A Forbes survey on Corporate executives and video usage revealed that 75% of all executives claimed watching videos related to business websites at least once a week, and more than 50% claimed that YouTube was the most popular video search engine used to watch those videos. As the dependence on video content increases for corporate executives, it has become imperative for B2B marketers to apportion a sizeable budget to video marketing initiatives. We understand that jumping into the video marketing bandwagon can be a daunting task, and we are here to ease in the transition by providing some actionable tips on elements that make up a successful video marketing plan. If you have in fact already started your video marketing campaigns, this check-list will help you determine if any aspects are missing from your plan.
Here are the most important aspects of a video marketing plan:
Start with a goal
Before embarking on any kind of a planning exercise, it is important to chart out the goal for the exercise. The goal could vary from increasing the number of blog / email subscribers to receiving sales leads through product demo registrations.
Narrow it down to specific tactics
After a clear goal has been established, you need to decide whether you want it to be achieved through earned (embedding the links on your website) or paid media (YouTube advertising); how many channels you want to create, how often you will be updating it with diverse content and the type of content to be used for catering to different types of marketing needs.
Create diverse content to cater to different stages of the buyer's purchase journey
Brands need to create diverse content to cater to different audience tastes and also to facilitate their journey at different touch-points of the purchase journey. A study by Pixability revealed that consumers who were close to the top of the marketing funnel could be pushed further along using short form content (short product demos, video clips), while those who are those farther along in the buying journey could be converted using longer form content (how-to tutorials, video guides etc).
Optimize
You need to optimize your videos so that they are search-engine friendly and can be easily found online. For this purpose, it is important to carefully research keywords related to your industry, niche or value offerings and use them in the title of the video, video description and keyword tags. Include a transcript for all your videos on YouTube as well as on your website.
Promote, promote and promote some more
Promote your videos everywhere from your website, blog to social bookmarking and networking sites, Make sure that your videos can easily be shared on social networking sites. The same study by Pixability as mentioned earlier also demonstrated how the top 25% of the 100 brands studies had higher Facebook (330 times greater) and Twitter (89 times greater) video sharing than the bottom 25%.
Include a call-to-action
It is important to leave your viewers with a desire to learn more and to undertake some action subsequent to the completion of the video. Leave a call to action at the end of a video urging the users to subscribe to your email list / newsletter, your channel, share on social networking sites, like the video, register for a trial or to simply get in touch with you.
Be consistent
Consistently update your channels with frequent videos. It is more important to add content to your channels as opposed to adding more channels. The top 100 brands performing exceptionally well on YouTube regularly updated their content.
Most importantly, just jump in. Your fear of the unknown will be eliminated the minute you do. You may have to experiment with the content, promotion techniques, call-to-action etc, but doing so will enable you to find that perfect mix that works the best for you.