How to work video into your marketing plan
We all know making moves is all about planning and execution, that’s why it’s so important to have a marketing plan in 2023. It always has been important but as content and goals move so quickly, in 2023, it’s important to understand where you are and where you want to go with your communication to your audience.
A marketing plan is a document that outlines a company’s overall marketing strategy, including goals, target audience, and tactics for reaching and engaging those company targets. It typically includes information on how a company will get the message to their audience about a product or service, pricing, promotion, and distribution. The marketing plan is used to guide decision-making and allocate resources within the marketing department, external agencies and may also be shared with stakeholders such as investors or boards of directors.
A marketing plan is so important because it provides a roadmap for a company to follow in order to reach its marketing goals and objectives. Without a plan it’s not as easy to track success. It’s important to learn about what works and what doesn’t.
A marketing plan can also help companies to define their target audience, understand their needs and wants, and develop strategies to effectively reach and engage them. Additionally, a marketing plan helps companies to allocate resources efficiently and effectively, and to measure and track the success of their marketing efforts. It also helps to identify potential challenges and opportunities, and to make informed decisions about how to respond to them.
Video is a very important aspect of a marketing plan, we all know by now that video is a highly effective way to engage and connect with target audiences. Not to mention, video has a number of advantages over other types of content, such as text or images.
Video helps:
– Increased engagement: Video is far more engaging than other types of content, and has been shown to increase time on your website and reduce bounce rates.
– Greater emotional impact: Video can convey emotion and storytelling in a way that text and images can’t. Video is proven to create a strong personal connection with the audience, making them more likely to remember and respond to the message.
– Greater shareability: Videos are more likely to be shared on social media and other platforms, which can help to increase brand exposure and reach new audiences.
It is important to note that video should be used strategically and with a specific purpose in mind. It should be included as part of a larger content marketing strategy, and should be designed to achieve specific goals such as building brand awareness, educating customers, or driving sales. The video should be able to reach the target audience and be able to convey the message in a compelling manner. We get an absolute buzz at Colada by working with brands and businesses to combine video into a wider marketing strategy and campaign as we’ve seen fantastic success with this over the years.
Here are a few ways to incorporate video into your marketing plan:
– Define your objectives: Before creating any video content, it is important to define what you want to achieve with it. Are you trying to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or educate customers? Once you have a clear objective, you can create content that is specifically designed to achieve it.
– Identify your target audience: Knowing your target audience is key to creating effective video content. Your target audience should be considered when determining the style, tone, and messaging of the video. This will ensure that the video resonates with the people you are trying to reach. Such an important point! If you’re aiming your video content at 13-16 year olds, using mature messaging isn’t going to help the success of your video.
– Create a content strategy: Develop a content strategy that outlines the type of video content you will create, how often you will release it, and where it will be distributed. This will help you to stay organised and ensure that you are consistently creating content that is aligned with your objectives.
– Optimise your video for different platforms: Different platforms have different best practices for video content. It is important to optimise your videos for different platforms to ensure that they are seen by the largest audience possible.
– Measure and optimise: Use analytics to measure the performance of your video content. This will help you to understand what works and what doesn’t, and optimise future videos to achieve better results.
– Integrate with other marketing channels: Video should be integrated with other marketing channels like email, social media, and websites. This will help to increase the reach and effectiveness of your video content.
– Use video as a storytelling tool: Video is a powerful storytelling tool that can be used to create emotional connections with your audience. Use storytelling techniques to create a compelling narrative that will keep your audience engaged and interested in your brand.
So what’s better a one off or campaign approach to video?
Both one-off pieces of video content and a campaign approach can be effective, depending on your objectives and the resources you have available to create the content needed.
Creating one-off pieces of video content can be a good strategy if you are looking to achieve specific, short-term goals. For example, if you are launching a new product and want to create a buzz around it, a one-off video that highlights the product’s features and benefits can be a great way to generate interest.
On the other hand, a campaign approach can be more effective if you are looking to achieve long-term goals or build a consistent brand presence. A campaign approach allows you to create a series of videos that build on each other, creating a cohesive narrative that resonates with your target audience. This can help to increase brand awareness and build a loyal customer base over time.
So, it really depends on what your goals are, what resources you have and the kind of message you want to convey. If you want to build a strong brand awareness over time, go for a campaign approach.
If you want to create a buzz around a specific product or event, a one-off video can be a good option.If you need help building a marketing plan and would like to chat about how video can fit into your strategy going forward we’d love to hear from you. Let’s chat today!
What is silent video and why use it?
When you think of silent video it might bring to mind Laurel and Hardy – but that’s not quite what we have in mind!
Silent video has a long history, the first videos had sound accompanying it. See the Horse In Motion (1878) or Roundhay Garden Scene (1888).
So I guess the question is, have we gone full circle? Definitely not, audio still is and always will be a very important part of video. However, it’s inevitable that a lot of content that’s viewed today is on mute. So as creators, brands and businesses we need to take this into account both in the content we create and where we place it.
To boil it down; time and place.
If you’re in a public place or have company most reasonable people don’t want to blast sound out of their device.
And, on platforms where videos autoplay, such as Twitter and Instagram, the default is to play with the audio muted.
Here are some things you can do optimise your content to work as a silent video
- Use text to reinforce key points
- Caption (subtitle) if your video includes a voice over, interviews of a piece to camera
- Make use of strong visuals that communicate tell a story in themselves
There are additional benefits too. For example, accessibility.
Inclusivity is, quite rightly, a priority for most businesses and organisations and video should be no different.
Creating content that works as well as silent as with audio can be more accessible for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as for non-native speakers who may have difficulty understanding spoken language in the video.
Are silent videos becoming more popular in general? It depends on the specific context and platform. However, on some platforms it should be a strong consideration.
On the other hand, silent videos are not as popular in the entertainment industry, as they don’t have the same level of emotional impact as videos with sound and dialogue.
Overall the popularity of silent videos depends on the context and the audience.
Silent videos can be an effective tool for learning, especially for people who have different learning modalities.
Creating a video that combines visual elements from video footage, text on screen, and audio can be beneficial for several reasons:
It can appeal to a wider range of learners, as it provides visual and textual information. This can help increase the chances that they will retain the information being presented.
It can provide a more comprehensive and immersive learning experience. The combination of visual footage, text, and audio can help to convey the information in a more dynamic and engaging way than any one medium alone.
It can make the video more engaging, as it can create a more dynamic and interesting viewing experience by alternating between different forms of media.
It can be more efficient for the viewer, as it can be easier for the viewer to understand and remember the information if it is presented in multiple ways.
It’s important to note that not all videos need to include all three elements, it depends on the context and purpose of the video, but including different forms of media can enhance the overall effectiveness of the video.
In summary, should you give up on audio and make all your videos silent? No, but maybe consider making your content work better with the sound off.
Keep an eye on our blog page as we’ll be sharing more tips and exploring the best ways to optimise your video across different platforms and for different audiences.
We’d love to talk to you about how silent video could work for your business. If that’s of interest let’s have a chat today!
Does video really increase SEO?
Don’t forget though, it’s important to optimise your video content with relevant keywords, titles, and descriptions to make it more discoverable by search engines. This is such an important point many people forget! Activating your content is something that we’re passionate about and proud to offer to our clients. Afterall, what’s the point in creating great content if it doesn’t make it to the screens of your desired audience.
Let’s take a further look at how SEO can increase when using video…
When a website contains a video, it can help to increase the amount of time that visitors spend on the site. This is known as “dwell time,” and search engines use it as a factor when determining the relevance and authority of a website. The longer a visitor stays on a website, the more likely it is that the website contains the information that the visitor is looking for.
If a video is embedded on a website, it can be shared on other websites and social media platforms. This can help to increase the visibility and reach of the video, and in turn, the visibility and reach of the website or page that it is embedded on. Increasing reach is super important when it comes to getting your message out there. It’s a bit like fishing, you can drop your hook below your feet or cast your line out into the ocean!
It’s also important to note that videos can be indexed by search engines like Google, YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet and people are even using TikTok as a search platform today. So, optimising your video with relevant keywords, titles, and descriptions can help to make it more discoverable by search engines and increase the chances of it appearing in search results.
As more and more users are searching for video content on YouTube, it’s becoming even more important to create videos that are optimised for search engines and are easily discoverable by users.
For example, if your video is about a wine bottling machine, instead of calling the video “Joe Bloggs Ltd – Bottle Pro JBBO1900” it might be an idea to call the video “How do I bottle my own wine?”. Using a search term as the title of your video can massively increase viewer counts and in turn leads and sales. It’s worth thinking about if people already know about your product or service and if they don’t, what search term would your audience use to find relevant content about your product or service?
Every year we hear crazy stats about how video is transforming business to help engage their target audiences. There’s no secret to it other than creating great content that your audiences want to watch. Sounds simple right?! Looking forward to this year, video continues to be an important factor in SEO in 2023 because it is a highly engaging and effective way to communicate with audiences. As internet usage continues to increase and the demand for more visually engaging content grows, videos are becoming an increasingly important component of digital marketing strategies. (Especially with the likes of social media platforms such as TikTok blowing up!)
With the rise of mobile internet usage, videos are becoming increasingly important for SEO as mobile users tend to prefer videos over text-based content. Advancements in technology such as 5G, faster internet speeds and better devices, have made streaming and watching videos more seamless and accessible, making videos even more appealing and relevant to your viewers.
As the competition for online attention grows, videos can help to differentiate a website or page from its competitors, making it more likely to rank higher in search engine results.
In summary, video continues to be an important factor in SEO in 2023 because it is an engaging and effective way to communicate with audiences, it’s preferred by mobile users and it can differentiate a website from its competitors. And with the advancements in technology, videos are becoming even more accessible and relevant to users.
We’d love to talk to you about how we can help you increase your SEO by using video. If that’s of interest let’s have a chat today!
How to get the best value out of your video project
Behind The Scenes
People love to see behind the scenes. There’s added interest in seeing an unpolished look into how content is created. Behind the scenes is great to tease and build interest in your new content and is perfect for “About Us” / “Meet the Team” pages and can lift supplementary content such as blogs.
Tease, Release, Remind
Make your video release into a campaign with versioning. Build interest in your content with short form tease style videos, release the content in full and remind your followers with short call back videos that remind them of the key messages.
It’s a formula you’ll recognise from big TV advertising campaigns.
Have you considered...
Although not strictly versioning, capturing still photography alongside a video shoot is a great way to generate extra content in a cost effective way.
You’ve made the effort to get all of the necessary people and elements together. Make the most of this opportunity to create content. .
Colada offers high quality (up to medium format) still photography shot alongside video.
Our clients love to talk to us about ideas they have and we get a real pleasure in providing solutions which offer a maximsed return whether that be in sales, engagement or action.
We’d love to talk to you about your next video project and discuss ways to get the best return on your investment. Let’s have a chat!
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