on highly engaging content that’s exciting and with a steady pace.

Pro Tip: The average attention span is only 8.5 seconds! This means that you must bring your story to life within the first few seconds of your video. The best way to do this is by creating a hook.

A hook is a preview of what’s to come. It highlights what the video is about, and gets people excited so they stick around and watch the video from start to finish.

Comments: if your video generates a lot of comments and feedback, chances are it’s striking a chord with people and delivering value. Comments are a clear indication of the overall engagement.

In turn, YouTube will reward videos with a high number of comments by making your content appear more frequently in searches.

Subscription Rates: one of the best signals that indicate that you have created a high-quality video is the number of people that subscribe to your channel immediately after watching.

Adding to “Watch Later:” is also a good sign of how much interest your video is attracting.

You can review these metrics on your YouTube Analytics page.

There are also a few other things to keep in mind when optimizing your YouTube videos:

File Name: whenever you upload an image onto your site, you should include your focus keyword in the image tag. Similarly, when you upload your video onto YouTube, use that keyword in the file name of the video.

Video Title: According to Backlinko, the title of your video should be 4-5 words long so that you can include your target keyword within a longer phrase.

Descriptions: A good video description is one of the most important parts of increasing your YouTube SEO.

When you write a killer blog post, Google can crawl through the article to gauge the content’s overall quality. But search engines can’t watch videos, so they depend on the description to get a feel for the video’s topic and how in-depth it may be.

The more YouTube knows about your video and its keywords, the better it can rank you for those search terms. And ultimately, your video descriptions should be at least 200 words long.

Place a link to your site at or near the very top of the description, which will maximize the number of clicks back to your site, helping you get more visitors and grow your website's SEO.

Tags: Including the right tags can help your video rise in the rankings.

When it comes to tagging, you should include a few keywords on what the video is about. Tags can help your video get discovered in YouTube’s sidebar in the “related videos” section.