When it comes to understanding how important video has become in the world of marketing, the numbers speak for themselves. For example, YouTube is now one of the most visited websites in the United States with a 72% penetration rate. And more than 500 million people are watching video on Facebook every single day!
Based on these numbers, you can see that it is definitely time for you to start incorporating video into your marketing strategy if you haven’t done so already. But before you start rushing out and creating videos for your business, there are three important things to consider when building out your video strategy.
1. Integrated Campaign vs. Stand Alone: Nowadays, anyone can create a basic, stand-alone video, put it on YouTube and get millions of views, but how effective would that be for your business? Your video will be the most effective if it is part of an overall integrated campaign that incorporates many different marketing mediums (organic, search, social, email, blogging etc.) that promote the video. Before you begin building your strategy, determine if the video you are creating has enough value for your audience that it could, and should, be promoted through all of your different marketing mediums.
2. Type of Video Based on Marketing Funnel: The types of videos that you create will depend on the different stages of the marketing funnel. Ideally, you’ll want to create videos for each stage of the funnel, but if you’re time or resource-strapped, choose the stage in the funnel that you feel needs the most focus.
- If you’re looking to generate leads at the very top of your funnel, you might want to make an educational or explainer video that attracts visitors to your website via organic search and social media.
- If you’re looking at moving leads along your funnel to get them to try a product demo, free trial, or download a free tool, you might want to make a demo video.
- If you’re looking to close leads and make the sale, you might want to make a customer case study or testimonial video.
- If your looking at retaining and delighting your customers, you might want to make a “how-to” video.
3. Length of Video Based on Marketing Funnel: Just as the type of video you create depends on the different stages of the marketing funnel, so to does the video length.
- Top of the funnel viewers aren’t hooked on you or your product yet, so try to make the video catchy and keep it short, between 30 and 90 seconds.
- By the time a prospect has made it to the mid-funnel stage, it’s safe to assume that they know enough about the problem to actively engage with your marketing materials. Mid-funnel videos usually last between 2 and 10 minutes, but this can vary by the type of video you are looking to create.
- Bottom of the funnel videos should be highly targeted and very specific. Video length can also vary in this stage, but bottom-funnel videos usually run approx. 10 minutes and are treated more conversational rather than pieces of content.
Keep in mind these are just general guidelines and it’s important to continually test and measure your video to determine the optimal length for your audience.
Are you looking to hire a video production company to help with your next project? We invite you to download our complimentary case study to learn how partnering with a video production company can help you achieve high impact results for your next video shoot.