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Content Marketing
It’s quite the new thing. OK, it’s not quite the new thing as it’s been around for some time, but creating really great content on your website and sharing it with people has never been so important for building your business. We keep hearing about content marketing, so we thought that we’d offer you our thoughts on why it’s important and why a video should be part of it.
So, What Is Content Marketing?
In a nutshell, content marketing is the use of articles, white papers, videos etc- basically content – to reach your target market in order to educate, inform and persuade them about your services. The trick is to produce content that’s so incredibly good that your demographic can’t wait to share it.
Depending on your audience, you’ll find that some types of content are more effective than others so it’s worth experimenting to find the right one. We think that video is a great tool, of course. Did you know that the average web user watches 16 minutes and 49 seconds of online video per month? Yes, someone has actually worked this out. A well crafted video can substantially alter the perception of a brand or service, it engages the viewer and makes a real difference.
Check out more stats about online video here!
Equally, loads of people who view videos online are sharing them on social media, so it’s well worth while building video into your content marketing strategy.
So, what are the main issues to consider?
Make a plan
Always a good idea. Think long and hard about why you want to a video and what you need to achieve by having one. To generate leads? Entertain or educate? To build brand awareness? Consider, too, how you will measure that this has been achieved.
Decide Who are You Trying to Reach
Rule number one: marketing is about WHO – your target market, in other words. Your ideal customer. Have the people (or type of person) you want to reach at the forefront of your mind, with a very clear profile of age, gender, job function, educational level, in fact everything that could possibly influence how they perceive your product or service.
You’ll need to “speak” to them in the language that they relate to. In video terms, this could be the style and tone in which the video is made and edited, so it’s very important to get this right.
Consider the type of video you need
There are so many different types of video on offer so you’ll need to hone it down: An animation?Timelapse? An interview style? Perhaps you’re keen to demonstrate a new product or talk about a happy customer.
What’s the tone?
Funny, serious, educational, formal or informal? Technical? Remember it’s your target market that you have to keep in mind at all times. Don’t forget to include a call to action in the video if you’d like some good conversions, maybe even offering some incentives.
Finishing touches
Think about the graphics, a voice-over, music, subtitles, all those sorts of things. A good video production company will focus on making your video the best it can be. It’s (nearly) all in the editing.
Right. Now you need to get your video out there, in addition to placing it on your own website of course.
Youtube
Google owns YouTube and it’s a huuuuge search engine. Make sure that you put your video onto YouTube, of course.
There are also business specific content portals out there, watched by professionals and executives. A good place to get discovered by your future customers. A quick search on Google will find the one that you need.
Encourage People to Watch Your Video
Make sure that your video has been optimised for search engines. This is a longer topic which we’ll cover in a later blog.
Persuade the viewers of your video to share it with others and don’t be shy about asking people to do so. You never know, it may go viral and you’ll be a cyber celebrity. Make it easy to share, with buttons to Linked In (essential for business), Twitter, Google+ and Facebook just to mention a few. Let people embed the video in their own websites, too.
Embed your video in an email
A study from the Web Video Marketing Council and Flimp Media tells us that emails containing embedded videos receive very high viewing and click through rates, meaning that videos are a great way to improve campaign performance.
Encourage Feedback…
…But be careful. You don’t want people posting false allegations so keep a close eye on this.
Participating in social media conversations will mean that you know immediately what people are thinking about your video and your services, so this is well worth considering.
Measure the results
Tracking and analysing with Google Analytics (a free tool) will enable you to measure the number of unique visitors to your site as well as the page views. You’ll be able to see how long they stayed on your site and, of course, how many times they visited the pages with your video on.
To summarise: make sure that your video is of the highest quality and that you make it easy to share, promoting it across several channels.
Video is one of the most powerful ways to reach your target market and here at Echo Video we think that it’s a fabulous way to meet people’s information needs.
Give us a call on 01273 911345 to find out how a video could make the difference to your business.