Video in content marketing

Content marketing is a very young tool. Businesses don't always understand what tasks to set them and what results to expect.

Multiply the complexity of content marketing by two when it comes to video. With few exceptions, Russian content marketers do not know how to bring value from the world of content marketing to the video format.

Successful cases involving useful video content can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Instead, companies invest in mediocre video marketing (recording "selling" videos) or sporadically shoot viral videos, paying for creative, production and seeding. They have it simple: if you make content, it's content marketing. When a savvy manager comes in and sees that the direction isn't solving a specific business problem, experimenting with video ends.

How do you build a video channel? What content to fill it with? How do you teach it to bring in customers? I decided to outline the role, functions and ways to implement a strategy for producing and promoting useful video content. That's why I undertook this guide.

I'll look at each stage of building a content marketing video strategy in turn - from developing a video channel concept to seeding and analyzing the videos.

1. Formulating the challenge

Video as part of a content marketing strategy should be in the world of users, not in the world of the brand. Therefore, the goal of video content is to bring specific benefits to the viewer: to teach, educate and explain.

This basic principle helps get the objective right. But it's worth interpreting it incorrectly, and you can make a lot of mistakes. After such an experience, it is easier for companies to forget about useful video content forever.

To avoid stepping on the same rake, let's analyze these mistakes in more detail.

Mistake 1: Selling your product

Marketers make the mistake of operating with classic video marketing techniques. The approach implies a complete focus on your own product: tell them how it works, praise the benefits and bypass the drawbacks. It's otherwise called "advertising."

"Now we're going to tell you how our product can help"-even in this form, it's the wrong attitude. The key rule of useful content is that it cannot be engaged. When talking about your own product, it's hard to be objective. Users sense a catch and perceive the videos as just advertising. There is no benefit or credibility. Why subscribe to an advertising channel?

You should not talk about the usefulness of your product, but to be useful in principle.

Mistake 2: Think of a "viral video" as content marketing

Advertisers are sure that if you have money for video, you should invest in a viral video. They are driven by the illusion of a fast payoff from this kind of content.

It's hard to change advertisers' minds - they see only certain outstanding cases, and they want "just the same, but about us.

If you think logically, it becomes clear: when the virality of the video is fixed at the level of the task, it has nothing to do with content marketing. The task of a viral is to make it want to be shared. The task of content marketing is to bring value.

A useful video can go viral if it's so useful that people share it with their friends en masse. But that's probably not the scenario the creators envisioned. In this case, virality is not the goal, but the consequence.

When we make a series of useful videos and some of them rack up a million views, it's good, but random. Virality is incredibly hard to predict and replicate. How many viral videos appear a year? How many can we list? Dozens.

I know for a fact: There are tens of thousands of them.

Mistake 3: Releasing content irregularly

Content marketing is a set of specific repetitive tasks. With planning, implementation, consistent publications, and clear numbers and metrics. It's releasing content on a regular basis.

Seriality is also relevant for video: you need to think in groups of clips - introduce headings and try out different formats. At the same time, each set of videos should systematically hit one point. If you don't do it at once, it won't work.

Regularity is costly. It requires plans, responsible performers, and a well-thought-out concept. Essentially, you have to build a full-fledged editorial department to formulate themes, come up with genres, and actually produce content.

To decide to do such a thing, you'd have to step on your own throat. Business is not in the habit of giving something away for free. Especially when it comes to expertise.

You have to get over yourself and learn to give away expertise for free. Even if someone is willing to pay money for it.

You may also be interested: commercial video production services

What are the challenges

We've dealt with the conceptual errors and found out that video content should be useful, regular and should not be thought of as a virus. Now let's break down what tasks content marketing can solve for businesses.

Recognition

Suitable for a company that has recently entered the market. Clients don't know about it yet, so it needs to build its expert reputation from the ground up.

It will also work when competitors don't invest in content marketing (or don't use it correctly). In such cases, useful video content will help fight them for audience attention.

If there is already a large brand in this segment that is engaged in conventional video marketing (making videos about itself or viral, buying seeding and working with agencies), it will be difficult to get the audience's attention. The larger the competitor, the more content you need to produce on low-frequency demand. You need to decompose the topic and close each customer issue with a separate spot.

Confidence in the product

Relevant for companies that sell a variety of products. A lot of effort has to be put into content marketing that is grounded in building trust in the product. The thing is, you can't give direct advertising. That means you can't talk directly about your product either. So what should you do?

I have one answer - branding. Produce a useful video, put the logo of the product over the image, to achieve an association with the product.

Registrations and leads

Ideal for businesses that already have content marketing lined up. They do not need so much from video as single sales, but the growth and segmentation of their customer base. For companies that sell a lot through other channels and want to know their customers better, it makes sense to look at video content from this perspective.

The challenge is to make a natural connection between the video channel and the rest of the content. Whatever the user comes across - a newsletter, a blog post or a video - everything has to be equally useful.

Sales

Appropriate, first, for well-known and recognizable brands. They can show a piece of branding, and the audience will immediately have an association with the product.

Second, thinking in terms of sales is useful for content projects. A good example are educational products (we give away part of the content for free) and professional events (we record interviews with speakers of future conferences).

For others, expecting direct sales from video can be pointless. Especially for companies with an unknown product: you need to earn trust and fame first, without descending into advertising, and then expect sales from the video channel.

In general, to sell directly - means to put content marketing on a par with classical marketing (which "vparivayut"). If you solve this problem with video, you can lose your sense of proportion and put the whole strategy on the wrong track.

Free content should stand alone. It's a complete and cohesive product. Otherwise, viewers will feel dissonance: if they are given a free product, why should they pay more?

To overcome this problem, you need to lead to a purchase decision through some supporting step. The simplest example is to lead with a video to the next step of the funnel (through a discount or bonus).

Once again, it's hard to trust an expert who sells their product in a video. There will always be someone who won't make that mistake. You can expect sales from the video channel, but you can't sell in the video itself.

Repeat sales

With the right approach, the video channel sooner or later begins to work as a social media channel. Social media is known to help grow repeat sales. The user shows interest in the product, subscribes to updates and consumes information regularly. He may stop buying the product, but he'll still be a content consumer. A little trick: the first sale can be made through any other channel.

To be clear: a person can stop buying our interactive courses, but remain subscribed to the YouTube channel. New videos serve as a reminder to him that fresh courses are coming out, that the product is being updated and getting better. Chances are higher that he'll pay.

If you're aiming for direct sales, be sure to build processes so that content goes out serially. The user who once believed in you needs to be retained.

2. Choosing a subject

Specialization

Subject - this is what you're going to talk about. Here it's simple: tell about what you know.

Ask yourself questions:

What do we do best?

What customer problem do we know how to solve?

What do we know that our competitors don't know?

At the heart of it all is the problem. If you can't figure out what problem you are solving, then something is wrong. Either you haven't thought enough about the questions above, or the specifics of your business are such that content marketing won't help it much.

All of this is true for useful video content. A basic solution is to talk about personal experiences in a video ("How I chose a contractor") or give direct expertise ("How to do an iPad presentation").

Trends

Content marketers who read the news and follow the industry can leverage audience interest in a topic. A well-chosen infomercial helps them earn more views without disrupting the holistic

approach to content marketing.

Answering the questions will help:

What's new in the industry?

What are the experts worried about?

What topics are gaining relevance?

That said, if you rely only on trends and don't address any issue, you can be labeled a "blown" expert. It is common when people with no specialization or understanding of how to solve a problem argue about topics that are simply interesting to them. The audience will sense a catch. To talk about trends, you need to be an expert.

Analyze your field of expertise. Trends help you gain a powerful competitive advantage over your competitors' content. Especially if they are not mobile enough and don't think it's important to follow what's going on around them.

How do you put together problem solving and expertise with trends? Why do you need it? We explain by example.

Video channel dance school. Most of the time it teaches the waltz and rumba. Then there is Gangnam Style. The school records a video explaining how to do the right moves from the clip.

On a wave of interest in the subject, the video gathers thousands of views on requests like "how to dance Gangnam Style. Then the interest wanes, during which time the channel receives a powerful increase in traffic.

On the wave of interest in the trend, the channel will gather a lot of non-targeted traffic. Be prepared for a lower conversion rate. But the probability that there will be a lot of target users, such as those who will later become customers, is also high.

3. Choosing the type of video

Every video in content marketing solves one problem in one way or another - it broadcasts a useful experience and helps to solve the viewer's problem. Trying to create a single classification is a thankless task, because in theory any format can be useful.

Nevertheless, I distinguish several genre categories for myself - the ones content marketers have to deal with most often.

Selections

A person who is knowledgeable about a topic talks about some useful things. The format of the video is a listing of ways, tools or services. Do not forget about an important principle: you can not directly review your own product (or that of competitors). The reviews can't be advertising, they are there to tell you about the culture of use.

Example: a web studio designer who talks about mobile app prototyping services.

Reviews

Reviews are similar to picks, but focus only on one product. The expert parses it in detail. Subjects for analysis are the same. A special case of a review is a screencast (when an expert writes down what is happening on his/her screen).

Example: An Internet marketer takes a detailed look at the innovations in Google Analytics.

In the first person

A simple and uncomplicated format - the classic "talking head. It is difficult to make this lecture dynamic, but the one who is going to talk requires a powerful charge of expert knowledge. Especially if it is an expert in a narrow field, which focuses on the same narrow audience. Webinars are in the same category.

Example: a doctor talks about new developments in trichology.

Video infographics

Complex and expensive format, which is suitable when you need to convey a large amount of data. Animation helps to tell fascinating and informative stories, but few people use it meaningfully.

Example: oil corporation explains how oil turns into gasoline.

Interview

For a company that interacts a lot with industry experts, it makes sense to work in the genre of a conversation with an expert. It is important to follow the basic rules of a good interview: choose the right speaker and ask him the right questions.

You have to understand that content marketing in this case should be developed to the level of a small industry media, and the brand should have some fame. If you have 100 subscribers on YouTube, guests simply won't want to spend their time preparing and recording.

Example: a fitness trainer asking questions of famous athletes.

Case

Suitable mainly for B2B companies. A case story is a classic way to share a valuable experience about solving an interesting customer problem. The main thing is not to overdo it, turning the story about the experience into a direct advertisement of the approach. Better, on the contrary, sharpen the angles and talk more about the difficulties and how to deal with them.

Example: a pastry chef who tells you how to make a cake for 100 people.

4. Production

The price of video production directly depends on the quality of the result.

A useful video is not necessarily expensive. In most cases, a company will be able to produce it on its own, without engaging a contractor. Without diving into the question in detail, let's divide the quality of production into three categories.

Low Quality (LQ)

I don't recommend recording videos at the knees. In 90 out of 100 percent of cases, it will reduce the credibility of the content. Especially if the purpose of the video is to lead to a landing page.

Often all you have to do is think about how to shoot better, and the video can be put into the next category.

Medium Quality (MQ)

The most logical option for those who are taking their first steps and testing interest in their audience's content, as well as those who don't have a big budget, but have a desire to produce a lot of content.

I believe that medium quality is the optimal and balanced option. If the viewer consumes useful content regularly, it is important to him that this content is of proper quality.

If one particular problem is addressed with a video, the viewer doesn't care about quality. Only the likelihood of him taking the next step - watching another video or subscribing to the channel - will be lower.

High Quality (HQ)

An option for recognizable brands - with large turnovers and large budgets. They have enough money to maintain their own video production - even at an embryonic level. It is important for brands to maintain the highest level of quality in everything - this is their fate.

Investing even more heavily in quality makes sense for those who have already built a workable content marketing strategy and are confident that it helps the business. Such companies have already learned how to solve customers' problems and are confident in the feasibility of the whole endeavor.

A separate story is if the product itself implies a video division. This is relevant for agencies, content producers and educational projects. In these cases it is reasonable to strive for maximum quality right away.

To put it as simply as possible: low quality - DVR, medium quality - iPhone 5s, high quality - any camera more expensive than iPhone 5s.

Source: https://www.bondarsvideo.com