7 Key Digital Marketing Activities to Be Enhanced with Videos
- Updated on: 2019-12-03
- Read original article here
Online marketing is a complex phenomenon comprising multiple interrelated activities. To bring good results, they all need to co-exist in tune.
Fellow marketers know that it’s quite a challenge to keep an eye on everything at once, especially when business is small (and same is the marketing team).
The verity of today’s marketing tools and tactics might confuse and distract from what you really need to focus on. Just recently, I’ve found a listicle featuring over 50 types of marketing.
Though marketing activities might take very peculiar forms, they all spine around some major, fundamental notions. Regardless of the scale and area, any business first needs to establish these pillars, and then move from the general to the specific.
Today we’ll look at 7 fundamental marketing activities that are essential for business’ success online and find out how to strengthen these tools with the power of video.
Content marketing is huge and important. This is what creates a solid basis for all other online marketing activities. Why?
First, because to promote your business online you need to create your most significant content piece – the website.
In general, everything you do online boils down to driving the target audience to your website, as this is where people convert from leads to customers.
But to generate that traffic, you need to create much more of companion content that would be relevant, interesting and valuable for your audience.
What content to create? There are dozens of content types that you can experiment with to find your best mix.
Let’s take a look at blog posts, the most well-known format of marketing content.
It’s not news that to make your articles more engaging, it’s good to blend in visuals. To bring it to the next level, add videos that offer an alternative way to consume content on the page.
Here is what you can do:
To make your content discoverable, it has to be attractive not only to humans but also to search engines.
Crawling algorithms should clearly understand what’s your content about and how valuable it is for a certain search query.
Search Engine Optimization is a complex marketing activity that doesn’t happen overnight. It requires continuous effort, patience and awareness on the best practices.
Blending videos in your content strategy is defenitely among those tactics that will help you rank your content higher.
Since users prefer video over other forms of content, Google loves it, too. It always tries to show videos on SERPs whenever there is a clip that matches a certainquery. Especially when it starts with What is or How to.
Hence, it is really important to provide the system with correct information about your video to optimize it for search.
Here is what you need to work on to bring your video higher on SERPs:
Investing in paid marketing activities is probably the most efficient way to make it straight to the eyes of your target audience. Also, paid advertising is a perfect playground for experiments.
Many marketers test various formats to find out what works better for them. We suggest try betting on video format.
This number definitely suggests that video is the format of choice for efficient PPC campaigns.
To find out why videos are great for ads, I decided to ask my colleague who deals with them daily.
As a living proof of what Alexandra is talking about, here is one of our Facebook ads:
Probably, email marketing can be considered as a pioneer of all digital marketing activities as we know them today. Being over 40 years old, emails still bring companies good gains and keep marketers focused on open rates, better subject lines, and proper segmentation.
The very first marketing email blast was sent out in 1978.
It was Gary Thuerk who brought $13 million in sales to Digital Equipment Corp by sending an email to 400 recipients as a promotion for his company’s computers.
Here is the guy. ????
Hope you find this story inspiring, too.
While in 1978 Gary was the only email marketer out there, today it’s hard to beat the competition and make it to the user’s primary inbox.
If you want your email to be opened and then clicked through, consider including video in it.
Even though not all email clients support video replay as such, it doesn’t mean you can’t include one in your next email communication. Create video-stylized visuals linked to your video.
Here are 4 methods to make them:
Take a frame from your video or use your video thumbnail to link it to your master content.
To give it a video-like look, put a Play button in the middle. It will highlight the fact that the image is actually inviting the reader to watch the video.
Turn a video scene into an animated GIF. It only lasts for a few seconds, but it’s enough to convey the dynamics and fun of the video format.
Again, to increase the likelihood of clicking on it, place a ‘Play’ button in the middle.
Here is an example from our last email blast. Isn’t it cool?
This is the quickest way to make video present in your email.
Take a screenshot of your video that lives on YouTube, Facebook, Wave.video or wherever else. Make the progress bar and other controls visible.
What’s great about this method is that the visual conveys the topic, length, and feel of the video right away.
Though it looks like pure fun, social media management stands among marketing activities that you’d better take seriously. Of course, not in terms of content, but the attention you pay to these channels.
Social media platforms are made for laid-back, natural communication. This is how you can connect to your audience and show those people real you, not your branded elements.
The number of social media users is constantly growing, and won’t stop. Here is a chart by Statista that makes it evident.
Number of social network users worldwide from 2010 to 2021 (in billions)
People come to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms daily. Some use them more and all at once.
Thus, you can connect to your followers right here, right now and learn about their preferences, their concerns, their tastes. And adjust accordingly.
It’s obvious that video format has hijacked all popular social media platforms. To say more, all recent major releases made by Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other networks somehow relate to new video features that make it easier to share and consume short clips.
Make sure to check out5 Types of Video to Boost Your Social Media Efforts
Just look at these numbers. Imagine how much potential is out there. And act.
Back in the early days, marketing was almost equal to sales pitching. A well-crafted product demo or brochure was enough to impress the audience and generate enough interest around the company.
Today, people are more cautious about their purchasing decisions and tend to thoroughly explore products and services before making any commitments.
The good news is that it’s you who can lead this process and help them make the right choices. How?
Create a set of marketing activities that are aimed at sharing valuable information, expertise and tips with your prospects in order to build trust. This is what education-based marketing all about.
To make it truly valuable, it’s important to cover some broader topics rather than your own product. You can educate your future users about the industry news, trends, life hacks and other relevant matters.
Video format works perfectly for learning new things because it appeals to 2 main channels of perception – vision and listening – at once.
Here are some more video-based activities that you can use to share valuable information:
Who could better tell about your product or service if not those who already checked it out?
Customer feedback (both positive and negative) is an enormous source of motivation to constantly improve the way you do business.
Social proof and word of mouth are two extremely powerful marketing tools. Consumers want more authentic, more real content from people just like them.
So seize any opportunity and induce your users to share their happy reviews and excited comments about what you do.
Video customer testimonials work exceptionally good because they show real mimics, real smiles that are hard to fake, so people trust them even more.
Whether you are a seasoned marketing professional or a newbie, you might be looking for ways to improve your performance on all fronts.
Be it content marketing or customer care, organic growth or paid promotion, we recommend turning to video-making to enhance these marketing activities.
