Video Marketing: 3 Tips to Get Started

Video marketing can be beneficial for any business, but it can be hard to get started if you’re new to the game and don’t really know much about marketing in general.

Thankfully, we are here to help you learn everything you need in order to get your company out there, start reaching viewers, and get some more money into your pocket.

Here’s three tips to help you start reaping the benefits of this increasingly popular method of advertising.

Tip #1: Think About Your Brand and Goals

Before you get started with video marketing, you need to think about your brand and your overall goals that you want to achieve with your ads.

When thinking about your brand, you need to consider your image, values, and overall mission when creating and placing video content.

For example, what types of content and placements would resonate well with your target audience? Better yet, what is your target audience?

You will need to do a lot of contemplation and introspection during this planning phase before you move forward and start to actually create your content.

When it comes to different ad objectives, there are several different ones that you may want to explore based on your overall business goals. Here are just a few different ad objectives that you may want to focus on:

Remarketing: Remarketing is a great ad objective for beginners. You are targeting people who already know your company and have interacted with it in some way in the past. This is a great way to keep your brand in that person’s mind while also increasing ad recall and customer engagement.
Brand awareness: If you’re really looking to jump into the deep end in video marketing, then you might want to try ads tailored to increase brand awareness. Brand awareness helps familiarize people with your brand, what you offer, and what you’re all about. This is an important step in marketing as you need to build up your brand before people are willing to buy from you.
In-market targeting: In-market targeting is a great way to reach people who are already ready and looking to buy products or services that you offer. These types of ads target people who have been searching for these items across the Internet. By presenting them with your content, you’re more likely to get conversions rather than just reaching out to random people who aren’t necessarily looking to buy any of your products.
Custom affinities: Using custom affinities to lure away customers who may have viewed products from competitors is a sneaky way to make a sale. In this type of content, you really need to emphasize the strengths and benefits of buying your product over other products that the viewer has previously considered. When done right, this can be a great way to get more conversions.

Tip #2: Explore Different Platform Options

There are so many different platform options out there for video marketing, that it’s hard to know where to begin and which platforms are the best.

Here’s the lowdown on a few different options that you can consider for your content:

YouTube: If you’re looking to reach tons of people with your ads on a platform solely made for videos, then YouTube is the best option. With more than 2 billion users and 5 billion videos viewed every day, your potential reach with Youtube advertising is unlimited. It also gives you the option to advertise across borders in different languages since it’s so international.
Facebook: Facebook video ads have become really popular in recent years and it’s easy to see why. Videos really stand out on Facebook since it also contains picture and text posts. At the same time, most videos on Facebook are viewed without sound, which is important to keep in mind as you create your ad.
Instagram: Instagram specializes in visual content — making it ideal for video marketing. However, audio is also a challenge on this platform so make sure that your content quickly grabs the viewer’s attention and makes them want to turn the sound on, or even better, visit your profile or site.
Twitter: We also have Twitter, which is grossly underrated when it comes to marketing effectiveness. Even though it has fewer users overall than other platforms, its users are often extremely engaged with the platform and can make great targets for relevant ads.
LinkedIn: If you’re looking to reach a more professional demographic with relevant content, LinkedIn might be the answer you’ve been looking for, though advertising here is limited in what you’re able to advertise for in a professional tone.
TikTok: On the other and, if you’re looking to reach a younger demographic — TikTok is the perfect place to do this. However, word to the wise: the TikTok app may no longer be downloadable in the U.S. for much longer.

Tip #3: Consult the Experts

The last tip to help you get started in video marketing is to consult the experts.

While you can definitely do some work on your own to get your feet wet in the world of video marketing, it’s still extremely beneficial for you to work with experts who can really help you create an effective strategy and get the most bang for your buck when it comes to your marketing budget.

These professionals know the world of video marketing inside and out and can help you create content and targeting mechanisms that get the best content to the right individuals.

Furthermore, companies like the Channel Factory can also help you with things like brand suitability and brand safety, that can not only help promote your ads alongside suitable content, but also protect your brand by avoiding placing your ads alongside negative content that could damage your brand image and overall reputation.

Video Marketing Best Practices

Now that you know how to get started using video marketing to promote your company, it’s a good idea to go over some best practices that you can use to make sure that you do this effectively.

It’s important to remember that video marketing can be extremely effective if you do it properly, so that’s where these helpful guidelines come into play…

Use data. When using video marketing, one of your best resources is data, so make sure you actually utilize it to help you tailor and adjust your ads and overall strategy. Most video advertising platforms will offer you all sorts of data points and analytics on how your ad is performing and who is viewing that.

If your ad doesn’t seem to be very effective, you can notice while it’s still running and make any necessary changes in order to boost the effectiveness.

Also, you can make changes in your targeting strategy based on who is viewing your content. If it doesn’t necessarily line up with your ideal target audience, you can adjust your targeting specifications to reach the people that you want to reach.

Use a call to action. Each video should include a clear call to action that describes what you want the viewer to do as a result of the ad. Based on the ad objective, these can differ between checking out your website, to checking out your amazing customer reviews, or even actually making a purchase. With clear messaging like this, viewers are able to associate an action with your ad rather than just another pointless video.

Make it mobile-friendly. Over 70% of total watch time on YouTube comes from mobile devices. And that’s just YouTube. That’s why it’s super important to create content that works well on mobile devices without lagging or affecting the quality of the picture. Make sure that the beginning of your ad is just as effective without sound as it is with it — because most people initially have the sound off when scrolling through content online.

Now you have everything you need to get started with video marketing. If it all seems a bit overwhelming, remember that you can always use experts like the Channel Factory to help break it down for you.

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