The use of video is a great online marketing tactic that your company should employ. Videos can be added to your company’s website, your blog or even uploaded to your social media sites. Videos are a great way to interact with your current and potential customers, provide them with news or useful information, and give them an easy way to listen to the message that you’re sending.
Making videos doesn’t require a great deal of skill, manpower or Hollywood-style camera equipment. Videos can be created using real people, or you can simply take screen shots and put them together in order to make a video. But just because making videos doesn’t require a supreme technical background does not mean that there’s not a right and a wrong way to create them.
In order for your video to work as an online marketing tool for your business, you must make sure that you follow these guidelines.
1. Make sure your video contains great quality.
If you want to get your marketing message across, you have to make sure that your visuals and your audio are of the utmost quality. If you spend a long period of time making a video and the sound barely works, it’s not going to do much marketing for your business. The same goes for the visuals. You could have the best sound effects and top-notch quality audio, but if the video is blurry or takes too long to load, it’s not going to have the same impact.
If you are creating the video yourself, make sure that you are using decent equipment. If you’re shooting a video, make sure that you have a quality video camera, the right type of microphones and the right lighting. You should also make sure you use quality software in order to produce your video. CyberLink Power Director and Corel VideoStudio Pro X5 are two of the best video editing software tools available. If you are sticking to screen shot video footage, CamStudio is a great tool to help you make the best possible video.
If you are hiring a company to create your video, make sure that you review their previous work to ensure that they indeed create quality videos. Always ask for references, and always keep a watchful eye on the video making process to ensure that they’re capturing the right footage and messaging.
Quality videos will attract more viewers, which is exactly what you need in order for your video marketing to be effective.
2. Be informative.
The best marketing videos are those that are informative, and being informative doesn’t always have to be entirely self-promoting. If you recently attended a great webinar, trade show or presentation, create a short video about what you learned. Did you recently read a great article that pertains to your industry? Share your thoughts about it via video on your website, blog or social network. Conduct interviews with clients or interesting individuals in your industry. Act like an expert and share your expertise. When you have something of value to share with the world, you’ll be more likely to gain viewers.
3. Have a call to action.
Your video needs to end with a call to action. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you want them to make a purchase. Maybe you want your viewers to attend a presentation that you’re hosting. Maybe you want them to visit your website for more information. Or maybe you just want them to leave a comment on the video. No matter what you want them to do, you need to end with a call to action.
4. Market your video like there’s no tomorrow.
You could spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars creating a great video, but if you don’t market it, it’s not going to have any affect on your customers. Even though the video is marketing collateral in itself, you still have to market the marketing. When you create a video, send a link out through email or social media. Make sure that your videos have the right titles and tags in order to be found by the search engines. Use QR codes on print pieces to generate traffic to your video from those people who see your print materials. These are all great ways to market your online videos, get people to watch it and entice them to take action.
5. Always measure your results.
Make sure that you are tracking the results of your video. Use tools like Google Analytics to determine where the traffic to your video is coming from, when and how long the video is being watched, and which keywords people are using to locate your video. If you use Bit.ly to create a link for your video, you can find out how many times the link was clicked and shared and see how far it’s traveled. Not only will this show you how many people your video is reaching (and if people are watching the entire video), but it will also show you which of the marketing tactics you used to promote it were the most effective.
Along with finding out the intricate details of how your video was found and how long it was viewed, you can also set up a survey to find out what your viewers thought of the video. Have a small survey appear after the video is over and ask viewers if they liked the video or if it influenced them to take some type of action. Though not every viewer will be willing to answer the survey, you’ll still get some great insight from those who decide to take it.
People love watching videos, and if your company uses these guidelines to make a great video, you’ll be invoking one of the most influential and successful online marketing tactics known today.
This and many other educational articles helping web professionals understand the challenges of the web have been prepared for you by Julie Myers thanks to SEOMap the SEO keyword research experts.
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