Nothing beats visuals when it comes to content marketing. From images and pictures to infographics, they are an engaging form of content which is effective at capturing the minds of the people who view them. However, none of them does better than video. A study revealed that social video generates 1200 more shares than images and texts combined.

Video marketing is simply put, the art of incorporating videos into your digital marketing strategy to help your brand garner more recognition and promote its awareness. 94% of video marketers have said that video has helped increase users’ understanding of their products or services.

More than 50% of consumers prefer to see videos from brands more than any other type of content, a fact that further highlights the importance of video marketing. Using writing to communicate with the audience is going out of style and quickly so.

Video marketing is the proper and most effective way of connecting with your customers more engagingly. It also helps you tell a story that best describes your company’s mission and purpose. Little wonder why so many brands and businesses have incorporated it into their content marketing strategy. To put things in perspective, 86% of businesses use videos on their website.

Video marketing might, in theory, seem complicated and expensive, but that is far from reality. It could be as simple as shooting videos through your smartphone and combining them into one video, embedding some background music, and adding your company’s logo using a video editing tool.

Videos embedded in home pages or blog posts, email newsletters with videos, or sponsored videos that pop up in your social media feeds are examples of video marketing.

It is helpful to many businesses in helping them drive traffic and increase their ROI. Indeed, 76% of businesses using video marketing saw an increase in traffic due to the incorporated videos.

If you want to increase your impressions, views, and lead conversion rates, it is high time you adopted video marketing.

Video marketing is indeed beneficial, mainly due to its engaging nature. This is especially true because consumers would rather watch an explainer video to learn about a new product than read a long descriptive text about the same product.

Types of Video Content You Should Know About

There are diverse types of video content every video content marketer should know about. These videos can be grouped into three main classes – awareness, engagement, and education videos.

Let’s go into details with the various categories of videos.

Awareness

These forms of videos have high-entertainment value and a great appeal. They are geared towards gaining the attention of the audience and attracting as many people as possible.

• Meet the Team Video

These sets of videos are aimed at showcasing a potential customer the organization’s values and mission. They are also made to highlight the culture of the brand and possibly introduce new members of the team.

They give the audience an insight into what your company does differently and go a long way in promoting brand loyalty.

• Round-ups

These video types are very effective and are usually based on a theme. An example is “top 6 affiliate marketing programs” or “Best affordable bikes and scooters in 2019” or “6 Tech Trends That Could Be a Thing in 2020”.

Generally, they are most effective when they are relatively short – say some four minutes, so that you can keep your audience engaged. 75% of videos published in 2018 were under two minutes long, compared to 56% recorded the previous year, stressing the fact that videos are becoming shorter with time.

You should also make sure that the video has the right mix of clips, stills of the people, products, or whatever you are describing. A video of just you’re speaking to the camera for the entire video duration can get boring pretty quickly.

• Interview

Interview videos are a fantastic way of sharing your brand’s values to your target audience. They usually highlight one or several people answering some questions directed by a rather well-known influencer such as a speaker or an author.

The questions asked are such that they highlight the virtues of the brand and the positives of using its products.

• Behind-the-Scenes Videos (BTS)

If you have an exclusive insight into the project or production process you think your customers might be interested in knowing more about, you should give a Behind-the-scenes video a thought.

They are usually less polished and unedited compared to traditional videos and have been known to work for both B2B and B2C brands.

For example, showing the BTS of the production of a snack can reveal the level of hygiene during its production process. It helps convince consumers they should use that product because they feel they can relate better with the product production process.

It is, however, important that you do not reveal any “secret formulas” of your products in a BTS video.

Engagement

These sets of videos are produced to spark a reaction from the general audience. They promote reactions like comments, shares, and likes. In general, they are used to playing to the viewer’s emotions.

• Skit/Humorous Video

Making funny ads, skits, and humorous videos is a good way of making your viewers smile and laugh, consequently making them see your brand as relatable.

An excellent example of a franchise that employs the use of such videos is Super Bowl and the NBA. The NBA commercials are downright humorous and make viewers of the game feel entirely relaxed.

If 46% of users act after watching an ad, imagine how much conversion you could get if the video is engaging.

• Video Emails

An effective sales email video should not be more than a minute-long. That is enough time for you to introduce yourself and explain why you’re reaching out to the customer.

You need not create a new video for every little thing out there. Instead, you can make a few videos that you can reuse time and time again.

• Vlog

Vlogs are exciting, especially when the individual behind the camera is fluent, engaging, and has a strong character with a high potential to influence the viewers.

In general, it describes a person’s personal experiences or thoughts on a particular product, brand, or topic. It is diary-styled and filmed by one person in front of a webcam.

Though this video form is used mostly by influencers, content marketers can also take advantage of this popular form of video marketing.

It is a good and effective way of carrying your potential and current customers along. You could take them virtually to live events, shows, interview sessions, and through typical days at work in your vlog sessions.

Education

They are poised to teach the audience something. For example, you might consider using a case study if you are targeting potential customers or a how-to video if you are more concerned with current customers.

• Product Review

Many online shoppers can’t purchase products online without going through the product’s reviews. They assure the audience that they are getting an honest take from someone they like and trust in a highly convenient format.

Through the reviews, they can compare the advantages and shortcomings of the product in a bid to conclude whether the product is worth the buy or not.

It might seem biased if you choose to review your product yourself. You should, therefore, give influencers a sample or trial and ask them to share their thoughts through a clip.

An example of this is a review of a tooth whitening kit. Such products need good convincing, and product reviews from influencers who have a good reputation might do the trick.

• How-to Video

They’re great at getting your audience to trust you and help build brand awareness. To make one, you should come up with a list of questions your customers would usually have and answer them one after the other.

Other video content types are event videos, stunt videos, user-generated video campaigns, Crowd-funding/Kickstarter videos, launch videos, and promotional videos.

• Testimonial/Case Studies

Case studies are arguably the best at ensuring leads conversion. This stems from the psychological phenomenon that people want to use something when they see others use it.

Get a customer or user who has had a good experience with your product and is excellent at telling stories. Let this customer tell his story and get others on his/her side.

Tips to Help You Produce Super Successful Video Marketing Campaigns

Having discussed useful video content ideas, we must take a look at best practices and valuable tips that could help you produce inspiring, compelling, and actionable online videos.

Center the video around the story and not the sale

Just as with content marketing, you should concentrate on the value you are providing for the customers rather than the number of sales you will be making.

Sales should be the result of an effective video marketing campaign rather than its primary goal. Make use of the power of emotions by appealing to the customers’ needs and hidden desires.

For best results, you should also include a call to action alongside a tracked URL at the end of the video to redirect them to your site.

Use humor and emotion

As much as your audience wants to know the how-to of your products and what-not, they can’t stand lengthy videos with no humor relief.

Apart from wanting to feel enlightened, they also want to relax and laugh once in a while. Spicing up your video with a little humor can help you get your points across efficiently and economically.

People tend to remember encounters that spark emotional reactions such as fear, or joy. Using downright funny video ads can help the target audience remember your brand easily.

Optimize your video for SEO

There are a host of tactics you can use to ensure that your videos rank higher in popular search engines like Yahoo and Google.

The first step in maximizing your SEO value is hosting it on your domain. For best results, you should also enable embedding on your video, as this could increase the likelihood of receiving inbound marketing links.

It is also essential that you add descriptions to your videos, as this would allow Google spiders to make sense of your video and understand its contents.

You should, therefore, make sure that the video is tagged with relevant keywords and its content fully explained with fleshed out descriptions and stand-out titles.

Here is the blog about “6 Ways Video Content Can Improve Your SEO”, it may help you to understand the importance of video in SEO.

Final Take!

Video Marketing is a gold mine for SEO and could go a long way in boosting your web page’s rank. Your videos can take any of the already discussed forms to create brand or product awareness, keeping them engaged, and educating them on the importance of the product.

Besides making these videos, it is also vital that you take note of the tips mentioned above that could guide you into running successful video marketing campaigns.