- 9th February, 2024
- Digital Marketing Strategy
- By Denise Choong
Leveraging Videos in Digital Marketing: Best Practices
Videos have long been a successful medium in digital marketing. In particular, short-form videos have skyrocketed to fame in social media, with mediums like TikTok achieving record levels of downloads worldwide.
Our intel shows that video marketing is a big digital marketing trend coming for us in 2024, but is it really something we should pay attention to?
We say yes. Here are some statistics that prove this.
Benefits of video marketing
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth millions. Whether it’s a live stream, a 30-second testimonial, or an interview, audiences love videos and recall them better than other forms of media.
In fact, 80% of audiences prefer watching videos over written text when learning something new. YouTube had over
2.70 billion active users in 2023 - if YouTube were a country, it would be more populated than China and India.
For many businesses, video marketing has also recorded significant success in their overall marketing plan. According to a report by Wyzol, 91% of companies mentioned using video as a marketing tool, and 92% said that their business achieved positive ROI with video marketing.
Source: Wyzowl
Using videos in your online marketing is a great way to improve your SEO strategy and brand identity. Successful videos don’t require thousands of dollars and a team of videographers, so even small businesses can execute them easily.
Follow these best practices below to harness videos as your best weapon in digital marketing.
Best practices for video marketing
Use storytelling
Create videos with the purpose of entertaining, not advertising. Instead of jumping straight into your business and what you offer, focus on engaging your audience with a captivating story or bringing value.
The example above by Qantas shows how the brand focused on a positive travelling experience that delights its potential customers instead of the company. The business elements, like its aircraft and logo, are only loosely promoted throughout the video.
Developing a storyboard, which is a visual representation of the screenplay or video script, is recommended before recording your video. Storyboards ensure you’re telling a compelling story for the audience and break down each shot to produce a more cohesive video.
Know your audience
If you haven’t done a strong buyer persona for your business, you should do it now. Understanding how and where your audience consumes content can help you create better videos with higher engagement.
Here’s an example of how a simplified buyer persona can shape your videos. Consider these two buyer personas below for a car retailer.
A video targeted to Yolanda Y, shown in the example below, should be highly focused on creating engagement. TikTok is known for its ‘unserious’ platform nature, where users go to be entertained. By publishing on the social media app and tapping into an iconic pop culture reference for most Gen Y’s (Mean Girls movie).
In comparison, here’s a video marketing the same car brand for Xavier X. However, this video leans towards inspiration rather than fun. Because the marketing goal is to educate the customer and encourage them to buy, the video focuses on the car's features and highlights its latest features in the market. It is also published on Facebook, an app popular among Gen X.
By understanding your consumers, their motivations, and their preferences, you can develop better goals for your videos.
Utilise different types of video marketing
There are many forms of videos that have proven successful in consumer engagement, which is good news for marketers with minimal budgets. Here are examples of different video types for small businesses or companies who don’t want to spend a fortune.
Your video should be created with an understanding of what your customers want to see and the nature of your business. Typically, businesses with technical products or services fare well with FAQ explainers and product demonstration videos to educate customers.
A study by We Are Social highlights the type of videos watched by Australians - with music videos and comedy videos being the most popular.
Source: We Are Social
Here’s an example of a simple yet effective video released in our Weekly Recon newsletter. It highlights how videos can be a great value-added source when done tactically.
Don't forget video SEO
Videos are excellent in improving one's SEO. In fact, businesses are 53x more likely to rank on page 1 of Google by having a video embedded in their website.
Your video itself should also be SEO-optimised to improve its discoverability. YouTube is the second-biggest search engine online, and Google owns the platform - so consider uploading videos on YouTube and optimising them for SEO using the right keywords.
Here are some strategies you can use to optimise YouTube video SEO.
Leverage social media platforms
Australians spend just over 2 hours on social media daily, so sharing your videos on various platforms can significantly help improve your video engagement. Different platforms have different target audiences, and your videos should be crafted based on where your target audience most likely is.
Remember that most social media platforms, like Facebook and LinkedIn, prefer direct video uploads onto the platform rather than linking a YouTube video to a post. Meanwhile, platforms like Instagram and TikTok have plenty of interactive video recording features in the app itself.
YouTube is currently one of Australia's most-used social media platforms - recording over 17 hours of use each month per user. However, TikTok has achieved a record growth of 26.5% in time spent on the app compared to other social platforms. For businesses with a younger target audience, uploading videos on TikTok is the way forward.
Source: We Are Social
Measuring Video Marketing Success
Likes and views shouldn’t be the only success metrics used in video marketing, and it's probably counterintuitive to have those ‘likes’ not translate to sales. For a clearer picture of how your videos have performed, here are some KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure your video performance.
KPIs like sales and calls might not be as easily determined as watch times or clicks - but like all things in marketing, videos are done to produce long-term results. With multiple video uploads over time, your business can expect positive sales returns.
Key takeaway
Video marketing is an upcoming trend this year, and small businesses that want to grow their brand visibility should capitalise on this. As this article covers, a compelling video doesn’t require enormous resources.
If you’re looking for a team to help you stay on top of video SEO, consider working with an SEO specialist like Digital Assassin.
Digital Assassin provides affordable digital marketing packagesfor Australian businesses to manage their digital marketing strategy with ongoing tactical content and SEO best practices. To learn more about how to build a great website, read our eBook, So You Need a Killer Website. Alternatively, speak to an assassin today.