Thanks to YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, we now have access to more videos than ever before. And while that’s great news for cat lovers and DIY fanatics, it presents a bit of a challenge for marketers.
How do you create engaging videos that stand out from the crowd and get people to take notice?
We’ve put together a list of 22 video marketing tips to help you create marketing videos that are both engaging and effective.
3 tips on how to strengthen your video marketing strategy
A video marketing strategy is simply a plan for using video to achieve your business goals. You can make all sorts of videos, from product demonstrations to company culture pieces, that will help you reach your target audience.
1. Use video marketing on your thank-you page
A customer feels the best towards your brand just after they’ve said “yes” to whatever you’re offering. A thank-you page nurtures this powerful enthusiasm to build trust and move your customer toward the next step in your funnel. And video adds fuel to the fire.
What is a thank you page?
A thank-you page is a website page that you direct visitors to after they’ve performed an action. Typical examples of actions that might lead you to a thank-you page include:
- Subscribing to an email list
- Signing up for a trial
- Purchasing a product
Optimize your thank-you pages by adding a quick, friendly video. Your video should make them feel good by thanking them for the action they just took, telling them what to expect next, and prompting them to take next steps.
2. Send a welcome explainer video via email
Picture this, a customer just signed up for your product or service. Like any company with a handle on marketing, your system quickly fires off a welcome email that provides them with the bare minimum they need to get started.
But what if, after reading your email, your customer still doesn’t “get it”? They’re flooding support with basic questions and eventually drop off your onboarding flow like a stone.
A short video explainer can help improve a struggling customer onboarding experience.
3. Give new customers an in-app tour
When was the last time you took a look at how new customers learned how to use your product for the first time? Often we put all the hard work into securing the sale… not retaining it. A great onboarding experience can increase your free-to-paid conversion rate while simultaneously reducing churn.
If your product has a steep learning curve or requires a conceptual leap of faith from your customers, then an in-app video tour can be extremely helpful when users first sign up.
Here are the top types of onboarding videos you can create:
- Product explainers for new services
- Micro videos guiding users as they explore new dashboards
- Screencast videos in tooltips that show users step-by-step how to perform an action
6 marketing video tips to write better scripts
A video script is the foundation of your video. The most important thing when writing a video script is to keep your target audience in mind.
What information do they need to know? What will grab their attention?
Once you have a good understanding of your audience, you can start writing your video script.
1. Define the goals and learning objectives of your video content before writing a script
When you know the goal of your video, it’s easy to reverse-engineer a script that successfully moves a viewer to learn or take action.
What do you want your audience to think, do, or feel? Here are some examples for you to work with:
- Educate or instil a new idea
- Teach someone how to complete a task
- Provide extra clarity for confused users
- Sell the benefits of your product or services
- Explain your product or service’s features
- Build trust that you can do what you say you can do
2. Use a script template to writing video content easier
A script template doesn't have to be complicated. All you need to do is create a table in whatever software you’re using that looks something like the image below.
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When writing an explainer video, try to keep your audio down to two sentences for each slide to improve clarity. If you’re creating training videos, be sure to include what visual aids you plan on placing with the voice over.
3. Keep your script it concise and focused
The good news is that the process of writing engaging scripts for marketing videos is exactly the same, whether you’re creating explainer videos, educational videos, or brand videos.
The not-so-good news is that short-form 60-second marketing videos are more effective than ever before. That means it’s worth putting in the extra effort to keep your videos short and sweet.
4. Draw action thumbnails if you get stuck on how to explain a concept
Rather than spending time creating a polished storyboard for your entire video, grab a pen and paper or a whiteboard marker and try sketching each slide in your video. This will help you better visualize what your script is helping to explain.
5. Customer research is essential for any video marketing script
No matter the context, any marketing video will always move the viewer from point A to point B.
While it’s simple to figure out what you want your audience to do after watching the video, it might not be so simple to understand the driving pain, problem, or motivation that got them to your video in the first place.
6. Always finish video content with a strong call to action
Remember that goal you defined before you wrote your script? Well, after writing, make sure to check that your last line finishes on a strong CTA.
That CTA can be taking the next step in product onboarding, signing up for a trial, or even just trying a feature out for themselves.
If you don’t direct the viewer clearly and simply, they’ll be much less likely to achieve the goal you initially set out.
5 actionable tips to make recording live-action videos easy
Video marketing is a tough business. You have to be creative to come up with video ideas that will resonate with your audience, and you have to be technical to execute those ideas flawlessly.
But the biggest challenge of all is simply finding the time to create videos. ⏰
To top it off, live-action is expensive to produce. Video marketers need to rent or purchase equipment, hire crew members, and pay for other production costs.
These next few tips should help you keep both issues under control.
1. Use three-point lighting for a neutral, professional feel
Three point lighting is used to create pleasing lighting that softens harsh shadows on that face. It consists of three lights at three different heights and angles.
- Key light: A large, bright light angled at 15-45 degrees to the face.
- Fill light: Small and positioned to the opposite side of the face. This light fills in dark shadows and softens facial features.
- Back light / Rim light: Large and positioned behind the face to create a soft rim of light to define your subject from the background.
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2. Shoot behind the scenes footage to add authenticity to your video marketing
Behind the scenes footage can be used to quickly throw together a marketing video that’s lighthearted and fun. You can also add bloopers into your videos to add humor.
Professional video maker Cindy Moss states, “Most people want unvarnished performances or presentations because it lets them know that what they're watching is real.”
But the true benefit of this realism is in the way a viewer reacts. She continues to say, “The more an audience feels they know you, the more likely they are to trust what you have to say. “
Building this level of trust is especially useful when creating a video ad that’s designed to touch the hearts of people who don’t know your brand yet.
3. Screencast video content is easy, cheap, and fast to produce
A screencast is a screen recording that walks viewers through a product or task. It can be used to inform, sell, or teach.
To use screencasts and polished marketing videos, make sure your audio quality is clear and there are minimal “ums” in your speech.
4. Try recording on Facebook and Instagram Live
Sometimes, quick and cheap video marketing efforts can pay off. 64% of businesses said in the last 12 months, a video on Facebook resulted in a new client.
More people than ever before are watching live videos from their favorite influencers. And if your brand has a founder or marketer who’s able to run these live videos, it can be extremely lucrative.
Live videos on Facebook and Instagram need to be polished, personal, and relevant to your viewership. To start, try behind-the-scenes videos and Q&A sessions with your customers.
5. Replace real actors with ai avatars
Rather than hiring a studio, and buying all that filming equipments, consider “hiring” an AI avatar to deliver your marketing content. AI avatars look near identical to real human actors, but they have plenty of advantages.
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With an AI avatar you can:
- Change the look of the person whenever appropriate making diversity a breeze
- Change the voiceover to a different voice or accent
- Change the language of the voice over in one click
- Add or change the script at any point in the video making process
- Create a custom avatar of a real person so you can scale video creation
Curious what it might look like for your brand? Type in a snippet of text here, and see what it looks like with an AI avatar.
4 video marketing tips for tools and software
In today's video-centric world, it's more important than ever to know your way around the tools and software that help you create videos. Here are a few tips to cut through the noise and get straight to production.
1. Not all video editing software is complicated to use
Software like Adobe Premiere Pro is incredibly versatile and powerful. It’s also made specifically for professionals… not marketing managers who’re low on time!
Thankfully there’s plenty of software out there that can help you crank out great marketing videos at scale.
1. Synthesia: A text-to-video maker complete with AI presenters that look human. Best used for explainers, educational content, training videos, how-to videos.
2. Powtoon: Gives you the tools to create quick whiteboard animations without hiring a professional team. Best if you prefer 2D animation as a visual style.
3. Canva: Free to use tool for beginners that allows you to make basic slide-show style videos with text. Best to create simple how-tos for social media.
4. Tiktok: Tiktok and similar apps mean that you can use your phone to quickly pull together a video for social media. Usually these video ads are built for brand awareness.
2. Use stock footage
Anyone who's ever used any kind of video marketing strategy will tell you that stock footage is a necessity. The world simply moves too fast to create high-quality visuals without taking shortcuts when you find them.
Most video making tools come with a free stock footage library that has live-action footage, background music, and animated graphics for you to use. There’s also plenty of footage available on free stock sites like Pexels.
3. Always edit stock footage
All stock footage is filmed to look generic. And that’s exactly why you need to edit it — to create a video that is visually consistent.
Editing stock footage doesn't have to be a big job. You can customize it to your brand's style by:
- Applying color balance filters to normalize colors and lighting
- Changing graphic colors to match your brand colors
- Carefully checking for consistency across images or graphics that are close together
4. Use a central video hosting platform
There are a number of different video hosting platforms available, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. But as a business you should really be looking for one feature in particular: viewer statistics.
Knowing just how long people are watching your video, where they drop off, and the speed at which they watch can help you to create videos that are even better in the future 💪.
4 tips for sharing your video campaign with the world
1. Cut long videos up into to create “micro” marketing videos
Micro content can be particularly useful when you know your audience is typically distracted and struggling with a complicated series of steps.
2. Upload training videos to your YouTube channel
When you record training videos for users, don’t hide them in your documentation. YouTube is the world’s second biggest search engine and tutorial videos are one of the most popular categories of content.
When you upload videos to YouTube, make sure you strategically write the description to match search intent. As always, don’t forget to add a CTA that points back to your website.
3. Amplify your video marketing efforts by transcribing videos
Search engines like Google and Bing can’t rank your video if they don’t know what it’s about.
The quickest way to maximize the reach of your video marketing campaign is to create blog posts with the video at the top and transcription below.
Or, you can add subtitles and transcriptions to help all users and search engines understand your video better.
4. Include video content on your landing pages
People typically get to your landing page after clicking on a PPC ad. That means they likely don’t know all that much about your business yet. Embed your video explainer to help get the message across in the simplest way possible.
Start your video marketing campaign today
You’re armed with the video marketing tips you need to create a stellar strategy that engages your target audience. Now it’s time to put those tips into action.
See how you can easily create a marketing video that your audience will love.
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