What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the term “video marketing”?
If it’s an Old Spice commercial, the Dollar Shave Club, or another viral video with millions of hits, you’re not alone. But what if we told you that video marketing doesn’t have to be hilarious and it doesn’t have to go viral? In fact, video can be an integral and inexpensive part of your content marketing strategy — and our friends Chris Savage and Ezra Fishman of Wistia showed us how in yesterday’s webinar. Let’s take another look at where video and content marketing meet.
First, consider these basic goals of content marketing:
Attract: Pull visitors to your website (via search results or social shares) with valuable information.
Engage: Engage visitors with valuable and digestible content, earn their trust, and establish thought leadership.
Convert: Gate valuable content with forms to increase conversions.
Build relationships: Keep visitors coming back by consistently publishing valuable content.
Measure and improve: Evaluate the success of your efforts, continually improve your content, and start the cycle all over again.
Now let’s take a look at how video content can help you optimize your efforts in each of these aspects of content marketing — and give you a unique approach that will set you apart from competitors.
Attract
Video has a substantial advantage when it comes to attracting visitors to your site for a couple of reasons. For one, video content is still relatively rare — meaning that if a video is properly embedded and optimized for search, you have a great opportunity to set yourself apart with this particular form of content.
And for another, video is a highly digestible (and shareable) form of content. Think about it: if you’re searching for a quick way to learn more about something, would you rather read an essay or watch a short, educational, and potentially entertaining video? Consider the following clip from Wistia with five tips for making a professional looking video using only an iPhone 4.
Engage and Convert
Video adds an element to relationship building that written content simply can’t achieve. After watching a video of someone, you feel a little like you know them — you have a sense of their personality, and a certain level of trust is established. Use this level of engagement to drive conversions, as Wistia does by asking for an email address at the end of the instructional video above. The viewer is now signing up for further information from the person they’ve just seen, rather than turning over their personal contact details to a faceless company.
Relationship Building
Video marketing isn’t just about getting your name out there and getting viewers to convert, it can also be an excellent way to maintain a relationship once a prospect has converted to a customer. Turn clients into brand advocates by letting them get to know the people behind your brand. Wistia introduces users to their team right off the bat with this quick video, which users receive after signing up for a free account:
Measure and Improve
If you’re all about the analytics, this may be the best news of all: video is a highly trackable form of content marketing. Not only can you gauge a prospect’s interests by what videos he or she watches, today’s tracking tools allow you to see how much of a video a prospect watched. Understanding where you lost a prospect’s attention can help you reshape your brand messaging and develop a better approach to communicating with your audience. Check out the following video from Wistia on understanding analytics — and learn how you can view these analytics from within your marketing automation platform.
So, stop thinking of video as an expensive and unattainable marketing endeavor. Start small and start basic: just putting an employee on camera to share some knowledge can give your company a face and help to build a relationship with the viewer. And don’t stop at one! As Ezra points out, “ the real success comes with adopting [video] as a core part of your marketing, as something you do on a regular basis…and as a part of your larger content marketing strategy.”