When you’re looking at ways to use video in your marketing and promotion campaigns, there are plenty of channels to utilise and methods to choose from as a route to market. The reality is that there are plenty of ways to use video but it will depend on your target audience and how they consume media. There are, however, some tried and tested channels that will generally always work no matter what the audience. We take a look at five ways to use video here that should be fairly accessible to almost anyone embarking on a digital marketing journey.
1. Website
Of all the ways to use video, this is probably the most obvious and placing a video on your website offers plenty of benefits. It will keep visitors on your site for longer, helping to decrease your bounce rate. It will ensure that Google looks more favourably on your website for search engine results. From a content perspective it can offer lots of information for your site visitors – a company overview video on your homepage will work wonders.
If you can place a video on every page then even better. Think about customer testimonial videos and product demonstration videos. If you want to introduce your staff then profile videos can help to humanise your business.
Ensuring that your website is video rich has so many benefits but don’t forget the most important benefit of all – it needs to provide visitors, customers and potential customers the most positive experience possible. Try and host the videos on a site like YouTube or Vimeo and embed them on your site (like we do here at CMA Video) rather than clogging up server space on your website be hosting them on there.
2. Social Media Channels
Video is a key driver for the likes of Facebook and Instagram and those platforms are prioritising video content for their users. When you consider Facebook Live as well and other live streaming services on social media then it increases the ways to use video even more. These platforms offer more opportunity for bitesize video content rather than the longer form version that would be found on websites. The nature of the users on social media is about quick content as they scroll through timelines and your video content should reflect that.
In contrast to your website and using YouTube or Vimeo here, upload your videos natively to the social media channel if you can. This will help to give you viewing statistics and analysis specific to each channel.
3. Exhibitions
This one is slightly different because we’re going offline. With digital and online dominating a lot of marketing activity there’s still scope for ways to use video in more traditional environments. In our work with exhibition stand designers and builders we are always hearing that video can really enhance an exhibition stand and attract delegates. Thinking about a range of videos that are played throughout the day, instead of one video on a continual loop,
4. Emails
Using video in emails can offer plenty of benefits. According to Campaign Monitor, the percentage increases are really quite impressive – Open rates can be boosted by up to 19%, click through rates can be increased by 65% and unsubscribe rates reduced by 26%. Whether the video is embedded into your email or it appears as a link to your hosted video on YouTube, the appearance of a video in an email can engage the reader and help to appeal instead of a block of text or static looking communication.
It’s worth considering that the usual rules of video will still apply even if you’re sending a video direct to your viewers’ inboxes. Shorter is better and keeping your messaging succinct and uncluttered works best too. Even though it will sit within an email, a clear call to action is still an important element so that your viewer knows exactly what to do. Specific to email usage, try and keep the file size low so that buffering is reduced and if possible try and mute the video so the sound is automatically off – it can be annoying if your recipient opens an email and a noisy video plays automatically.
5. Sales Tool
Video is often produced as a marketing tool that the viewer watches in their own time or is directed to by online marketing activity. But your sales team can also use it as a tool as part of their sales funnel. In the first instance one of the ways to use video is as a warm up after an initial contact i.e. to back up that first conversation to reinforce any key points. Similarly, if the video is loaded on a memory stick or tablet then your sales rep can take it with them to appointments. Depending on the content of the video it could even be used for a post sales meeting follow up or even after sales activity.
Blog writer: Adam Snelleksz is the marketing 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.
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 what we do here at 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.
