As video marketing moves from being a differentiator to a requirement of online marketing (Luke, 2013), it is interesting to establish how firms can best utilise videos in their marketing campaigns. As the largest video sharing website, second largest search engine online (Queensland Gov, 2016), and 85%of adults using YouTube regularly (DeMers, 2015) there is a vast audience where effective videos can easily convert customers’ attention to action (Ozer, 2009). With such an opportunity to express your brand universe (Reynolds, 2011) it is crucial to ensure that your brand is implementing YouTube efficiently, and if your brand is struggling to, it may be worth following these YouTube Marketing Tips.

How to Create Engaging Videos

Key production tips for Video Marketing (Michel, 2011a):

• Brands need to have an objective, such as increase brand awareness, increase sales, improve customer relationships. Interestingly, Michel excludes entertainment, although firms want to entertain their clients, without having an objective, the video will be useless. This objective will impact the way the video is composed.

• Think about topics you will produce videos on, for fitness this may be the brand – how it differentiates itself and helps customers, what is the thinking behind the brand – alongside various foods and how to make them, workout videos, exercise demos, have influencers talk about how they keep fit, what clothing they wear of your brand.

                      

 

 

 

 

• Although a script is beneficial to ensure your video stays on track, speaking on the video must seem natural, if it seems scripted then simply think through what you want to achieve in the video and the sorts of things you say before filming.

• An introduction is needed, saying what will be shown in the video so that customers know what they will be viewing. It is important customers do not feel as though your brand’s video is wasting their time as this deteriorates the customer-brand relationship and limits the likelihood a potential converter will become a customer. An introduction will mitigate the risk of this happening. Here it is also beneficial to highlight the company logo, keep this in the right hand corner to reinforce your brand throughout the video and have a link to the company website.

• Have a call to action and reinforce the call to action in the video, such as visit our website – place a link to the website at the end of the video and in the description box. DeMers (2015) adds to this to include keywords in the description box to optimise SEO even further with the first three sentences of your description showing your value proposition & website as these need to be drawn attention to instantly.

Although useful, Michel missed out a fair few other key points in creating an effective YouTube video strategy. A good video marketing strategy should incorporate the social aspects of video, because video-sharing sites are also social networks. Video integrates with other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, which increases brands abilities to build relationships with people who watch their videos therefore it should be something that people want to watch, comment on and share (Lancaster, 2010).

Video caters to the rise of experiential marketing (Simpson, 2015). Users should feel as though they are experiencing what is going on in the video as it increases motivation – especially in sports, positive visualisation makes people more motivated to partake in fitness and health – making them want to come back and use your health and fitness videos more, in turn increasing sales.

Videos no longer all need to be of professional quality (Lancaster, 2010). For videos such as workouts which are there for informative purposes, these can be made in-house, as this is something consumers can engage and relate to more. Through doing so in-house, allow your brand personality to show through (Queensland Gov, 2016), such as adding in comedic elements or focusing on yoga exercises if this is the feeling and message your brand wants to put out whilst also sticking to what your brand is based on.

Using a variety of shots, changing every 3 – 5 seconds and using short videos can be most effective in video marketing, as it engages and retains the audiences attention before they stop concentrating (Lancaster 2010). However, what is a short video depends, a consumer video should be 3 minutes (Michel, 2011a), for workouts, a short video is probably 5 – 10 minutes. Additionally, videos should be at max 50% talking head, with the best only 20%-30%, the rest should be action shots perhaps with voiceover or music (Ozer, 2009).

Make sure you use YouTube annotations, include a link to your website to increase your search engine ranking. Here firms must be careful they are not put throughout the video maybe, just at the end because people become annoyed when pop ups are taking up the screen of their video and may stop them from watching the video altogether (Queensland Gov, 2016). Firms must be careful not to annoy their prospects as this affects customer relationships.

Focus on your customers and prospects. Michel (2011b) states you don’t care about other territories, therefore going viral, which is incorrect for most brands as it would be good to gain greater awareness. He has a point in that in focusing on your customers or target audience, you are more likely to achieve your video marketing goal. Going viral is incredibly difficult and you may not reach anyone, therefore focus marketing videos on your target audience. This doesn’t mean your videos have to be boring though, set the mood you want your customers to feel with your product for athleisurewear, have a fitness coach running along a beach feeling good about the clothes he’s wearing and how that enhances his performance. This then warms up the customer for your ultimate call to action (Siu, 2016).

When making a factual statement, proof should always be believable and from the best source available – demonstrate how it is true if possible. If you can’t show, then get an outside source (influencer) to tell (Ozer, 2009).

Also, make sure you update your video content regularly to sustain interest, having people coming back to your channel will remind people of your brand and get them checking your ecommerce site more frequently.

Promote Your Videos

Promote your video, on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, your blog, this enables people to be aware of your existence (Kearney, 2016). If you collaborate with an influencer, get them to promote it on their websites too (Miller, 2011). Since this article has been released it may be worth adding that people should share 10 seconds of the most interesting part of the video on social media sites to whet the appetite of prospects to introduce them to content covered, increasing views (Michel, 2011b).

Videos need to be where customers are looking for information and they need to let the viewer know what to do next. Wherever you post the video, such as a promotional video for a new product – which should be on your webpage and YouTube – a call to action must appear right by it (Ozer, 2009). Also at this point it is good to suggest people subscribe to your channel, increasing brand relationships (Michel, 2011b).

Furthermore, offering solutions to people will help gain peoples attention to your brand who don’t even know you exist (Siu, 2016). People regularly type into search engines ‘Online workout’ – for an athleisurewear brand, fitness videos would appear. If someone follows this video they then know about your brand, may check out your clothes and even buy something (Queensland Gov, 2016).

Advantages

Benefits of using video include:

• Showing your brand’s personality without having to meet anyone face-to-face;
• It is searchable content which can help your website’s search engine rankings –particularly with video being favoured by search engine algorithms;
• People are more likely to watch a video than read lots of text;
• It differentiates your brand from competition because it is still underutilized as a relatively new phenomenon;
• It is easier to consume on mobile than text due to the size of the screen;
• You can show you products in action rather than as a still image.

With the latter point one of the most relevant as mobile has overtaken desktops as the platform that generates the most amount of internet traffic. Furthermore, you can also gain instant feedback through comments and ratings. As a social media site it allows you to build a community with your clients, where you can interact with them 24/7 to create and sustain a relationship.

Limitations

It is easy for companies to get caught up in trying to make a viral video and losing the ultimate focus of selling your product/service to your target market. This is why you have a plan in mind of who your audience is, what message you want to give them and the best way to give it to them via video – in following this you will remain focused and on track to continually publish relevant, engaging videos.

Over 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, therefore your strategic customer may easily miss your content. This is why it is crucial you know your audience and know how and where to publicise your content to give it the most attention.

People can upload negative comments, these negative views may influence others’ opinions who may otherwise be positive about your product and if you delete them your band may look like it has something to hide (Fairley, 2015). However, if comments are continuously bad you can disable comments, or you could take them on board and re-evaluate and re-create your YouTube content based on these comments.

Content can gain more views when uploaded elsewhere. Videos uploaded directly to Facebook are more likely to get shared than content distributed by YouTube.

Measures

Ultimately you must measure YouTube performance against your strategic goals for the channel, however video views, channel subscribers, video comments are all potential measures prescribed by Lancaster (2010), this is made easy by using YouTube Analytics (Queensland Gov, 2016). Interestingly Lancaster missed a key rating which is video rating, if the video has a lot of dislikes then people are less likely to watch the video when they click on the link. Additionally channel views may also be useful to establish how you match up with your competitors overall and establish if they have any videos which you are missing.

If this blog took your fancy, you may want to find out more about YouTube marketing by clicking these links:

• YouTube Marketing: Tips, Trends & SEO – ReelSEO
• YouTube Marketing: Social Media Examiner
• 9 Tips to Maximise YouTube’s Marketing Potential

References

• DeMers, J. (2015) The Definitive Guide To Marketing Your Business On YoutTube. Forbes, 24^th September 2015 [Online] <http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/09/24/the-definitive-guide-to-marketing-your-business-on-youtube/#5f916c716e37> [Accessed 10^th April, 2016]
• Fairley, J.,F. (2015) The Pros and Cons of YouTube Business Marketing LinkedIn, 31^st March 2015 [Online] <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pros-cons-youtube-business-marketing-james-dean-fairley> [Accessed 15^th March 2016]
• Kearney, G (2016) Use YouTube for Marketing Concept5 [Online] <http://concept5.com/how-the-top-100-brands-use-youtube-for-marketing/> [Accessed 15^th March 2016]
• Lancaster, J. (2010), ‘Online Video Marketing 101’, Ward’s Dealer Business, vol. 44, no. 12, p. 23.
• Luke, K (2013), ’12 Ways to Integrate Video into Your Marketing’, Journal of Financial Planning, vol. 26, no. 9, pp. 18-19.
• Michel, M (2011a), ‘Producing Internet videos for marketing’, Contractor Magazine, vol. 58, no. 9, pp. 60-80.
• Michel, M (2011b), ‘Using Internet videos for marketing — P1.2’, Contractor Magazine, vol. 58, no. 12, p. 38.
• Miller, M (2011) YouTube for business: Online video marketing for any business. Pearson Education: Indianapolis. 2^nd Ed
• Ozer, J. (2009), “deep thoughts on MARKETING VIDEOS”, EventDV, [Online], vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 48.
• Queensland Gov (2016) Using YouTube to market your business [Online] <https://www.business.qld.gov.au/business/running/marketing/online-marketing/using-youtube-to-market-your-business> [Accessed 10^th April, 2016]
• Reynolds, S. (2011) How To Use YouTube For Effective Marketing Business Insider, 4^th April 2011 [Online] <http://www.businessinsider.com/using-you-tube-for-marketing-2011-3?IR=T> [Accessed 15^th April 2016]
• Simpson, J (2015) My 10 favourite Christmas experiential marketing campaigns of 2015 econsultancy, 23^rd December 2015[Online] <https://econsultancy.com/blog/67364-my-10-favourite-christmas-experiential-marketing-campaigns-of-2015/?utm_source=Econsultancy&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6609826_2065-daily-pulse-uk-2015-12-24&dm_i=LQI,3XO6A,LRRZKK,E6VBS,1> [Accessed 5^th March 2016]
• Siu, E (2016) 4 Tips to Improve Your YouTube Marketing Social Media Examiner, 1^st March 2016 [Online] <http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/4-tips-to-improve-your-youtube-marketing/> [Accessed 17^th April, 2016]