8 Guidelines for Effective Video Marketing

People love watching videos. With almost 1 billion active users, YouTube has become one of the most visited sites online. Many businesses have discovered the immense potential of video marketing and are now using it to promote their products and services – here are some tips which will help you derive the biggest benefits from video marketing.

1. Understand your audience.

Before posting any video, you need to get familiar with your target audience. What are their ages? What are they passionate about? What problems are they dealing with? What kind of videos would appeal best to your audience? Once you have answers to such questions, you will then be able to carry out an effective video marketing campaign.

2. Think outside the box.

There are thousands of videos on YouTube competing for people’s attention. For your video to stand out of the crowd, you will need to think out-of-the-box. Come up with a creative and radical concept which will capture the imagination of your viewers. You can get some inspiration by looking at what others have already done and borrowing some ideas. However, don’t make the mistake of duplicating entirely the work of others.

 

3. Get familiar with the tools.

The internet offers a wide range of free tools which can be used to create unique videos. Take time to carry out an online search to find such tools. Visit several review sites to see what people are recommending. When it comes to premium tools, make use of the free trial option first before making a decision to buy.

4. Develop a series.

One of the best ways of retaining the attention of your audience is by developing a web series. Create a video which tells an intriguing story which unfolds slowly. Make sure the story is relevant to your industry or brand. End each part of the series with a teaser which build anticipation in your audience.

5. Optimize your videos.

Optimizing your videos will enhance their ranking in search engines, thus making it easier for users to find them. Therefore, take time to optimize your video tags and descriptions using appropriate keywords. It would be advisable to stick to industry keywords which people are likely to use as search terms.

6. Submit to different sites.

Besides YouTube, you should also submit your content to other video sharing sites such as Dailymotion, Veoh, Metacafé, Vimeo, Vevo, Flickr and Break. If possible, find a site which is the right match for your industry. Be wary of websites which allow pornographic or any other indecent content. Being associated with these kinds of sites could have a detrimental effect on your credibility. You should also consider adding videos to your own website or blog, but try to keep from adding too many videos all at once as they might slow down the loading speed of your pages.

7. Promote on social media.

Social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest can be very effective for sharing and promoting your videos. Encourage your connections to like, retweet, pin or +1 your videos in addition to sharing the links. As your video is shared across different networks, you will be able to reach a much wider audience than before with your marketing campaign.

8. Track and test.

Whenever you run a video marketing campaign, you need to test it to find out how effective it has been. Keep track of analytics such as the number of daily viewers, how many times the video has been shared and the amount of traffic generated to your site from the video. Having this kind of data in place will give you an idea of what kind of videos work best with your audience and what themes and styles to continue using.

Charles Mburugu is a professional blogger who writes about marketing tips for sites such as gopromotional.com.