How to Make a Video Marketing Strategy for Your Business

Ask any marketer what is most important to their marketing campaigns and they’ll most certainly tell you it’s the strategy. It doesn’t matter whether you’re working on a video marketing campaign, an email campaign, or an organic campaign – strategy is everything! And yet, many marketers still struggle when it comes to figuring out how to make a video marketing strategy that’s ideal for their target audience. Why?

Video is absolutely fundamental to brand growth online. Accounting for more than 100 minutes of audience attention every day, video is the most sought after form of content online and continues to represent a prominent portion of all internet search traffic and intent. In fact, 82% of all traffic is video related as of 2021. And while 84% of businesses are using video as part of their marketing campaigns, few know how to make a video marketing strategy that is truly effective.

We’re talking about more than just releasing a video here and there on social media or to your YouTube channel. This is not just creating a few customer testimonial videos to share on your Google My Business page and your website. Creating a true video marketing strategy for your business requires:

• Defining Your Video Marketing Goals
• Determining Who Your Target Audience Is
• Deciding on What Kind of Videos to Create
• Defining Your Video Marketing Budget
• Setting a Realistic Timeline
• Deciding Whether to Produce In-House or to Outsource Video Production
• Defining Key Metrics to Measure Campaign Success

As you can see, learning how to make a video marketing strategy for your business is definitely going to take some essential planning.

Defining Your Video Marketing Goals

Setting the goals that you wish to achieve with your video marketing is the first step to any campaign. You cannot possibly measure your achievements if you don’t know what you’ve set out to accomplish in the first place!

Depending on your business, you might want to consider defining your video marketing goals based on your brand and your revenue. In other words, you should have brand based goals such as increasing awareness through video views, shares, and mentions and you should have revenue goals such as increased leads, higher conversions, etc.

Determining Who Your Target Audience Is

In order to be successful with your video marketing strategy you must be targeting a specific audience. You should know who your audience is, what they struggle with, and how your brand can provide a solution to the problems they have.

Once you have this information, you can begin to create video content that connects with your target audience. From awareness content that helps your audience to see that your products or services are available for the problems they have to conversion content which helps to drive the consumer’s decision making, you cannot possibly succeed with video marketing if you don’t know your audience.

Consider buyer personas and research your two best friends! Get to know your audience personally, and in-depth, so that you can create content that speaks to them and their needs.

Deciding on What Kind of Videos to Create

There are infinite video styles and types that you can create, but don’t get overwhelmed! One of the key factors that prevents brands from succeeding with video marketing is not starting in the first place because they have too many choices and don’t know where to begin. If you’re having trouble deciding on what kind of videos to create, begin by checking your competition to see what they are sharing. Also consider the story you want to tell and how you intend to tell it through video.

There are different videos for different stages of the decision making and purchase funnel. Ideally, you’ll want to create videos at each stage of the marketing funnel:

• Awareness – to attract users and introduce them to your brand.
• Consideration – to answer questions, provide recommendations, and product reviews that bring them closer to choosing your brand.
• Decision – to help them see why your brand is the right choice over the competition.

There are all different types of videos that you can create at each stage of the funnel but what’s most important as you figure out how to make a video marketing strategy is that you are targeting your audience and meeting them where they’re at!

Defining Your Video Marketing Budget

Budget is very important to your video marketing strategy. Few businesses have the funds to throw around without any real focus on how the funds are being appropriated. Thus, you’re going to need to define your video marketing budget clearly, and be upfront with your team or production crew about what you’re working with for video creation.

Setting a Realistic Timeline for Production

The budget and timeline are going to be crucial to the success of your campaign. You want to always try to stick to the proposed budget and timeline so that your project stays on the right trajectory. However, it’s also important to set a realistic timeline for production.

From the initial idea to the distribution of the actual video, expect several weeks to elapse. Depending on whether you’ll be producing in-house or outsourcing, this timeline could be extended or shortened based on the resources available. Most importantly, you plan upfront what your production timeline will look like and when you expect to launch your videos – and stick to the schedule.

Deciding Whether to Produce Videos In-House or to Outsource Video Production

Another major decision that you must make in determining how to make a video marketing strategy that’s right for your business is whether to produce in-house or to outsource video production to a professional such as Beverly Boy Productions. Ultimately, this decision rides on whether or not you have the internal resources and expertise to produce videos of a professional nature.

For most businesses, a mix of outsourcing video production and creating videos in-house is the chosen option that works best. This way, simple videos such as introductions on social media and short live streams can be handled in-house while the major videos that are shared throughout a marketing campaign on the website, in emails, and throughout various networks are produced by a professional crew.

Some businesses, about 21%, choose to fully outsource all video production to a third-party such as a freelance videographer or a full-service video production company. This decision is really a matter of what you can afford, what kind of resources and skills you and your team have in-house, and what’s best for your firm.

Keep in mind that video production requires the following resources:

• Camera equipment
• Lighting
• Audio equipment
• Software for editing
• Talent
• Skills to operate all equipment

Defining Key Metrics to Measure Campaign Success

A successful video marketing strategy requires some way of measuring the campaign. Defining key metrics that you can use to measure the success of your video marketing campaigns will largely depend on what your goals were in the beginning. Certainly you can track a multitude of metrics and KPIs for success, but the most important metrics are going to be those that directly relate to your campaign goals. So, if your goal was to increase awareness, you would likely measure the success of your campaign in terms of number of video views, number of video shares, number of new subscribers, etc.

Consider the following metrics to track the success of your video marketing strategy and campaigns:

• Views
• Impressions
• Unique users
• Click through rate
• Watch time
• Clicks
• Calls
• Signups
• Sales
• Visitor returns
• Engagement

Any of these could be key to measuring the success of your campaign.

As you can see, learning how to make a video marketing strategy for your business is an intricate process that requires a lot of planning and thought. It’s certainly not something you want to rush, but your success does depend on many of the key planning factors we’ve mentioned here.