Video marketing continues to be an important aspect of today’s marketing landscape. Just ask Amir Bazrafshan from the Content Marketing Institute, who wrote a blog post in 2018 about the ways that video marketing was changing. He emphasized the importance of staying up-to-date with current video trends because using an outdated marketing strategy is just as bad as having no marketing strategy at all.
What is a video, anyway? Is it just a filmed explanation of your products and services?
No, it is a lot more than that! It is a way to form an instant bond with your audience. It is a way of engaging them with your company and providing your message. It is even a way to communicate your company culture and values.
Just check out these statistics:
If you want to be a part of the companies that are using these statistics to their advantage, you will need to know the ins and outs of video marketing.
There are many types of videos you can use to connect with your audience. Let’s talk about some of the most common types of videos that you can use to drive engagement and improve sales. Each type of video is used a little bit differently, and we’ll go over some of the ways you can implement these different types.
Don’t feel like you have to do all of this at once, though! If your company isn’t doing any video content right now, pick one or two types of video and give it a try before trying to tackle too much at once!
Yes, under committing to video means you’re missing your opportunity to communicate directly with customers in ways they’re drawn to. However, trying to commit to using every type of video marketing right now might spread you to thin and lead to your company creating poorly made videos.
We recommend choosing one or two of the following video types and exploring your options. If you ever want to talk in more detail about what would best work for you, let us know so we can help!
A timelapse video shows a sequence of events but sped up to make a long process visible in just a few seconds or minutes. You know the type: a flower sprouting, blooming, and dying in 10 seconds. A stadium stage being set up over the course of several days by dozens of workers, but filmed so that it all unfolds within a single minute.
Because these are fun to watch, they drive viewer engagement. Plenty of different types of timelapse videos exist, but some of the most popular ones include nature, manufacturing, instructional, and storytelling videos.
You may need special cameras, tools, and apps to create the timelapse content you are imagining right now, but you may be able to just use your phone. What you need will depend on the complexity of your idea.
Animations are not just for kids! They’re actually a terrific tool for audiences made up of adults, too. Providing information through an upbeat, animated video can be a great way to teach a group of people. This is important, though: people are used to seeing high-quality animation, so if yours looks cheap or low in quality, viewers won’t engage.
Animated videos can be especially effective for explainer videos, which, as the name suggests, explain an important business concept or process. Here is a great example.
Find an animator you trust to create quality work so that you, in turn, will be trusted by your viewers.
When a commercial is done right, it can be as enjoyable as any other short-format form of entertainment. Think about how many people go to Superbowl parties just to watch the commercials, or about how often lines from commercials become part of our everyday conversations. Commercials don’t just sell specific products. They build brand familiarity and communicate something about what you care about as a company.
Your potential customers will watch commercials over and over again and share them with friends, but only if they are entertained or given an emotional experience. Today’s commercials can be found on TV, but they are just as likely to be found on social media pages and websites. Commercials can be posted as individual videos on YouTube, or they can be the advertising that plays before other YouTube content.
You should storyboard your commercials as if they are short films. Create a mini-masterpiece that promotes your brand at the same time that it makes people want to hit the share button.
Longer form digital ads, as part of a larger marketing strategy, can take the form of case studies and product demos.
Drones are pretty affordable these days! Drone footage catches the viewer’s eye by providing an overhead or close-up view of something they don’t usually get to see. You can use this footage to show a vast geographical expanse, to take a tour of an area, or to give your viewers a whole new perspective. Take them somewhere they can’t go with your drone!
A company with a large campus of buildings could show off their facilities from a never-before-seen angle. An agricultural products producer could fly over the fields of a farmer who is using the company’s materials. A coffee shop could show the fields where their coffee is grown. A company that employs a lot of people could get footage of their annual Employee and Family Picnic and put the video online to celebrate their team.
One thing that companies can do is build an instructional library for their followers, fans, customers, and prospective buyers. Today’s shoppers want to be able to trust the companies they are buying from, and one way to build trust is to serve as an educator.
Educational videos, then, are a great way to accomplish that goal. Without spending a huge amount of money, your company can provide informative and educational videos that demonstrate your knowledge and expertise. Become a voice of authority so that when people want to know about a product or service you provide, they go to you, the thought leader, for information about that product or service.
Educational videos are also really useful for training and onboarding employees. For a business that is aggressively growing, educational video drives employee onboarding, at scale, through informational and organizational culture videos.
NextThought is a national leader in educational videos, and we understand the importance of creating a strong, clear voice to help employees and customers alike retain information and benefit from video-based learning.
Some video content is designed specifically for social media, including platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. You want to create videos that are short, bold, and eye-catching. They also need to have captions, because an overwhelming majority of social media users watch video without the audio turned on.
Social media can include testimonial videos, product videos, content to accompany a blog post, project demos, and plenty of other uses.
When creating a social media video, you want to think about which parts of your target audience are on which apps and platforms. Then, target those audiences. Make sure that any video you plan meets the social media specs and limits. Be sure to follow the rules or the video you’ve worked hard to produce won’t be compatible with the platforms you planned to use.
There is nothing like live content to give your videos a feeling of importance and a sense of urgency. Live video, especially in the form of Facebook Live, is growing in popularity, although you have to get it right to make it work. We recommend working with a talented video production team if you want your live content to be impressive.
Interactive video allows the audience to choose what happens next. This “choose-your-own-adventure” style video means that viewers aren’t just viewers. They are participants. This kind of content is especially common in training scenarios, but it can also be used for marketing. In the same way that interactive video provides employee training in a customized way, it also allows consumers to seek out information they need in a similar way.
This is probably the most complex form of video content for marketing and training alike, and it requires a lot more than just a phone and an editing app. Be sure to get expert advice on this kind of video before you get started!
On the marketing side of things, video content drives engagement, and engagement increases sales. On the training side, it creates a more knowledgeable group of employees, which can increase customer satisfaction and sales.
In other words, here is what we know about video content: it’s absolutely vital!
You have an opportunity to communicate with buyers and potential buyers in new and compelling ways. You can capture their attention with images, words, music, and video, and then give them an achievable call to action, whether that is buying something, contacting you, or hitting the share button.
We want to help! NextThought provides insight, guidance, and exceptional quality to our video marketing customers. Our goal is to help you find ways to incorporate high-quality video content into your existing marketing strategy.
Give us a call at (405) 673-5582, or contact us via our website.