The best thing about a cake is the cherry with icing on top. Even if your host offers you a perfectly baked cake, it’s the topping that makes you melt and keep coming back for more.
The promotion of video content is no different. A well-made video is only half the job done. You must follow it up with clever and efficient strategies of promotion and distribution.
Indeed, to produce each unique video you must earn an edge over all others in a media platform.
For maximum audience outreach, feedback, and profit, start treating your video like a full-blown project. The first phase would consist of the following:
In the second phase (the importance of which is often overlooked and underestimated), you must leave no stone unturned while promoting your video.
The reason?
[bctt tweet="A cleverly promoted video has the extra fuel that separates the good from the best." username="relevance"]
In Star Wars terms, your content may be Luke Skywalker and your post-production Darth Vader, but it is your promotional strategies and measures that turn your video into Jedi Master Yoda!
On close analysis, such a promotion is not as hard as it sounds. Basically, you must devote ample time in making your video reach both old and new audiences, who will discover, watch, and comment on your creative work. Given below are ten effective video marketing strategies that will help you realize the full commercial potential of your hard work.
For most of us, this seems to be an obvious step. Still, for the uninitiated few, social media marketing is integral to your video outreach. You could even say that promotional content on digital platforms is the best way to make your content visible in our virtual era.
First, you or your organization must create social media pages on various major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc. Then, consistently post exciting video content on these pages so that they pop up your followers’ feeds. In turn, they will like, share, and give useful feedback on your videos. Be it a product promotional content or a grand event you organized, engage your followers on a daily basis via sleek and fun videos!
Such moves will increase customer interests and lead more people to play your videos. In addition, you can put up links to your landing page (the website that your organization has legally created) on every video you post. Thus, your followers will be able to directly access your services from your website via these platforms.
Always remember that regular native posts are most effective, as it garners greater engagement. All social media platforms want you to grab people’s attention on their own sites. A quick link to your landing page, however, will always do more good than harm.
Experts say that video thumbnail is the most attractive component of your video that will grab everyone’s attention immediately.
Those who say never a judge a book by its cover clearly haven't seen the amazing artistry that goes into making a book cover. Similarly, your video thumbnail must catch every pair of eyes that glances upon it. But how?
The easiest and most effective way to do this is by making the person in your video give a wide smile and make eye-contact with the camera. Thus, a human connection is established with whoever peeks at your video thumbnail. Instead of a drab video ‘cover’ which can be easily skipped while browsing, a smiling person looking directly at you is far more inviting and gets you hooked from the word go.
Expert psychologists have identified connections between a smile and positive connections between all kinds of people. To cash in on the connectivity potential of your video content, put up a compelling smile!
Adding share buttons is another important aspect of video marketing on social media. Along with the major sites, you need to make sure that your videos can be widely shared in platforms like Snapchat, Pinterest, etc.
In reality, this is really a simple and easy process. You only need a cool video player app that will help you automatically add share buttons to your videos. For example, the Wistia video player by WordStream enables your customers to share the links to your videos without having to exit the video player. Thus, interested parties are seamlessly directed back to your website.
Getting people to share your video content is as much as an online task as it is offline. Granted, your friends and followers on social media will not hesitate to share all your work at a moment's notice. While this is a great move to start with, you must go one step further!
For instance, you can invest in boosting the reach of your videos on host social media platforms. As a result, your work becomes much more likely to be shared by friends of your friends, followers of your followers, and random new people who take an instant liking to your videos.
Moreover, offline in-person requests can also work wonders! Whether you are at an office party, a fundraiser, or any event that involves interaction between different groups of people, shameless go around promoting your work and ask people to share it widely. Your level of acquaintance is no bar; you only need to be polite and receptive to their feedback.
Such measures will lead to word-of-the-mouth promotion. Besides, you can also consider asking social media influencers (who have a lot of followers) to extensively share your video content.
The best video marketing professionals confess that video and email are amazing partners. Simply putting the word 'video' in the subject line of an email will propel your open rates and click-through rates, while reducing the number of unsubscribers drastically.
Just include a video thumbnail to your email and watch its engagement increase threefold! Both user and organizational data state that video thumbnails in emails are more compelling than the same old images.
On top of increasing your market reach, merging videos content with email marketing drives lead to greater attribution! Using the latest video players in tandem with marketing platforms will enable you to accumulate refined data on workflows and lead scores.
Now, you can identify which of your leads has viewed a video demonstrating the latest product on your website. In turn, you can classify several of these leads into a group to which you can start sending regular email notifications or even hire professional sales reps to call and interact with these selected few.
Money is hard to get, let alone invest. However, the amount you need to invest in promoting your video online is really not as much as you think. You just need to think carefully about making the levels of your investment agreement with the quality/content of each work.
Indeed, promoting videos on Twitter, Facebook, etc. is cost-effective if you can utilize the settings concerning your audience and campaign. Simply put, a calculated investment along with clever and maximized promotion will steer more people towards your videos. Therefore, you get a sumptuous return on investment and grow in terms of popularity. Learn how to successfully streamline and execute advertisement campaigns and use them to your benefit.
As mentioned before, you must leave no stones unturned. A dull event usually has everyone nodding off, browsing their phones, or sneaking out for snacks and air. You might feel even worse when you see such drabness during your own presentation.
How do you avoid becoming repetitive and boring? Play a cool video during your presentation! A clever move like this serves multiple purposes. First, you get some respite from speaking constantly to an audience that is on the verge of snoring. On their part, the audience can finally sit up and take notice of something other than a person blabbering for hours!
Once you have piqued their interest, your entire video can keep the audience hooked and ensure the promotion of your product (among other things). Realizing the catchy nature of videos, even TED speakers have started to play videos to keep their audiences engaged and make them learn about relevant content without straining their vocal cords.
Pin your latest video either on your personal or your organization’s Twitter feed. The reason? Social marketing requires you to post a lot of tweets regularly. As exciting as your video might be, it might still get lost in the tidal waves of tweets that you have to post.
Experts have found that pinning important content (such as videos) on your Twitter feed exponentially increases your chances of conversion! Additionally, more people get to notice such content and increase plays, likes, and comments!
If you oversee marketing, you must be handling multiple accounts and communities where you spread relevant information and content to your followers. Take advantage of these spaces; try to engage these people by consistently putting up video content with cute thumbnails.
For example, you can clarify doubts and respond to questions/feedback on a product that your customers find difficult to use. Just create an explainer video where you do the same in the funny and peppy way!
Similar to movie trailers, teasers of larger videos will keep your audience pining for what is to come. You can simultaneously put up the link to the full video so that interested people can easily access the full version.
Furthermore, you can transcribe all your videos and particularly highlight the relevant keywords. This way, all kinds of viewers will clearly understand what you are saying and the content you are promoting.
You can add other useful tips to this list. In summary, these ten points will hone your skills and strategies related to video marketing, both online and offline. Go forth and spread your videos and their messages to people and communities, both old and new!
