How to Beat the Competition with Video

Unleash the power of video to engage audiences, build a following and boost sales.

INTRO

It’s no longer a debate. Your marketing plan needs video.

You can’t escape it. Videos are everywhere. Websites have eschewed long-form text for short video clips. Social channels, once filled almost exclusively with photographs have been transformed into video-centric platforms. In fact, short-form videos are now the norm, and not just on TikTok.

Video content is more accessible, more shareable and more important to marketers than ever.

First there was YouTube, which quickly became the world’s second largest search engine. Then with the rise of social media and its switch from still photos to videos, videos are no longer an option. They’re a necessity in your marketing plan.

Nothing conveys emotion and makes a quicker connection with your audience like video. Sure, photographs might be worth a thousand words, but the power of the moving picture amplifies those words, drives engagement, triggers emotions and stays with consumers long after they’ve watched.

But like any great tactic, it’s not enough to just start creating and posting on a whim. You must understand the channels you’re using, dive into the needs and wants of your audiences, and build a story that is compelling. Yes, that’s right. There’s no escaping strategy, even for video marketing.

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Part 1:

An Introduction to Video Marketing

Video Marketing: A Quick Primer

Quite simply, video marketing is a subset of your marketing plan that encompasses the strategic use of video. From the planning to the production to the posting, the purpose of a successful video marketing approach is to excite, engage and elicit a response from your target audiences.

3 Ways Videos Can Boost Your Marketing Efforts

  1. Build Rapport with Your Audience. There’s no escaping that people are busier than ever, and they’re on their phones more. As they scroll through endless feeds on social media, a well-placed, well-produced video has the power to stop their scrolling and get their attention.
  2. Drive Traffic/Reach More People. According to research by the Aberdeen Group, videos drive 41% more web traffic from searches than text-only content. Investing in video and making it a strategic portion of your marketing efforts means reaching a larger percentage of your target audience. It’s that simple.
  3. Boost Sales/Increase Revenue. In 2023, video will be the #1 source for consumers to discover a brand or product. In fact, more than 90% of customers already say their buying decisions are influenced by product videos. No wonder another study showed that marketers who incorporate video into their marketing strategy grew their revenues nearly 50% faster year over year than those who didn’t include some form of video marketing.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the benefits of adding video to your marketing strategy. This guide will help you take advantage of this growing market by exploring the benefits and power of video, providing suggestions on creating successful video campaigns, outlining the various types of videos and much more.

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Part 2:

The Benefits and Power of Video

There is no question that video is the most powerful medium in your marketing arsenal. There is simply nothing like its ability to tell a story, evoke emotions and target a specific audience with your precise message. Not to mention it is unique in its ability to create a viral impact.

Video content can help you achieve a number of marketing objectives:

Increase Awareness

Looking to build brand awareness? Start with a compelling video. The secret is simple. Create an engaging story that entertains just as much (if not more) than it informs. Be consistent, make your product or service the hero (but don’t overdo it), and remember to always view your message from your target audience’s point of view.

Build Trust

Want to build trust? Nothing beats looking current and potential customers in the eyes with your video message. Get your executives on the front line. Demystify the people behind your products or services. And don’t forget to let your most satisfied customers speak for you.

Generate Leads

Videos are great for generating leads as well. Craft a message that is intriguing, something that leads your audience to naturally want to learn more. Then give them a way to do just that, whether it’s clicking through to your site, signing up for a newsletter, filling out an online form or some other easy way to keep them engaged.

Raise SEO Rankings

Want to rank higher on Google and other search engines? Video can help with that. A well-crafted, entertaining and informative video that is optimized for your keywords and includes a text transcript is more visible to modern search engines while being more engaging than other forms of content.

Optimize Conversions

No other tool in your marketing plan is better at boosting engagement. Not only that, but videos can also enhance your conversion rates. There’s simply nothing as powerful as a video’s ability to persuade viewers to take action.

Improve Retention

It’s easier to keep existing customers than find new ones, but it’s not automatic. Video can help. Create videos for existing customers as well as prospects. Subjects such as how-tos, tips and explainers are great. Let your customers know you won’t forget them after the sale.

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Part 3:

Objectives & Planning Successful Campaigns

Successfully leveraging videos begins where all marketing tactics should. With a sound strategy. You should start by examining your objectives and determining how your videos will fit in with, and compliment your other marketing tactics.

Here is a step-by-step planning guide you can customize for your specific needs:

1. Identify Your Objectives

What is it your video (or video campaign) needs to achieve? How will it fit into your current marketing plan? And how will you isolate and track your success? Answering these questions before you begin, will set you up for success.

2. Narrow Your Audience

We all wish the entire world will watch our videos and decide to become our customers. But, just like with any other marketing tactic, it’s important to be realistic. WIll this video help existing customers? Are you going after new ones? If so, it is helpful to create a customer persona and to identify their pain points.

3. Focus On The Right Segment of The Buyer Journey

You’ve got customers at every point along the buyer journey, and videos can help at every step. But a single video won’t work. You need to target not just your audience, but where they are along the journey from awareness to consideration to purchase and beyond.

4. Develop Video Concepts

Using everything you’ve learned from the first three steps, now you’re ready to develop your video concepts and storyboards. Use your objectives, audience persona and buyer journey information as a litmus test against which to judge which concept(s) should move into production.

5. Produce Your Video(s)

This is generally the step at which it benefits most companies to partner with an outside video production firm. It’s also precisely what we do at CROOW Studio. CROOW will take care of the entire booking process, vetting the videographers and studio to ensure a high-quality experience and product.

6. Distribute and Promote Your Videos

Just because a video exists, doesn’t mean it will find an audience on its own. Think about which platforms your videos will perform best on, who your intended audience is, and what you want your videos to accomplish. Even consider boosting your videos to get maximum exposure and engagement.

7. Track Your KPIs

As with other marketing campaigns, you should always track your results so your marketing team can learn what works and what doesn’t. Keep a note of how much engagement your videos get, conversion rates, CPL, and impressions. Proper measurement ensures your next campaigns will perform even better.

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Part 4:

Building a Preferred Brand with Video

Awareness is important, but let’s talk about how you can and should go deeper than that with your video strategy. What happens once potential customers know your business exists? How can your videos help ensure your brand is in your target audience’s consideration set? And after that, how do you ensure you are one of their preferred brands?

That’s a lot to unpack, but it’s important. Just look at the statistics. By including a video on a landing page, conversion rates typically increase by over 80%. And adding a mention of a video to an email subject line can increase open rates a whopping 19%.

Preference Equals Profit

It’s a simple equation. Create video content that’s engaging, informative and high-quality, and you will keep your brand relevant to your target audience.

Why? Because we all prefer to do business with companies we feel familiar with. Companies that seem to understand us, know our problems and offer solutions that excite us.

Keep in mind, you cannot build preference overnight. Anyone who was around during the early days of Apple will remember a very different environment in the personal computing market than the one the trillion dollar industry darling enjoys today.

Videos For Brand Building

Just like other aspects of your broader marketing strategy, your video strategy will be different depending on the maturity of your company and your market.

If you’re still in the early stages of building your brand, the videos you create will help to shape the narrative of who you are as a company. If you’re an already established brand, consider polling your existing customers about the type of content they’d find most helpful for their own success. And don’t shy away from trial and error. Like everything else when it comes to branding, you can do all your research, but in the end it comes down to taking an educated leap of faith. Video is great for this.

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Part 5:

Leveraging Video for Lead Generation

Videos can help you generate leads if they’re created and used correctly. Why is that? Simple. Because lead generation relies on trust, and more than any other medium at your disposal, videos are an excellent way to project authority and build trust. Aside from trust, lead generation also relies on information retention. Video shines here as well.

Five Tips to Generate Leads with Video

1. Get Creative
The number one key when creating a video for lead generation is creativity. If your viewers aren’t entertained and if they can’t retain your information, they won’t engage.

2. Ask For Action
What do you want your viewers to do after watching your video? Don’t assume they’ll know. Include a call to action at the end such as “learn more” or “sign up now” to provide an easy, quick way for people to engage further with your brand.

3. But Don’t Ask Too Much
People are busy, and more importantly, they’re wary of giving their personal information to businesses. Don’t ask for a lot. Consider just requiring a name and email address. You can always get more information later as you build the relationship.

4. Watch Your Length
Know what’s appropriate for the platform you’re using to share your video content and create videos that fit the required or expected length. Where your target is in the sales funnel should influence your video length as well. Don’t expect someone unfamiliar with your brand to give you a bunch of their time.

5. Mind Your SEO
Keywords are just as important for your videos as they are for your written content. Make sure your videos are SEO optimized. One way to do this is by adding a transcript to each video.

Once you’ve created your lead gen video(s), you can determine the best placement for them. Some ideas include landing pages, social media campaigns and email messages. If you’re videos contain advanced tutorials or other valuable information, don’t be afraid to gate them by requiring at least an email address before a visitor can view your content.

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Part 6:

Selling, Onboarding and Retaining with Video

Videos are excellent tools for selling. Yes, you actually can increase your sales with videos. Like everything else in your marketing arsenal, you just need to design a strategy and create relevant content.

Establish Yourself As a Thought Leader

So you want to sell more? First establish yourself as a thought leader. People seek out experts on topics they care about and that can help them do their jobs better. And they trust thought leaders. Trust leads to more traffic, which leads to more sales.

Customer Stories And Video Testimonials

The most compelling marketing messages to attract new customers often come from the mouths of your current customers. Customer stories and video testimonials offer social proof that you deliver on your promises.

Onboarding New Customers

There is perhaps no more important period in a client relationship than the beginning. The processes and policies you establish upfront will guide not only your day-to-day interactions but the trajectory of your entire relationship with a client. Short videos are best here. Get the whole team involved so they can start to put faces to names. Explain your processes, demonstrate software or systems, and set the tone for long-term success.

Tutorials Offer Expertise And Sales Opportunities

Create short walk-through videos that hit one or two specific areas of a product. By creating a library of tutorials, you’ll help boost your SEO and create great social and FAQ content while adding to the knowledge base of your potential and current users and demonstrating that your company sticks around even after the sale.

Hold Virtual Events and Host Live Videos

Did you know that 54% of B2B professionals watch webinars on a weekly basis? It’s easier than you think to create a virtual/live event. The great thing about this type of event is that people don’t want perfection, they want authenticity.

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Part 7:

Engaging and Training Your Team with Video

Internal communications and training plans are excellent places for injecting videos into the messaging mix.

Here are 10 ideas for engaging and training your team with video:

1. Live-Stream Corporate Announcements
These types of videos from your executive team help to boost morale and create a buzz of energy and excitement amongst the ranks far easier than an email could generate.

2. Manage Transitions
Video communications allow you to share your vision for the future during a business transition, which helps to ease employee uncertainty.

3. Streamline Employee Training
Videos provide a welcome face and set the tone for new employees while helping to make their integration into your team smoother and more informative.

4. Personalize Recruitment Efforts
Job description videos stand out in a sea of text job postings. And video messages to prospective candidates help put a face with the name of the person they’ll interview with.

5. Promote Knowledge Sharing
Creating video libraries filled with content from internal subject matter experts is a great way to show employees you value their expertise and to spread knowledge across teams.

6. Modernize Departmental Communications
Whether you’re realigning, bringing on new leadership or onboarding additional team members, video provides a quick and easy way to keep everyone abreast of changes.

7. Clearly Communicate Corporate Governance
Video is an extremely cost-effective tool to communicate your corporate governance functions, corporate ethics, and core strategies in a transparent, documented manner.

8. Announce Regulatory Updates
Interject personality into these important announcements by utilizing video. Analytics or post-video quizzes ensure everybody in your organization has watched.

9. Broadcast Corporate Events
Whether it’s a town hall, a conference or other internal event, make sure your entire crew can benefit by live-streaming and recording your effort.

10. Recognize Successes
Video provides a lasting way to recognize individual and team successes while making large or geographically dispersed teams feel more tight knit.

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Part 8:

Animated, Live Action or Talking Heads?

Before you start creating videos, it’s helpful to know the various types and their role in your marketing plan. Here are three of the most common video types:

Animated Videos

Animated videos are an excellent format for explainer videos. Simple animation can boost engagement over text communications on a website or landing page. But really there is no limit to the value of creating animated videos.

When compared with other video types, animation gives you the most freedom. If you can dream it, you can create it. Animation can also save you money on on-screen talent and location fees. Above all, though, adding animation to your videos injects an element of fun to your message. This is important when it comes to engagement and recall.

Live Action Videos

There’s nothing like the energy on the set of a live-action video shoot. When you have an experienced director and crew, everyone understands their part and works together like a well-choreographed dance sequence.

Live action videos are great for conveying emotion and for relaying an authentic and even instructional tone. The reason is simple, when we see a real person on screen, it is easier for us to relate to the brand behind the message and to trust that message.

Talking Head Videos

Talking head videos are a subset of live action videos. This type of video is perfect for an interview setting. Not surprisingly, it’s also one of the most popular videos to create. That’s probably because it is relatively inexpensive and quick to create a talking head video. However, just like everything in your marketing plan, just because it’s easy to do it yourself doesn’t mean you can skimp on quality.

When shooting a talking head video, make sure you choose an interesting location and that the lighting enhances the scene. There is a tendency to oversimplify this kind of shoot as well. Even though it might just be a single person on screen, consider using at least two cameras to shoot from different angles. This will allow you to create cuts to emphasize your message and maximize engagement.

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Part 9:

Tips: From Engaging Content to Distribution Channels

Creating Engaging Content
Here are a few tips that will help you create an engaging video:

1. Know Your Audience

We covered this in our section on Objectives & Planning Successful Campaigns. Before you start writing your video or ever pick up a camera, it’s important to have a deep understanding of the people you hope to reach with your video. What makes them smile? What are their pain points? What kind of information are they looking for? And how can you ensure you capture and keep their attention?

2. Capture Their Curiosity

Over 300 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s a lot of competition. And it’s precisely why your videos need to be just as entertaining as they are informative. The more you know about your audience, the better you can capture their curiosity with your videos.

3. Tell a Compelling Story

And once you pique their curiosity and get their attention, how do you keep it? When it comes to creating engaging video content, storytelling is the key. Think of your video as a story. A mini movie or a TV episode. Your story should build to a climax and have a satisfying conclusion.

4. Make The Most of Your Visuals

One of the reasons video has become more popular than the written word when it comes to marketing, is that it engages all of our senses and creates a deeper emotional connection than text-only tactics. Use this fact when mapping out your video, and make the most of your motion and visuals.

5. Balance Emotion With Information

Humans are emotional animals. Even our buying decisions are driven by emotion. It doesn’t matter whether we’re choosing where to eat or what business to partner with, we lead with our emotions and then use logic to back up our decision. So make sure your story, your video, appeals to both emotion and logical rationale.

6. Possible Distribution Channels

Make the most of your video marketing efforts with these channels:

YouTube
YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. More than 6 billion hours of videos are watched every month on YouTube. By utilizing YouTube, you gain the power of allowing viewers to like, comment and subscribe to your channel.

Facebook
While Facebook seems to be waning, it still has more than 2.74 billion active users. Wouldn’t it be great to capture even a fraction of those eyeballs with your video content?

Instagram
Instagram video posts enjoy two-times the engagement of other types of posts, and sponsored videos receive three-times as many comments as sponsored photos. Clearly Instagram is becoming a popular and profitable platform for video.

TikTok
When you think about TikTok, you probably picture people participating in the latest dance craze or maybe promoting a book they love, but this is a platform that is primed for branded content and eager to grow beyond its silly-video roots.

Twitter
Twitter is another natural B2B marketing tool because the platform has been increasing in popularity among B2B businesses because its audience tends to consume a lot of industry news, and ad views have 26% more viewership on this platform compared to others.

LinkedIn
There’s no question LinkedIn is the undisputed king of B2B social media platforms. According to LinkedIn, 96% of B2B marketers use the platform for organic social media marketing while 80% run ads. And who are they targeting? Oh, just the 55 million companies with LinkedIn profiles.

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Part 10:

B2B & Corporate Video Marketing

B2B Video Marketing

In the B2B world, the decision-makers and the end-users aren’t usually the same person. This means you’ll need to convince more than one person that your product or service is a good fit for their business. And it makes video, and its ability to cover multiple topics in an entertaining way, an even more essential part of your marketing mix.

Why video? Well, 72% of customers say they’d rather learn about a product or service by watching a video. And 84% say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. In addition, 79% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy or download a piece of software because they watched a video.

The most important part of any B2B video marketing strategy is your creative collaboration plan and ensuring that your videos are high-quality and relevant to your target audience.

Corporate Video Marketing

Corporate videos can generally be broken down into two categories. 1) internal communications and 2) corporate communications.

  1. Internal communications can help improve the flow of information and collaboration within your organization. Examples of internal communication videos:
    • Video Announcements
    • Events
    • Onboarding
    • Training
  2. Corporate communications share your company’s story, talk about a product or service, communicate key messages and updates, and help build trust. Examples of corporate communication videos:
    • Company Vision
    • Culture
    • Industry Trends
    • Thought Leadership

Whether you’re targeting an internal or external audience, corporate videos allow you to elevate your message and showcase it in a way that reflects the expertise of your company.

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Part 12:

Conclusion

Video Brings Your Communications to Life

We hope this guide has been helpful as you plan your future video marketing campaigns.

Creative collaboration can help your team reach the next level. Establishing these best practices inside your company will promote unity and productivity among your team members. We know it can be difficult to do this alone, which is why we created a solution.

CROOW is a platform designed specifically to provide creative and video productions teams with the tools for both project management and video collaboration. Team collaboration features like real-time project updates, communication tools, and workflow management help production teams be the best video team that they can be.

Sign up to try CROOW for free today and streamline your workflow for better video collaboration.

About CROOW

CROOW is revolutionizing video production through its innovative collaboration platform which has been incubated through agencies, production teams, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The software leverages workflows and efficiencies to streamline video production and change the way that studio-quality is produced. CROOW shines with advanced collaboration capabilities and in-app features that allow for clear storyboarding and painless revisions. In just three years, CROOW has been named a Top 100 Startup in the United States, and CIO Applications has recognized CROOW as one of the Top 10 Collaboration Technology Solutions Providers of 2022. For more information, visit CROOW.com.

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