Video Marketing: Best Practices for Improved Performance

Did you know the average Internet user spends 88% more time on a website with video?

Research has shown that everyone from Millennials to senior business executives prefer watching a short video over reading text when presented with both options. As such, creating video content to bolster your website and digital marketing strategy isn’t just a good idea — it’s a necessity for a positive user experience.

Additional research by comScore found that “64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it.” In fact, 70% of marketing professionals report that video content converts better than any other medium . This means, while press, TV, email and social media are all important components to a comprehensive marketing plan, video plays a vital part.

Video can be used on your website to increase time-on-site, on landing pages to improve your conversion rates and on social media to boost your engagement rates (likes, shares, comments and click-throughs). It can also be used in email to increase your open rates!

Forrester research found that simply mentioning “video” in a subject line boosts open rates by 19% and when video is included in an email it increases click-through rates by 200-300%!

Forward thinking brands are including, or planning to include, video in multiple marketing channels to support customer service, increase brand awareness and improve sales. Don’t let your competitors put out compelling video campaigns before you when all of the research shows customers respond so well to video!

How to Use Video Marketing in Digital Campaigns

Creating great video content requires knowing your audience well. After that you need the creative and technical skills to put together a compelling video 2 minutes in length or less (yes, that’s all the time you have before a viewer stops watching!). Finally, you need the marketing know-how to setup your campaigns to increase the reach of your content. After all a video that never gets watched has no chance of success.

Here are the basics for putting together a campaign that will help you drive more brand engagement and sales:

1. Define Segments Within Your Target Audience

You likely already know who your target audience is, at least on a general basis.

For example, if you sell expensive handbags your target audience would likely be affluent women. However, there will be plenty of segments within this target audience that you could create specific messaging and video content for, including:

• Career-focused women
• Stay-at-home moms/wives
• College students
• Husbands looking to buy gifts for women in their lives

You could (and should) create targeted video content that speaks directly to each of these segments to improve your digital marketing campaigns.

How?

Well, your video for “career focused women” might include messaging about rewarding yourself for completing the latest project at work/landing a new account/giving yourself a bonus. Alternatively, your video for “stay-at-home-moms” might include messaging about “deserving a special gift for being the family chauffeur.”

These type of videos can be used in social media and display ad campaigns where you’re able to target different segments of your audience very specifically.

For example, using Facebook ads you can target your “stay-at-home moms” video just to stay-at-home moms who live in a household that makes over $250,000 a year and who frequently shop at luxury stores.

You could also target your “career-focused women” video to females between 30 and 50 who hold specific job titles like “manager,” “director” and “vice president” and who like shopping at luxury stores. You could even add on the household income targeting option to further ensure you’re reaching an audience that can afford your expensive handbags.

With a Display Ad campaign on Google you could show your videos on websites that affluent women frequently visit to bolster your brand awareness with this audience.

The more specific you can target you video message to the right audience the better your results will be!

2. Create Your Videos with the Right Content

When putting together your video, no matter which segment of your target audience it’s for, you’ll want to keep some basic research in mind.

For instance, did you know that men respond well to visuals of other men? At the same time, women respond well to images of other women, images of men and women together and gender neutral images but they do not respond well to images of men!

With this research in mind, put together your videos using the right mix of people that your target audience will likely respond to.

3. Review Your Data and Optimize Accordingly

Starting with research is the right way to begin, but it’s important to look through your image and video statistics so you can optimize your campaigns accordingly.

For example, when BassProShops dove into their analytics they found that their female viewers love to share images of dogs ! It would stand to reason then that their next video content should also contain dogs if they hope to generate the highest possible engagement rate.

Without having reviewed their analytics, they might have continued making videos featuring people and their engagement would have been lower than it could be.

Are You Ready?

Every campaign, whether good or bad, generates data that tells you something about how your target audience wants to be communicated with. Being able to interpret that data is the key to improving engagement and sales every quarter.

If you want to talk with a digital marketing professional about incorporating video into your campaigns contact us today for a free consultation! At Green Dot we have the creative talent and digital marketing expertise you need to achieve the best video marketing results!