The growth in internet technology has had a huge impact on how content is consumed online. Initially, keeping pace with the new media meant just establishing a presence on it but this technological boom has changed things. It has forced businesses to continuously evolve their marketing tactics to get an edge over competitors. In the early days of the internet, the focus was completely on text. The focus has since shifted to images and, now to videos. Video content marketing has, hence, come to the fore as the latest big marketing tactic.
If you only look at YouTube statistics, you’ll find that the number of online denizens consuming videos has risen consistently in the last decade. The same trends have been noticed on other social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter. All you need to do to verify this is look at your own social media feeds. They’ll have far more videos than they used to only a year or two ago.
However, video content marketing is an expensive venture. It isn’t like content marketing where a single unit (read article, blog post, newsletter etc.) is affordable enough for a business to experiment freely and write off multiple samples. Because of the costs involved in video content marketing (even the cheapest videos are more expensive than articles or images), a business can’t make fundamental mistakes. Luckily, basics of video content marketing aren’t as convoluted as you may think. Here are a few.
Video Content Marketing Basics #1: The 10-Second Barrier
The average human attention span is shrinking. It has, in fact, dropped below the average attention span of a goldfish. This statistic, although debatable, is symptomatic of the more specific problem of marketing fatigue or vice versa. In a nutshell, people are less prone to paying attention to things. Further, they’re even more likely to not pay attention to marketing messages. This has a direct bearing on video content marketing.
Various studies have found that 20 percent of the people are likely to click away from a video in less than 10 seconds. Surprisingly, that dovetails well with what we mentioned above. The average attention span of a goldfish is 10 seconds and the study cited above states that people’s attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2017.
This is a statistic that you’ll have to fight against throughout your video content marketing campaign. The takeaway here, of course, is that the videos you create need to be able to keep the viewers’ attention for more than 10 seconds to have any kind of an impact. In journalism lingo, your “hook” needs to be spot on.
Video Content Marketing Basics #2: Multiple Channels for Maximum Visibility
If there was one video content marketing mistake that was made most, then it would be focusing solely on YouTube. It is undeniable that YouTube is currently the king of videos on the internet. Virtually, every website embeds their videos in one form or another. YouTube may be a behemoth of a video platform but it is still not alone out there. There are a number of other platforms with the number of visitors that should be significant enough for you to be interested.
Consider alternate video platforms such as Vimeo and even social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and even SnapChat. While Vimeo is an established alternative to YouTube, the social media platforms have all turned their attention to videos in their content feeds. This means that the kind of traction you can get on, say Facebook, will be far beyond what you can get on YouTube. This is why it is advisable to use multiple channels in your video content marketing strategy. At the same time, it should be mentioned that your strategy needs to be informed by where your target audience rests.
Video Content Marketing Basics #3: Add Value and Don’t Compromise On Quality
The traditional wisdom of content marketing will obviously apply to video content marketing also. This is that content needs to add value to the viewers’ lives or they will skip away immediately and refuse to share it. Originality and uniqueness, thus, become important pillars of video content marketing as they are for content marketing in general. There are various ways through which a business can go about adding value. The first is by creating the video in a way that is entertaining, the second is by offering specialised knowledge, and the third is providing brand new information on recent events.
There is always the dictum of not compromising on quality. People now have the capacity to watch videos in higher resolutions. Moreover, the level of competition in the market also means that people have the capacity to pick a better produced and edited video if the current one is below par. The situation is again the same as what you see in content and image-focused marketing. So, not only do you need to offer value through your video content marketing campaign but also focus on quality.
Video Content Marketing Basics #4: Optimise For No Sound
Smartphone and tablets have brought about another kind of revolution in video content marketing i.e. soundless videos. This isn’t to say that silent movies are making a comeback. Instead, this means videos which are optimised to be useful even if the user has turned the sound off. Because of mobile devices, people are now consuming videos in situations where they cannot play sounds. This could be in offices, in cinema halls, in hospitals, and even while commuting via public transport.
This means that businesses need to create videos that stay relevant even without sounds. This can be done in two ways. The first requires producing the video with visual cues for important points and the other is to simply provide subtitles for everything. The number of people using smart devices to access the internet has risen everywhere in the world. This is why this form of optimisation has become so important for businesses.
Video Content Marketing Basics #5: There’s Something Called Video SEO
Small to medium scale businesses that try to initiate video content marketing in-house are more prone to overlooking the aspect of video Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Video SEO isn’t as complicated as traditional SEO that is done for websites. However, it still has a few elements. The foremost of these is the use of right keywords. Videos need to be accompanied by the keywords and tags that are most appropriate for the type of content being provided.
These keywords shouldn’t revolve around sales objectives but instead be descriptive of the content in the video. Along with this, videos need to be accompanied by long descriptions. These descriptions should explain what the videos are about and also direct the viewer on to the right landing pages. Even making the videos a part of playlists is a good way to ensure that they get visibility in the audience.
Video Content Marketing Basics #6: CTAs Still Rule The Roost
CTAs stand for Call to Action which is a request or direction to the viewer to do something. This could be anything from following a link, subscribing, sharing, or even liking the video. Whatever the objective of the video content marketing campaign is, the CTAs job is to ensure its achievement. CTAs can be placed in various ways on videos.
The simplest method is to make it a part of the video. Another is to add an end panel with textual prompts. A CTA panel can be added in the middle of the video as well but you need to be careful with this because it can end up annoying the viewer instead of convincing him to perform an action.
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