“How Do I Start Video Marketing For My Business” is a question that we get asked a lot. The answer depends a lot on the circumstances that you are starting from. Some businesses are beginning a journey of video marketing, some are looking to refresh existing video marketing activity and some are thinking about adding video content for their business to a wider marketing campaign. There is also the question of where the activity is going to take place – on social media, on a website, for distribution through emails or another digital platform. Whatever the situation there isn’t really a one size fits all approach but there are some common factors to take into account.
Without sounding too obvious, the best place to start is at the beginning! Take a look at where your video marketing, or indeed your general marketing, is at the current time. What have you done so far and what results have you seen? Sometimes an underperforming video doesn’t mean that the video is not up to scratch, it just may not be in the right place or you may not have put it in front of the right people. A quick audit of any activity will show where you are now and ask any questions that need to be asked.
Once you’ve established where you are right now, you need to thing about where you want to be regarding your video content. Coming up with a plan is a good start. Plans should look at a number of aspects such as:
There may be other considerations but this is a good place to start. Knowing what the videos are supposed to achieve is a big factor to think about. This will shape your call to action on each video and tell your audience what you want them to do.
Next, you need to think about how are you going to make the videos and get your messaging out there. Do you need to engage with a video production company to make the videos and come up with creative ideas? Engaging with experts can bring a number of benefits. Firstly, they will likely have produced similar campaigns or be able to draw on previous experiences. Secondly, as an ‘outsider’ to your business they may have a fresh or different approach to promoting your messages and thirdly, they’ll be able to create professional content that will represent your brand.
Alternatively you may want to try a different approach. If you are looking at social media as your distribution platform then creating video content for your business may be better produced on your phone. There are video production companies that will do this for you or it puts the creative power into the palm of your hand, literally. You can create raw, organic social media video content that fits well on social platforms with your smart phone. This obviously requires an element of video editing skills and an eye for filming but it’s a route that many take.
Including the video production agency that you’re working with is also a great way to get the best from your video retainer. We work with one of our clients in a planning and consultative way and it means that we can contribute to how ideas can be created and give insights into tweaks and amendments to filming plans. We also bring the experience of working with other clients on their video marketing content for over 20 years and bring ideas of successful campaigns that we have been involved in. In addition we also bring an outside view of the industry sector and the campaigns that are being planned. Essentially we can bring an opinion that clients may not have because they are too involved in the subject.
This is all about how you want to present your business to the world. Video marketing for your business or even personal videos on social media can be a really powerful tool to show who you are and what you’re about. It can convey your personality and break down perceptions that may exist. It also means that you can carefully cultivate how you come across online to your audience and manage it with well planned video content. It may be that your staff are your greatest asset so you want to show who they are, their personalities and what makes them unique.
It could be that your industry is a very serious environment so you need to demonstrate that in how your business is perceived or you may just want your audience to respond to your regular updates because you’re positioned as an industry leader and authority. Whatever your objectives, knowing and sticking to the relevant tone of voice will really help to position your business where you want it to be in the marketplace.
This also allows you to think about what your audience wants or needs to hear rather than what you want to tell them. Don’t forget that there is a time and a place for everything too so if you are aiming for a more serious tone of voice, it doesn’t hurt to show some fun or an insight into your personality at times like Christmas, April Fools Day and other opportunities.
Once you have an idea of what and how, next comes the where. Do you know where your audience ‘hangs out’? Understanding where your target audience consumes it’s media is key. There’s no point putting your videos on TikTok if the people you are targeting are generally found on Facebook. How frequent are you going to put your videos out there? Too much and you could just annoy your audience but too little might mean that you get lost in the sea of content they consume and you don’t build up a consistent approach.
One of the most important
elements of video marketing for your business is the performance. If you don’t know how the video content is performing then how can you know what is working? An ongoing programme of monitoring and evaluation can allow you to tweak, pause, increase or stop what you’re doing and adapt accordingly.
There are many ways to monitor what you’re doing from stats and data on the platforms you’re using to simple responses to a call to action. Depending on what your goals are you can look at things like impressions and views of your videos or direct interactions. If you find that the video isn’t get the response that you were hoping for, it’s not the end of the world. It may be that you just need to address an element of it, change the messaging or even change the targeting.
The key is that you don’t always have to wait until the end of the campaign to make the changes and assess the performance. If you can be agile with your monitoring then you can maximise the performance of the video marketing for your business.
There’s obviously plenty of other elements to creating a marketing campaign involving video or otherwise but these are some useful starting points to think about. Making sure that the planning is in place, you know what you want to achieve and how you are going to do it will mean that things can get off on the right foot.
Make sure that you get the right process in place to create the video content. You may think that you can create it in house on phones and that is a strategy that works for many organisations and could tie in with a particular style and tone of voice that you’re looking to achieve. Alternatively working with a video production company like us (well, we would say that wouldn’t we!), is also an option for all of the expertise and experience that comes with that. The most important thing is that you choose the option that suits your marketing plan, budget, style and your business.
Want to find out more about how we could help you? Get in touch and we’ll be happy to discuss your options.
Blog writer: Adam Snelleksz is a director of CMA Video and has worked in marketing for over 20 years. He has worked in video production in Birmingham for five years with CMA Video and has been using video for marketing for nearly 10 years. He also set up the video TV channel Blues TV, the official online channel of Birmingham City Football Club. Some of the projects that Adam has used promotional videos for include the Birmingham Half Marathon, the European Gymnastics Championships and the World BMX Championships. Contact Adam here.
Our video marketing blogs have been recognised as one of the Top 50 Video Marketing Blogs on the internet. We hope you enjoy reading them and gain valuable insights into CMA Video and show that we’re not just another Birmingham video production company but we do more from animation videos to event filming, video strategy to social media video campaigns.
