How to Use Video Marketing to Grow Your Business

in 2017 63% of businesses were using video as a marketing tool in 2018 that number rose to 81% and in 2019 87% this is part of the reason why we jumped on the bandwagon in 2018 and started publishing videos consistently and it's led to over a hundred thousand YouTube subscribers millions of views and thousands of new paying customers so today I'm gonna show you how to use video marketing to grow your business even if you're in a so-called boring industry like SEO stay tuned video marketing is powerful no doubt and a lot of it has to do with accessibility we watch videos on our computers mobile devices and TVs in fact go to a metropolitan area like New York Las Vegas Hong Kong or wherever and you'll likely see videos playing on Billboard's and the numbers speak for themselves in a 2018 study it was reported that 85% of US Internet users watched online video content every month so with such high demand for video content how do we use it as business owners and marketers to actually drive revenue to answer that let's first define video marketing video marketing is using videos to promote and educate your target audience it's also used to increase brand awareness and social engagement allowing you to reach new and bigger audiences now video marketing doesn't mean you have to create shows or be a personality that people fall head-over-heels for a report from HubSpot research shows that 54% of consumers want to see videos from brands which was higher than any other content type video is powerful for a few reasons first it allows you to demonstrate concepts faster and more clearly for example as you're watching this video you're using your sense of hearing and your sense of sight together creating a rich learning experience whereas text-based content limits you to just cite for example if you wanted to learn how to do the reverse overlap putting grip you might read this blog post there's an image showing the grip and it says apply your left hand to the putter grip and then just beneath rest your hand around the putter grip linked both your hands by lifting the index finger of your left hand and wrapping it over the fingers of your right hand good luck doing that and getting it right but watch this video for 30 seconds and you'll master the technique in no time second video allows you to create a personal connection with viewers which shouldn't be under mine for example I was creating videos for HFC YouTube channel for around 6 months and then went to visit head office in Singapore for the first time and when I walked into the office the first thing someone said to me was I feel like I already know you a few of the other people around us laughed and agreed now creating that effect through a blog post is much more challenging third you can reach audiences in places like YouTube where video is the only way to play the game now as powerful as video can be you'll need to create them so they a resonate with your target audience and be ideally feature your products and services so unless you're making money through ad revenues views alone won't pay the bills so let's go through four steps to create great video marketing campaigns step one is to define your audience and to do that start by thinking of who your product or service is serve knowing who your audience is in terms of gender age profession interests or whatever information you can dig up can help you shape the format and content of your videos so if you have an existing list of customers start there define who they are what kind of problems they face how they found you and why they chose you you can do simple customer surveys or one-to-one calls and ask them those specific questions get to know their business and the problems they face if you don't have any customers yet you can use audience research tools like Facebook audience insights you'll need a Facebook Ads account for this but this tool is completely free just fill out the information in the sidebar of who you think your audience is for example let's say I'm starting a new tabletop games reviews channel I'll set the country to United States assuming that's my target audience and I'll set the interests to tabletop games and now you can see some insightful things like the majority of people being between 25 to 44 and if we go to the page likes tab you'll see some interest Electronics collectables and video games below that are specific pages they like which can give you a good place to start for reviews to create the next step is to define a primary objective and there are three main categories for objectives these are brand awareness education and entertainment aka be brand awareness videos are usually short and the purpose is to just make people aware that you exist think of commercials you see on TV it can be anything from McDonald's promoting to dollar Big Mac week or something like slacks animals commercial where they show a team using their software to create a flying umbrella the main point is that the viewer should know the brand name and have an idea of what they provide educational videos are like the ones we create on YouTube most of our videos are tutorials on SEO and marketing strategies and as a software company we show how our tools make these processes easier and more effective and entertainment is self-explanatory think of shows or series they're often created as stories for example Red Bull does a really good job of this they create series and videos around extreme sports which draws in their target customers now just because you want to entertain it doesn't mean you can't educate or vice-versa but in my opinion you should choose a primary objective based on what you want to achieve after you've defined your objective it's time to create the content well I can't tell you exactly what to create or how to create it we can talk about a few subcategories under the umbrella of video creation so let's talk about optimal lengths formats breaking through common struggles and how you'll get these videos in front of the right people so let's talk about how long your video should be first content length will usually be determined by your primary objective for example a brand awareness campaign can be as short as 15 seconds and usually won't exceed a couple of minutes again think of commercials are those ads that play before you watch certain YouTube videos educational content will be anywhere from 5 to 120 minutes our videos are usually 7 to 20 minutes while something like a webinar can easily go over an hour as for entertainment this will also vary in duration I like to think of these kinds of videos as shows this can range from 10 to 180 minutes depending on the format speaking of format this is where you'll see quite a bit of variance as it depends on your audience objective industry and the message you want to get across meaning there are no set rules but there is one format that I've seen work for all audiences all objectives and all industries and it looks something like this problem teaser and solution or story whether it's a commercial tutorial or blockbuster film there's always a problem problems make content interesting and it's something I recommend leaving with next is the teaser the point of this is to show that there's solution to the problem without giving it away finally is story or solution and this will often depend on your objective again for example educational videos will usually have a clear-cut solution whereas videos that go the entertainment route will likely have stories that lead to the solution or conclusion let's go through some examples in the 2019 Superbowl Bud Light aired this famous commercial the problem starts when a giant barrel of corn syrup is delivered to their factory but since Bud Light doesn't use corn syrup in their beer they tease the answer that it must be one of their competitors shipments like Miller Lite the story goes on to show the journey of delivering corn syrup to the competitor once they arrived at the castle Miller Lite says they already receive their corn stone and suggest to deliver the barrel to another competitor Coors Light Bud Light gang heads over to the Coors castle and they gladly accept the corn syrup as for educational videos it's easiest if I use our tutorials as an example with this video I started off by sharing how important video marketing is I then go on to tease the solution by showing how we've used video to get over a hundred thousand subscribers millions of views and thousands of new paying customers right now we're in the solution stage where I'm sharing what we've done in a step-by-step way to use video marketing for your company finally is the entertainment route just think of your favorite sitcom there's always a problem they often tease what could be if the problem were solved it leads into the story which is the bulk of the show and ends with some kind of solution or conclusion now I'm not saying that this formula is what all successful videos follow but if you're struggling to find your own unique format try it because it works alright let's talk about some very real struggles that come with the territory of being a video creator even though some of these roadblocks might seem like huge problems in the moment I promise that you can overcome them so let's break down the problems and solutions struggle number one I'm not good in front of the camera this was and still is one of my greatest struggles I don't feel natural standing here talking to a lens knowing that thousands of people are gonna watch it but the beauty of video is in editing as you've seen from this video as well as others we use b-roll like screencasts animations and text screens to take the attention off me while creating better educational material another way to combat the jitters is to use a teleprompter this is what I use because it helps me deliver as much information as possible in a short period of time rather than going off on tangents serval number two I don't have equipment or the budget to buy it listen video production quality is overrated yeah we spend a lot of time trying to produce quality stuff but at the same time it's not a necessity to create impactful videos you probably have a camera in your pocket everywhere you go it's called a smartphone in fact when Tim started HFC youtube channel in 2015 he created all his tutorials on a GoPro which is far from Hollywood equipment but those videos took our channel from zero to twenty six hundred subscribers in five months no fancy cameras microphones or backdrops this brings us to the last common struggle struggle number three is that English is not my first language tim is originally from Ukraine and if you've watched any of his videos you might have noticed that English isn't his first language being a child of immigrant parents myself I know there are personal struggles in terms of how you think others might perceive you so I thought it'd be best to have Tim share his experiences on how he was able to power through and overcome this challenge hey guys so Sam asked me to share my experience of creating video content while not being a native your speaker should I also say not being even a fluent English speaker so yeah I did have my hesitations to start recording videos or audio content because of my strong Ukrainian accent so much so that I even recorded a video question to Gary Vee show asking him if my heavy accent would be a problem and if it would make people jump to conclusions and not listening to my content well what Gary said was that it is true that some people would hate my accent and choose not to watch my content because of it but on the other hand there are tons and tons of smart intelligent people all around the globe for who English is not their first language so my accent is absolutely of no problem for them as long as the content is good so here's my advice for you if you want to start creating video content but you have an accent don't bother about it just start doing it if your content is good you'll find your audience and there will be many people who will appreciate what you're doing despite your accent and one last thing please tell them that this t-shirt looks much better on me than on him type it in the comments please thanks the final part of this video marketing puzzle is likely the most important and that's how you're going to get views to your videos and I'm not gonna talk about things like TV but I will focus on three online marketing strategies that I've used to get more views first is through organic reach and this means ranking your videos on YouTube and Google as well as being recommended through other YouTube features like suggested views and browse features to prove that we've done this here's a graph of our YouTube organic search traffic we've invested a lot of effort into YouTube SEO which has given us free and consistent growth over time and here's the fruit of our labor from our video SEO efforts this graph shows free and consistent views that we get from Google search YouTube SEO works particularly well if your main objective is education naturally people are and will always be searching for helpful tutorials on various topics rather than going deep into how to do YouTube SEO we have an actionable tutorial on how you can rank your videos on YouTube which I'll link up in the description another way to get views is to embed videos on your blog or landing pages if you have a website where you're already getting consistent traffic it's worth embedding your videos in relevant places this is something we do regularly a day trips and it's probably one of the lowest-hanging tactics you can do from what I've seen embedding our videos on relevant posts have helped us rank these videos in Google's video carousels suggest eclipse and video Search tab next is through other social media platforms if you already have a following on Facebook Twitter or LinkedIn I'm sure you're already posting videos there now if your goal is simply to get people to consume your content you can try uploading the entire video to the social platform and see how they perform but if your goal is to get people to your youtube channel then I recommend creating short teaser clips and uploading them to the social platform and within the description add a link to your YouTube video every industry is different and every audience is different to try both of these tactics and don't be afraid to throw a bit of money into social ads a little can go a long way speaking of ads that's the final strategy I recommend with video ads I've only tried them on Facebook in YouTube and from what I've seen Facebook tends to work well for brand awareness and lead generation videos lead generation videos are ones where you ask people to opt in for a webinar or something else that's free from there you nurture the lead and then try to sell your product Facebook has arguably the best audience targeting features so if you know your audience really well it can help you get engaged views fast as for YouTube we regularly use discovery ads for full-length tutorials these are ads that appear at the top of YouTube search results as well as in the suggested sidebar you can target audiences or topics much like Facebook's interest targeting and layer in demographic profiles you can also do keyword targeting where your ads will appear when a user searches for specific words or phrases since our videos are mostly creative to solve specific problems I found QR targeting to work really well to get engaged views meaning long ones finally our in-stream ads which are those video ads that play before a video these work well if brand awareness is your objective it's important to take note of the format of these ads for example people aren't able to skip the first five seconds of the video so two things you'll want to do in the first five seconds are a grab their attention enough so they'll continue to watch and be make the focus on your brand the second thing to note is that YouTube only considers it a view if the user watches at least 30 seconds of your ad or the full video if it's shorter than 30 seconds this means if your video is 31 seconds and someone watches 29 seconds of that video you won't be charged so take that into account - at the end of the day successful advertising will come down to your targeting the quality of the video and how relevant it is to your business and audience I highly recommend trying out video ads even if you spend just $10 per day you can get hundreds of views so by now I'm hoping you feel an urgency to start marketing with video it's insanely powerful in the fact that you're still here is a testament to its effectiveness now if you enjoyed this video make sure to like share and subscribe for more actionable marketing tutorials and we've got a bunch of helpful tutorials on video marketing so be sure to check out that playlist I'll see you in the next tutorial

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