Video Marketing Strategy & Tips [2023 Ultimate Guide]

To market their products and services more effectively to target audiences, more and more businesses are leaning into a video marketing strategy. In fact, 92% of marketers leveraged video in 2020.

As such, video has become a core pillar of modern marketing, not only capturing the attention of potential customers but also helping businesses rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

This guide will help you create a solid strategy for making videos that attract, educate, and delight your target audience so that you can build your brand and make more conversions.  

In this guide we’ll review:

• What is a video marketing strategy?
• Why is video important in 2021?
• Steps for creating an effective video marketing strategy
• Additional tips for your strategy
• Conclusion

What is a video marketing strategy?

A video marketing strategy is how a company creates targeted video content to promote its brand and increase conversions. Video production can be a complicated process. Different types of video content may require different expertise and equipment.

You’ll need to focus on budgeting for, planning, and producing videos and decide what type of video is right for your intended audience. Even high-quality videos won’t do your company much good if they aren’t directed toward your target consumers.  

The work isn’t done even after you produce your videos. You still have to distribute them on the right channels and promote them. However, if you put in the work and follow a few guidelines, a good video marketing strategy can give your company a big return on your advertising investment.

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Why is video important in 2021?

Since people do business using e-commerce more now than ever before, companies can’t afford to neglect online marketing. Video has become the most effective way to market online. Visitors stay on a website longer if the website features videos, and effective videos have a much higher conversion rate than other forms of media.

Videos are a great way to grab attention on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. These channels have massive amounts of users and have become essential marketing tools for businesses.

Videos are versatile. You can make so many types of videos, from commercials for YouTube to live videos and webinars on platforms like Facebook Live and Zoom. Some videos are used to get attention, while others might turn interested viewers into customers.

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Steps for creating an effective video marketing strategy

Using a well-thought-out video marketing strategy can save you time and money and give your videos the absolute best chance of helping your business. There are several steps for creating a video marketing strategy that you should follow.

• Choosing your medium
• Defining the message and action
• Creating the content
• Promoting the content
• Reporting the results

1. Popular mediums to consider for video campaigns

There are so many ways you can introduce your product to different audiences. Your content must be available on multiple video platforms. It’s up to you which ones you want to focus on.  

If you’re a new small business, you might not have the budget to buy TV airtime, but if your product is focused on an older audience, TikTok’s viewers might not be the right fit. Which of these channels does your target audience use?

TV

Because over 120 million TV households in the United States watch hours of TV every day, this medium offers you a huge opportunity to reach select markets. As a result, you may decide to make commercials for local or national TV, depending on your business reach and budget.

You can also buy ad space on streaming platforms like Hulu and Sling. As more and more people favor streaming services, this can be an effective way to reach a bigger audience. This also means having access to more nuanced viewer information, such as demographics, buying habits, and other information that can help with targeting.

YouTube

In light of the fact that viewers watch over a billion hours of video content on YouTube every day, publishing video on the platform is a great way to build awareness for your brand.

If you make videos for YouTube, you can also embed them on your website. Featuring videos on YouTube won’t cost money, but you can pay to advertise and promote your content on the platform.

Facebook

Facebook lets you get your product or service in front of an enormous audience, as it’s the largest social media platform in the world, with over 2.2 billion monthly users. You can feature your videos on your business Facebook page, or you can buy ad space using Facebook’s Ads Manager.

If you purchase Facebook ads, you’ll also have some say in who sees them. The program lets you target users in specific demographics (your intended audience) or who have shown interest in products or services similar to yours (through their Facebook history). ‍

Twitter

On Twitter, tweets with videos are shared six times more often than tweets with pictures alone. This means creating videos for Twitter can help you reach new audiences organically. The social media platform has about 330 million monthly users who share microblogs.

Twitter also allows you to create conversational ads, which are advertisements that have an easily noticeable call-to-action (CTA) button. The CTA button lets users share your video content with their network with one click.

Snapchat

Because most of the over 331 billion people worldwide who use Snapchat are 35 and younger, the platform lets you use videos to engage younger demographics. If your products or services appeal to groups like teens and young adults, Snapchat can be a powerful tool for getting your message across.

With Snapchat, you can create short, personalized videos that talk directly to your audience. Another benefit of the platform is that users will watch video content (even from businesses they’re unaware of) at a much higher rate than many other platforms.

TikTok

Due to the high level of engagement of TikTok’s 1 billion users, the platform allows you to use brief, entertaining videos to promote your products or services. While most TikTok videos are under 15 seconds, the average TikTok user spends almost an hour a day on the platform.

TikTok also has a sizable number of influencers with large followings in specific localities. You can collaborate with a local influencer to create video content that targets a particular area.

Google Paid Ads: SEM (landing pages with videos)‍

Because Google Ads gives businesses a quality score based on the relevance of their ad copy and landing page, your business can gain an advantage over the competition by creating high-quality video advertisements.

While Google Ads cost money, it doesn’t allow companies to simply buy their way to the top of the SERPs for a keyword phrase. The platform rewards video content that is highly relevant and well-produced.

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2. Define the purpose, message, and action you want prospects to make

What are the overall marketing goals of your videos, and what do you want them to say about your company? These are a few of the things you’ll have to decide before actually creating your content.

Below are the different types of goals you want to achieve with video.

Increase brand awareness

There are several types of videos you can use to increase brand awareness. The best way to present your company to a potential customer is to identify a problem they have. Then, introduce your product or service as the solution. Videos aimed at getting your product or service noticed should be attention-grabbing but short.

You might create a commercial that shows a college student getting their term paper back, but it’s covered in red (revisions and grammatical mistakes). The video would then introduce your company’s writing software as a solution to writing with poor grammar.

Remember to give your viewers a CTA that encourages them to find out more about your business. If your video is featured on social media, you can include a link to your website. If the ad is on TV, you could stress your company phone number.

Expand brand expertise, authority, and trust

After you’ve grabbed the attention of potential customers, it’s time to teach them about your service or product. A video aimed at building authority will go into more detail about your product or service than one aimed at building brand awareness.

For example, you might create an explainer video that describes the features of your writing software in-depth. The video would explain that your writing software uses complex algorithms to identify mistakes like bad punctuation, run-on sentences, and incomplete thoughts. It might also include research about the most common grammar mistakes and demonstrate how your product can handle them.‍

Introduce a new or existing service or product

The goal of a product or service video is to emphasize one or several features that are impressive or compelling. Product or service videos are short (usually less than half a minute) and flashy. They’re designed to show that your service or product is a better option than your competition.

Let’s say your writing software has some rare abilities. Not only does it correct typing mistakes, but it can also listen to a user speak and format the user’s words into well-written paragraphs. It can also listen to a melody played on an instrument and produce corresponding sheet music. Additionally, it’s less expensive than your competitor’s software.

Display benefits of service or products

The best way to sell your products isn’t by just showing off details about it. It’s better to show your audience what the product can do for them. An example of a video with this purpose would be a testimonial for a countertop cleaning product.

In the testimonial, a customer would tell users how their countertops were always grimy, even after they’d just been cleaned. They would then explain how your product has solved this issue for them.‍

Answer specific product or service questions

You can use videos for providing in-depth answers to some of your target audience’s frequently asked questions. You may also need a video to answer user questions if you have a nuanced service or product.

For example, if your company sells computers, you might have a video that answers user questions about what software is compatible with them.‍

Showcase product tutorials

You may need to use video to show your customers how to use your product. These videos will also help show off the features that some of your consumers might not be aware of. An example of this would be a Facebook video showing users how to use your company’s time-tracking software to increase a business’s productivity.‍

Message

The message of your video is the information you want to impart to your viewers. Messages can be things like your business’s core values or mission statement. The most effective messages make a customer feel something. Your video message should be memorable and relatable to build trust among your target users.

For example, if you have a business that sells organic dog food, the message you want to impart might be something like, “Your dog is part of your family. Make sure you give them the best food available.”

Action

You don’t just want your user to watch your video passively. You want them to perform some kind of action. For a short, attention-grabbing video, you might want them to click a link that takes them to a landing page to learn more about your product or provide them with an opportunity to buy from you.

3. Creating the content

Now that you know what type of video content you want to create, it’s time to start planning production. When it comes to creating quality video content, there are three stages: ‍

• Pre-production: This is where you’ll develop the creative ideas for your video and the plans for making those ideas happen. You can use storyboards to sketch out your ideas and see what works with your team. Organize your ideas into a script using software like Final Draft. In this stage, you’ll also set up a budget for filming.  
  

Set up a production schedule for creating your video. Your production schedule will lay out things like casting, shooting locations, shooting times, and which scenes can be shot on the same days or location to save resources and time. You can use software like StudioBinder to write out your production schedule.

• Production: This is when you film your video. You’ll need the right equipment. Some items you may need to produce your video include:
  

• Camera
• Sound equipment
• Lighting equipment
• Studio space
• Green screens
• Light box
  

• Post-production: This is where you edit your raw footage into a finished product. After editing your footage, you can use an editing tool like Adobe Premiere Pro to add visual effects, title overlays, and sound effects to make your video more appealing.

For simpler video creation shoots, you might be able to get away with doing the production by yourself. Otherwise, you’ll need a production team. You can hire an in-house production team or contract a production agency. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

In-house production team

Pros:

• Only works on your projects
• Has a vested interest in the quality of your videos
• You know the qualifications of everyone on your production team
  

Cons:

• Adds employees to your payroll (salary and possible benefits)
• Your business will have to purchase film equipment
  

Contracting production agency

Pros:

• Production agency has their own equipment
• Don’t have to worry about full-time hiring
  

Cons:

• May be juggling several projects (extended deadlines)
• May be more expensive, depending on size and experience
  

To help you understand the support you’ll need for your video production, the following sections identify key team members associated with creating content:  

Producer

A video producer handles the business aspects of video production. They’ll manage the budget for a project, hire the director and other key staff, and generally supervise every stage of the production process, including pre-production, production, and post-production.

Production assistant

A production assistant (PA) helps out on a video shoot. They don’t have specific responsibilities. Rather, they do whatever is needed of them. This may include making script copies, transporting crew or equipment, and announcing when shoots start and end.

Production manager

A production manager keeps everything running smoothly and on budget. It’s their job to create a production schedule and make sure the video crew sticks to it.

Director

The director decides and manages the creative direction of a video. They’re involved in every stage of production. They have a vision for how the final product should turn out. It’s their job to lead the rest of production toward making that vision a reality.

Videographer

The videographer is in charge of the footage collected during filming. They frame each shot so that it correlates with the director’s vision. A videographer will likely also be involved in editing footage during post-production. ‍

Camera operator

Camera operators handle the cameras during filming. They take directions from the videographer and adjust the cameras for each scene accordingly.

Are you looking to build a production team? Upwork can connect you to skilled production workers who can help you make great, effective video content.

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4. Promoting the content

After you film your product, it’s time to promote it. First, you need to decide on the right platform (or platforms) for it. To do this, you’ll have to decide who your targeted customers are. One of the best ways to do this is to use a process called market segmentation.

Market segmentation means using a tool like Kissmetrics or Lookalike Audiences (Facebook) to gather information about your target audience and separate them into smaller, more identifiable groups that share common demographics, buying behaviors, ideas, or locations. For example, if you sell laptops, one segment of your customer base might be parents whose children are leaving for college.

Using a social media platform like Instagram to reach this market segment would be ineffective because the majority of its users are under the age of 35. You’d have an easier time reaching parents of college students using platforms which are more popular with older users, like Facebook or TV.

You can also use market segmentation to forecast the worth of each segment’s potential market. Forecasting considers things like the population of a market segment and its average purchase to decide the segment’s value. This helps you target a greater deal of your advertising toward more valuable groups.

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5. Reporting performance (KPIs)

To know if your video marketing strategy is helping your company, you’ll need a way to measure its success. Key performance indicators (KPIs) allow you to analyze how well your video is performing.

Engagement metrics

Engagement metrics show how many people are interacting with your content. They show how well your video is grabbing the attention of its viewers. For example, for a video on Instagram, engagement metrics could be view counts, likes, comments, followers (subscribers), or shares.

View time

This is how long viewers watch your video. How much of your video do viewers watch? If they typically watch four minutes of your five-minute YouTube video, it’s keeping their attention. However, if they only watch 30 seconds, they probably won’t see enough to get your message.

Falloff (where the user stops watching the video)

Is there a particular part of your video where a high percentage of viewers stop watching? See if you can pinpoint the content that’s causing them to leave so that you can alter it.

For example, you find that 60% of the people who view the explainer video for your grammar-checking application leave when an actor goes into detail about grammar mistakes. You realize this part is boring. You have the video re-edited, and it performs much better.

Next action: clicks + funnel

How well is your content moving consumers down the sales funnel? For example, if you have a paid video ad on Facebook, you need to measure its click-through rate (CTR).

The CTR for an advertisement is the ratio of how many people click on it per how many impressions (times the ad is shown on a platform) it gets. A good CTR for Facebook is 2% to 5%. If the CTR for your ad is 1.5%, you know your video isn’t performing optimally.

Return on ad spend (ROAS)

Return on ad spend (ROAS) is the amount of money your company earns for every dollar it spends on advertising. Generally, your ROAS should be at least 2-to-1. If the sales generated from your YouTube video are $50,000, and you spend $10,000 promoting it, you have a high ROAS of 5-to-1.

Keep in mind that the amount you spend on video advertising also includes the cost of your digital marketing staff, production, software, and any other indirect expenses.

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Additional tips for your strategy

In addition to all the technical strategies for making great video content, there are a few general tips. Here are a few things to consider when engaging in a video marketing campaign:

1. Research videos that worked well in your industry

There are bound to be companies that offer similar services as yours. Take a look at what videos they use. You can check their social media pages or their company website. Researching other companies can help you see what works and what doesn’t.

2. Talk to your customers ‍

Take into account the opinions and experiences of your consumer base. A great way to do this is to hold focus groups. Focus groups give possible or current consumers a chance to weigh in on your products.

You can also seek out testimonials by email or contact forms. Try to get a sense of how your customers feel before and after using your products.

3. Work with multiple teams to boost performances

Effective video marketing requires collaboration between several teams. Marketing, public relations (PR), production, and management all need to be on the same page to create video content that improves your campaign’s performance.

4. Be original yet consistent with brand voice and tone

Great content needs to be unique to draw an audience’s attention. However, marketing needs to be on-brand so that clients recognize your business. That’s why many companies hire a spokesperson for their commercials with a recognizable voice. This keeps the tone of their content consistent.

5. Don’t be afraid to fail

Don’t get discouraged. Putting together a great video marketing strategy takes time, and it’s not an exact science. Even if you do everything right, there’s no guarantee that your content will lead to conversions immediately. If you keep up with your strategy, you’ll eventually see results.

Conclusion

Creating a video marketing strategy encompasses knowing what videos to create, why you’re creating them, and who you’re creating them for. Then, you have to produce, distribute, and evaluate your videos.

Are you looking to make great video content for your small business? Upwork gives you access to the best remote production and marketing experts from around the world. We’ll even help you narrow your search to only the most relevant independent professionals for you.

Upwork is not affiliated with and does not sponsor or endorse any of the tools or services discussed in this section. These tools and services are provided only as potential options, and each reader and company should take the time needed to adequately analyze and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.