How to nail video marketing in 5 steps

Today’s guest blogger is Aleksandra Bodekhina. She is a young forward-looking explorer with 5 years of international experience and passion for developing great ideas. Aleksandra has been helping European businesses establish their digital presence since 2012. She is currently running marketing for a young Finnish startup Shuut - a handy mobile app for corporate video advertising on social media. 

Looking at some amazing data provided in an Adweek infograph, there's no doubt that video marketing is at the cutting edge of digital advertising today. Growing numbers of users prefer watching videos instead of getting the same content in the form of text. This, in turn, led 76% of companies who have used video in the past 12 months to report a direct business impact, and more than 60% plan to increase their investments in video next year.

Don’t worry if you are new to video marketing, we have designed a ready-made plan for you to crack this. It’s short and simple - only 5 steps - but it can have a major impact on the performance of your business. Read it through, give some thought and start planning.

Step ONE: Decide on your goals

What is the end result you want to achieve with your videos? What do you want your viewers to do after they watched them? This is my favourite approach to planning - it makes you work backwards from your aim and helps to see the big picture.

Your possible goals could be:

- To building brand awareness

- To educate your audiences about your niche in the industry

- To attract new talents

- To bring more visitors to your store/website/event

- To increase number of app installs/subscriptions/page likes
and many others (see our app for more).

Already at this step it is also helpful to determine how you’re going to measure the results. Will you use Google Analytics to track how many views/shares has each of your videos got? Or do you want to go further and see how many people clicked on the links and follow their journey?

Step TWO: Understand your customer

Just before you start wondering around with your camera, visualise your target customers. Who are those people? Men, women or both? How old are they? What do they do? What do they like? Where are they located? Understanding this is crucial for producing engaging video content that your audience will be happy with.

Step THREE: Make your shots

A good video starts with a good story. If you are using Shuut, then you can just follow the storyboard guidelines that we pre-made specifically for each of the marketing goals or you can set yourself free and do your own thing. Just keep in mind your target customer profile and remember that you want to have several ideas to try out and see which one works better and which ones can be saved for later content. Scribble down all that you have in mind and then start putting together the jigsaw.

Each story has some typical sections like intro and outro where you can show your brand logo and do some talking. The rest is left for your creativity. So let’s see how a draft of a storyboard may look like:

Goal: building local awareness
Storyboard: Front of the shop > walk-in , see the interior > zoom in to flagship products > show the welcoming shop owner and his team

Goal: leading more visits to the website/online store
Storyboard: Showing the products > Showing them in use > Showing the package / person opening the package

Remember to show a smile!

Above all, the main benefit of video is building strong emotional bonds with the audience. What emotions would you show to your viewers? Happiness? Surprise? Joy?  Don’t hide them, we all need them way more than we think we do.

Step FOUR: Hit the publish button

Is your video good to go? If yes, think about the potential customer profile the most obvious places where you target audience hang out. Is it Facebook? Instagram? YouTube? Your website? Also filter the audience by location, age, and gender for better response (remember step TWO?).  Make a short plan on where and when your video is going to meet your perspective customer. Plan it yourself or go back to Shuut and see how we preset your targeting according to your business page profile.

If you can’t decide which channel to use more, choose Facebook and let this infograph tell you why:

Step FIVE: Harvest the crops.

After you've given your ad sometime to circulate through Facebook or other platforms, it’s time to monitor the performance. Putting it simple, you should look for your KPIs - maybe one video gathered more social shares and views than another, or a post on Facebook had more clicks on your link than the same post on Instagram. Do more of what’s working and less of what’s not. If you are using Google Analytics, may the Force be with you, it might take some time to make sense of the numbers. Shuut, on the other hand, sends you automated reports on the performance of each of your video ads including its total reach, number of views, clicks and so on. After a certain video ad campaigns made with Shuut, you can also receive an overall review of your activity to see how you are growing your business with video marketing.

We believe that it doesn’t require a genius to create good promotional videos but it takes passion, some thorough thinking and practice before you find your voice. Repeat steps one through four and you will see improvement. Video is a powerful way to convey your brand’s key messages and a useful tool to reach your objectives. Give it a try and see your business grow.