With sound, images, music and other engaging elements, video marketing has all the bells and whistles to attract viewers. It’s projected that adults will spend 80 minutes per day watching digital video by 2023.
Marketers need to take note of this if they want to develop their video marketing strategy on social media.
Luckily, there are many ways video can be used in social media marketing. We’re not limited to TV-style ads or perfectly polished educational videos. With the introduction of live streaming videos, an interest in brand authenticity and accessible editing apps, it’s easier than ever to dip your toes into the video marketing world.
Follow our 7-step guide to creating a successful social media video marketing strategy.
Our guide will walk you through each of the seven steps you need to create a successful social media video marketing strategy. But you can also watch the below video for a crash course, including tips for scaling your video process from pre-production to post:
At the beginning of any new marketing strategy, there’s a need to set goals. What do you want your videos to accomplish?
If you’re just starting out, we recommend creating only a few goals so you don’t become overwhelmed. An example of a video marketing goal would be creating brand awareness.
But with the right script and creativity, your video marketing strategy can do more than support a prospect’s awareness of your brand. It can also guide them through the decision stage of their buyer’s journey, educate customers on their brand new purchase and fuel a brand’s advocacy plans.
There are five stages of a typical marketing funnel, and videos can fall easily into each stage as long as you develop your social media video marketing strategy to target them.
As you reflect on what your goals are for your video marketing strategy, consider where they’ll fall within each stage of the buyer’s journey and use it to inspire your social media video ideas. Setting your goals and identifying the funnel stage will help you create highly effective calls to action in your video content as well.
Here are five example goals you can accomplish within each funnel stage:
If you’re like the majority of social marketers, brand awareness is your top goal. In the first stage of the buyer’s journey, brands are trying to capture consumers’ attention and introduce themselves. Social media video marketing is a great medium to reach new customers and show them who you are and what you value, what your brand offers and what differentiates it from your competitors.
With video you may only have seconds or minutes to capture your audience’s attention, so get right to the point when you’re creating awareness-stage video content.
For example, eye-catching educational videos or opinionated thought leadership can establish credibility and your brand identity, so when consumers have purchase intent, your brand is top of mind.
For some brands, videos are used heavily for advertising. They may start on a product page on the website and then branch out to land in a social ad. Others create videos only for social media ads. This is especially useful for direct-to-consumer brands like Lo & Sons, where product videos are necessary to help the consumer picture themselves with the product.
In the below product video, the luggage brand shows how their Rowledge backpack is appropriate for any occasion. The video is relatable and short, and can not only be used in Facebook as a feed post but also be promoted as a social ad.
Once consumers have reached the consideration stage, they may know about your brand and what you offer, but it’s still your job to generate demand for your products and services.
There are several ways you can achieve this goal with social media video marketing. For example, how-tos and tutorials show your product in action and make it easy for the consumer to envision how they’d use the product themselves. Brands in the skincare, makeup and beauty industry, like ColourPop, are masters of consideration-stage videos.
You can bet that whenever ColourPop has a sale or giveaway going, they will share short-and long-form social videos of makeup artists, influencers and real customers applying their products. Consumers can see the smoothness of foundations, color pigment of eyeshadows, creaminess of lipsticks and other visual markers that will catch their attention.
When people can see how your product works or how other people use your services to solve a problem, they can visualize themselves doing the same thing.
Every major social media platform has its own form of video, so there is plenty of real estate to incorporate it into your strategy.
If you’ve never used video on any platform, begin with the ones where you already have audiences established. According to the Sprout Social Index™, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are the top platforms consumers and brands anticipate to use the most over the next year.
Choosing any of these five to begin your video marketing strategy is a good first step, but it would be remiss of me to not tell you to strongly consider using TikTok and YouTube for video marketing first.
