In our last post, we talked about the importance of putting your video to work. In this post, we’ll present a few good examples on how to do that and get meaningful results from your investment in video production.

HOW DO I GET MEANINGFUL RESULTS?

First, you must internalize this: tie your video to a single goal.

What makes for a good goal? It should be tied to the overall growth of your organization: like driving traffic to your website, generating leads, building your email list, educating your audience, etc. Set your goal first. Then, pick the type of video or videos you’ll make based on that. Your goal should also determine where and how you will deploy your videos, and the tools you’ll use to help drive traffic and measure those results.

It’s important to identify the platform and tools that you’ll use to put your valuable marketing video content to work at the very beginning of the process. Please don’t let this be an afterthought.

Scene note: picture a mild-mannered producer/video marketer from a Boston video production company, maybe called Motivity Video, kneeling on floor and pleading with hands tightly clasped and raised towards the ceiling. His eyes are squeezed shut as if praying.

We put a lot of stock in Wistia for supporting our clients’ video marketing efforts. Wistia is a robust video marketing platform that offers hosting for embedding videos, video-specific analytics, powerful video SEO tools, email collection and call-to-action tools, easy player customization, email marketing integration and thumbnail generation, and more.

Here are a few goal and video pairings to get you thinking:

  • Drive Traffic: Educational Videos, Social Teasers, or Event Promos or Recaps
  • Increase Engagement: Explainer Videos, Culture / About Us Videos
  • Converting Leads: Recorded Webinars, Video Ads, Educational Videos
  • Closing Sales: Video Voicemails, Product Videos, Testimonials and Case Studies

Let’s look at a few examples.

VIDEO BLOGGING

Blogging with video is a great way to humanize your business, showcase your expertise and that of your employees, and drive traffic to your website. Whatever you do, keep it educational.

Blogging can also be tremendous for SEO. How? By posting videos on your website using Wistia with transcriptions in your embed code to drive traffic to your site. And, you’ve got YouTube, the world’s second largest “search engine.” Potential customers are searching on YouTube, not just Google, for your products and services, so you need to be visible there, as well. So, is it Wistia or YouTube (or even Vimeo)? Potentially both but with a different strategy for each, which screams for its own blog post. We’ll take that on soon!

The key is in transcribing your videos and adding that keyword rich transcription to your Wistia embed code, along with a good title, description, and a short summary on your post page. You can get transcriptions quickly and inexpensively from sites like 3playmedia.com or rev.com. How does $1.00 – $4.00 per minute sound?

Whether you hire a professional video production company or DIY, video blogging is one of the easiest forms to produce and post. Some key tips:

  • Develop a content plan and calendar
  • Release 2 per month*
  • Keep them simple. Simple = faster to edit and launch, and lower costs
  • Capture several per quarter so you can edit and release your video blog posts over time

*Remember, SEO is a long-term effort but you should start seeing good results

(increased website traffic, social referrals, and engagement) within 6 months.

Finally, if you’re worried about being on camera: Get over it. Seriously. It’s time. It will take some practice but you need to start.

EMAIL MARKETING WITH VIDEO

Use videos in your email campaigns. Just add a thumbnail of your video with a play icon to your emails, and a link back to your website or a landing page. The click-through rates can be up to 65%. A few important things:

  • The word “video” in the subject line boosts open rates by 19%
  • Put a great thumbnail for your video at the very top of the email. A thumbnail can make the difference between clicking through or not
  • A thumbnail with a play button icon can increase engagement by up to 40%
  • Keep your email content to one or two items only. Less content = higher click-through

Using video in your email marketing is good for just about every type of goal and video.

LANDING PAGE VIDEO

You can use videos to drive an action on a landing page. Whether you get people to your landing page with email or via a lead generation campaign using Google AdWords, video can help move your audience to act.

Videos work best on landing pages when the content in the video is geared towards what you want people to do on the page. Briefly introduce how you understand their problem or challenge and explain how you can help them. Then, you should encourage people to click on that CTA (call-to-action) or button next to the video to get in touch with you. You can also use this to encourage people to download a whitepaper, sign up for a demo, etc. Depending on your video marketing tools, you can add on additional layers like a CTA built right into the video.

Avoid using videos made for other purposes and general videos (i.e. About Us, Our Story, Our Product, etc.). They are not effective in getting people to click and convert because they are usually not built for your goal.

30-60 seconds is a good length here because you want your audience to move quickly to the action and goal.

Start using video more effectively, reach more people and generate higher video ROI. We’d love to have a conversation with you about video and your goals.