With social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook doing more and more to incorporate video in their user interfaces, it makes sense to consider incorporating more video in your online marketing strategy. Since video is a newer medium for many marketing professionals, here are some tips for how you can use video in your digital marketing.
Business Intro
Are you a company with an interesting niche or a unique business model? A business intro video is a great way to introduce consumers to who you are, what you do, and why you do it. Many up-and-coming businesses—especially those on Kickstarter—are using business intro videos today to provide a brief overview of their product or service and to explain to customers how to use their product or service. These videos are usually rich in graphics so that customers can understand abstract concepts very quickly.
You can feature your business intro video on your homepage (hint: this will improve your SEO significantly), or you can promote it on social media (especially YouTube and Facebook) to get the word out about your business. The beauty here is that if the concept behind your business is interesting enough, your business intro video will practically share itself on social media.
Product or Service Launch
Maybe you’re an existing company that is coming out with a new product or service that you would like to introduce to your customers. A video is a great way to give customers an engaging look at what they can look forward to from your company. Apple, for example, creates a highly stylized video for every product launch. Again, you might feature this on your homepage, or you might promote it on social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. You can even include it in your emails to subscribers, which will boost your click-through rate significantly.
Educational Video
Alternatively, instead of promoting only your own products and/or services, it’s an excellent marketing move to offer consumers a valuable resource in the form of a video. Think tips, tutorials, and demos. If you are a company that specializes in workout clothing, for example, you might create a series of short videos demonstrating proper technique for common workout moves. You can create very short videos for platforms like Twitter and Instagram, or you can create longer ones for platforms like YouTube and Facebook. You’d be surprised at how effective even a 15-second video on Instagram can be at drawing in followers.
One tip here: if you’re going to take the approach of creating a series of several small, educational videos, consider creating a hashtag that you feature both at the beginning of every video and in the caption for every post of the video on social media. This will help make the series of small videos more cohesive, and it will give customers a way to go back and see all of the videos you have created. Make sure that your hashtag is unique enough that it will be exclusive to your company.