fbpx

Video Content Experts Reveal What Works And What Doesn’t

When it comes to content marketing, online video is becoming an increasingly important medium for business promotion.

When it comes to content marketing, online video is becoming an increasingly important medium for business promotion. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, “it would take an individual over 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks each month in 2019. Every second, nearly a million minutes of video content will cross the network by 2019.” While, “globally, consumer internet video traffic will be 80 percent of all consumer Internet traffic in 2019, up from 64 percent in 2014.”

If you’re a small business owner looking to grow through effective promotion, here’s an inside look at actionable video marketing advice from top UK content marketing agencies. Experts chime in on the discussion surrounding the use of video for promotion and customer engagement along with simple actionable tactics you can use to maximize your exposure.

 

Understanding Your Brand Story

First up we have insights from Ben Parkinson, Account Manager at Headstream, a content marketing agency based in London that creates content strategies designed to build brands, acquire customers and grow customer value.

 

Why is online video important for brands?

Video is an important part of any content marketing campaign. It is the most visual and creative outlet for brands to effectively tell their story, allowing them to connect with audiences and guide, entertain, engage and interact.

 

How can brands leverage video to maximize the impact of their content marketing campaigns?

Well, first and foremost they need to research who their audience is and how video can be used on different channels and networks to adequately engage them.

For example, on Facebook video tends to work best when concise – also preferably video that can still be understood when played without sound, as Autoplay does automatically in a user’s news feed. This means that the images need to be engaging from the start, encouraging viewers to not only watch to the end but actively press the button to receive the sound as well.

Looking to Twitter, and video suddenly needs to have ‘extreme relevance.’ As a site specializing in sharing news and current events in real-time, the video shared obviously also needs to be current, reactive and preferably related to trending topics.

One of the most famous examples of this is the tweet sent by Oreo during the 2013 Super Bowl power-cut. One of the key things for both these sites, however, is also the ability to offer and promote lots of videos in quick succession. Video is being described as ‘snackable’ media that brands must offer to consumers.

The technology available to brands looking to embrace video is extensive as well; various platforms and ad networks allow for businesses to easily begin video-based programmatic paid social campaigns. Also, smartphones have made it unbelievably easy for businesses to create video as and when they need.

 

What is a common brand misconception about online video?

The most important piece of advice I can give to brands is that budget isn’t everything. Some of the most effective video content I have seen has been created out of nothing. It’s more important to truly understand your brand story and then use video to, ultimately, connect that with your audience; leveraging the emotion behind that story to help enable them to buy into your brand itself and not just a product.

 

Zero Moment of Video Truth

Next we have video content marketing advice from Charlotte Griffiths, Content Strategist at CPL, an award-winning editorial and design agency based in Cambridge specializing in contract publishing and marketing production for businesses and membership bodies.

 

Why is online video important for brands?

Video is a powerful tool for small businesses to drive engagement, but it can be challenging for some companies to work out how to use video content – especially if they don’t have a physical product or shop space, or are geographically isolated from their target market.

 

How can brands leverage video to maximize the impact of their content marketing campaigns?

Good quality video content takes time and resources to create: as such, it’s still a relatively expensive medium and needs to be used correctly – and not just “chucked on YouTube” and forgotten about.

Placing shorter segments of video projects on carefully selected social media platforms will make the most of the huge audiences found in these communities. These teasers will serve to attract the targeted viewers’ attention, and direct them towards to the company’s main website, which is where full length projects and further information should be hosted.

It’s a commonly-held view that digital marketing activity should always be encouraging visitors back to your website, but with video there’s a more subtle reason for this approach: on your own website, you can control the viewer’s experience and there’s no danger of the customer being exposed to unrelated (and therefore distracting) material, or – worse yet – projects by competitors.

On a business’s own website there’s also the opportunity to control the environment around the video player. Once the video experience [has] ended, you can channel viewers into specific activity by carefully placing links next to the video player (such as related articles or shopping opportunities), keeping them engaged with your messaging and hopefully driving them to the ‘zero moment of truth’ – the microsecond at which your customer makes the decision to purchase your product or service.

 

What is a common brand misconception about online video?

There’s … an odd, unwritten rule that web videos should be three minutes in length, but it’s not true: a video can be any length you need it to be, as long as the content is useful and it serves the original purpose.

Don’t get distracted by stats – or, make sure you’re looking at the right stats: at first glance, a one-hour documentary on your business’s production methods that’s only attracted ten viewers might be deemed as a total waste of time and money – but if all of those ten viewers watch the documentary from start to finish and then go on to purchase the service offered, that video could be the activity which takes your business to the next level.

 

This article has been edited and condensed.

Garth Haley is a corporate Videographer, Editor and Animator, and the founder of Hyperfine Media, a video production company offering video, motion graphics, event videos and video journalism to a wide range of corporate and charity clients. Connect with @hyperfinemedia on Twitter.

 

© YFS Magazine. All Rights Reserved. Copying prohibited. All material is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this material is prohibited. Sharing of this material under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International terms, listed here, is permitted.

   

In this article