The impact that video can have on a marketing campaign is certainly no secret – so why is it that so many marketers are leaving video out of their otherwise robust content strategies? In fact, when we recently surveyed over 1,000 marketers across various industries about their motivations, budgets, and resources allocated for video, we found that only 56% of marketers are currently using video in their strategies, and 61% are planning to do so in 2019. Video may seem like its barrier to entry is too high for the common marketer – but that’s just because most marketers haven’t learned how to leverage their resources in the best way possible. Here a few simple steps you can take to significantly lower that entryway to video, and get ahead of the video game while your competition is still trying to crack the puzzle. This post was originally featured on Masserclassing’s Ask the Experts blog. Check it out here!
Clarify your video content marketing goal
Findings from our research revealed that increasing overall brand exposure and boosting awareness of products and services are the two most universal goals for marketers when it comes to video. However, “awareness” and “exposure” are difficult KPIs to track – and there are plenty more measurable goals that video can help achieve. Try out using video to promote events (to increase attendance), company culture (to boost open job applications), and thought leadership content like white papers, client testimonials and case studies (to build your email list and generate leads). That way, the ROI that you see from your videos will be much easier to prove.
Optimize your budgets and operations
Most marketers allocate the majority of their video budget to distribution (an average of $50K), leaving an average of $15K for creation. But many marketers also feel that they’re spending too much on creation, and not enough on distribution – an issue that can be alleviated by leveraging easy-to-use video creation tools. Our research found that marketers who use online creation tools are more likely to create more than 32 videos a month and lower their annual creation budget to under $10K. With less budget allocated to creation and more high-quality videos produced in-house, you’ll have much more room in your budget for distribution – so if you don’t already have one, we’d suggest adding a video creation tool to your tech stack.
Here are some helpful charts from our video marketing report – make sure to hover over the bars to see the numbers!
How different creation tools impact productivity
How different creation tools impact budget
Identify channels that resonate with your audience
Youtube and Facebook used to be marketers’ go-to platforms for promoting video content, but their fickle algorithm changes and oversaturated content space should be reason enough to diversify your distribution strategy. LinkedIn has recently gone all-in on video – its algorithm now prioritize posts and articles that contain videos, especially about events, news, products, company culture. And Instagram has proven its precision and effectiveness when it comes to paid ads, especially for business in the E-Commerce space. Instagram Stories have also become marketers’ favorite tool to post interactive vertical short videos that provide an exclusive, raw backstage scene which drives both eyeballs and engagement. And now that Instagram has introduced IGTV, YouTube should be just as worried as Snapchat should have been last year – and your content strategy should make room for this new channel as quickly as possible.
Top social platforms for paid video promotion