Effective video marketing is as much about presentation as it is about measuring results.

Video marketing is the rage.  Many of you think that if you have a Youtube channel and a handful of videos, you are effectively executing a video marketing strategy.  While I agree that you may be on your way to creating a terrific online video presence, there are 7 ways you can enhance your strategy. 

Video and Landing Pages

1) Embedding your video into a custom page that is designed using a CMS like Hubspot improves the amount of times your video will get played. The page you design sets the stage for the video.  If you have your landing page set up to reflect the needs of your buying audience, you are more likely to encourage a video view.  After all, if a video isn’t viewed, what good is it?

Landing Page Example

Sharing Your Videos

2) Marketing today is all about sharing.  You want your audience to love your content so much that they share it within their own networks.  Make it easy for them to do so.   When you use a service like Wistia, a private video hosting service, the videos you embed in a landing page come with social sharing buttons.  When your audience shares the video, they don’t just share the video, they share the entire page!

Email Marketing

3) Email click through rates skyrocket when a video is shared in the email. This awesome post by Wistia speaks volumes about how and why video enhances your email click through rates. Wistia’s findings:

 “The click / open ratio (# of clicks / # of opens – this factors out any variation in open rate between the two emails, which should have been identical because there was no indication of difference until you opened the email) for email a with video was 38%. Without a video was 12% … more than 300% improvement!”

Video Calls-To-Action

4) A call-to-action is something you want your audience to actually do.  The video, first, should be designed with a specific call-to-action in mind.  Contrary to popular opinion, a “viral” video is absolutely meaningless if it doesn’t encourage a planned for and desired action.  Remember, this is about business not entertainment. Play the video below to the end OR skip right to the end to see an “in video” call-to-action.

Video Metrics That Matter

5) Video “heatmaps” tell you how much of a particular video was actually watched.  This is relevant because without it, particularly if you are using a free hosting service, all you can determine is that someone clicked on your video.  You cannot see how much your audience was engaged.  Heatmaps will clearly tell you if you are marketing to the right audience with the right message.  If your audience doesnt watch your video, you have either an audience problem or a video problem. 

6) Engagement Metrics Include:

• Loads – How many times the video landing page was loaded.
• Visitors – Unique page visitors.
• Play Rate – How many times the video was played compared to the number of loads.
• Average Engagement – Combination of metrics that tells you how much your video message is actually being watched.

Animated Stories

7) Using stories to connect with your audience is the absolute best way to explain what it is that you do and why anyone would think it relevant enough to take action.  Animated videos allow you to create scenes that help explain simple and complex topics.  Services like GoAnimate, make it incredibly simple and cost-effective to create some awesome animated videos for your business.   Generally, animations are awesome for the following reasons:

• Animated thumbnails, the image that people see when your landing page loads, encourage a much higher click to play rate than a non-animated video.
• Animated stories are engaging and entertaining, keeping your audience focused on the message until its completion.
• Animations allow you to create “characters” that reflect your buying personas so that your audience relates to your message.

Example of a quick animated “story” to describe why SMS Text Marketing is an effective restaurant marketing strategy.

Video marketing is a very effective marketing strategy.  Video creation has a lower total cost of production than ever before.  Video’s can also contribute to your SEO strategy.  More importantly, video is an unbelievable way to let everyone know about who you are and why they should care.  Just make sure that you are paying close attention to the direction you are taking.  Otherwise, your video marketing strategy will be a very fast and expensive trip in the wrong direction.

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