Video marketing or the use of short videos for promotional purposes of your services, products or brand image, has been of vital importance for some years in any Social Media marketing strategy that a company or corporate brand has. Any audiovisual production company or any important city worth its salt, incorporates video marketing to its services to help its clients gain relevance, positioning, and ultimately, customers and market share.

 

As a Commercial Video Production Services provider, what we communicate and how will be one of the fundamental pillars of our marketing and communication strategy. Video marketing is no longer seen as an isolated action that brands implement only when it is necessary to advertise or promote a unique and sporadic product, service or event. No. Given the engagement and attention it generates, it has become daily content within our editorial calendar. And we know, thanks to a study by the Hubspot tool, that 90% of people who consume videos, for example, of products, consider them clearly useful and informative in the decision process before the purchase.

 

Mainly for this reason, audiovisual support has already emerged as a top format for transmitting the messages that we are interested in as a brand, being an effective and tempting method for users, who prefer it to consume digital information, over others such as text, images or live broadcasts. The same also happens when we interact with advertising messages, which based on performance and conversion data, users prefer them in the form of video when they consume them on social networks.

 

Social networks as the main provider of videos

The video marketing as such, claimed the impact it has today thanks to the emergence of social networks. With the evolution of these and their greater commitment to the audiovisual format, videos brought the concept of virality by the hand, and then the publications with the most engagement (regardless of which social platform we were talking about) were always those that shared a video.

 

From text to text to images, in a matter of no time, our timelines filled with videos were seen in a rapidly expanding social ecosystem. Without so much presence of companies and corporate entities in the first years of the rise of the networks, it was audiovisual content that spurred the emergence of brands and professionals, who saw an unbeatable opportunity to interact with a large part of their audience and target audience.

 

Currently, video marketing as a business strategy, we see it massively present in some of the main social networks of the moment:

·         Facebook

·         Twitter

·         Instagram

·         LinkedIn

·         Youtube

·         Vimeo

·         Tik tok

·         Snapchat

The Smartphone effect and connectivity concept

Technological development at all levels has marked the last decade like few other events that we remember. The leap from analogue mobile to smartphones (92% of devices in Spain) in the hands of an increasingly accessible Internet opened the door to new marketing and communication actions that logically companies welcomed with enthusiasm. Social Media marketing, video marketing, digital advertising, remarketing, influencers ... Endless branding, informational and sales actions that have changed our environment forever.

 

And the Cloud and the concept of connectivity. Wherever we go, we now demand to be connected to our world and to the outside world. Have access to our documents from any device (no longer only from the computer or laptop), and of course, interact with any digital platform at any time and from anywhere in the world. Be connected to everyone and everything.

And it is in this new global communication and connectivity ecosystem where companies prefer the audiovisual format to interact with their potential target on social networks and other digital media. They develop video marketing strategies within their Social Media marketing because they are aware of the predominant consumption of information and entertainment from a mobile device, which promulgates and facilitates the visualization of audiovisual content ahead of textual content.

 

Virality or valuable content?

It is often said that video marketing seeks to create viral videos, which are quickly shared through other digital media such as mobile messaging apps or other social networks, but we must not fall into the error that only virality is the end of the content audiovisuals that we include in our Social Media marketing plan. Providing added value, solutions for specific cases in our area of expertise, that really help our target, is ultimately more important than the scope that the video we have created may have.

 

Aspects to take into account when creating audiovisual content for our Social Media strategy:

·         Optimal duration: From 30 '' to 3 ', always with the slogan of if it is short, concise and direct, much better.

·         Out of the box: Creativity to power, although not always, depending on the sector, it will be possible to “innovate”. In these cases, the unique content of value must prevail over how the video is made.

·         High video quality: Take care of the format, lighting, sound, graphics, good editing without errors, etc. Our professionalism can never be compromised. Recording and editing a video requires time and dedication, and an understanding and knowledge of audiovisual language. Quality videos are not made in seconds.

·         Message and edition: Depending on the message, the idea of ​​the video will vary and we will edit the video with one or other characteristics (voice-over, labels, interview, without audio, etc).

·         Segmentation: Videos directed at a generic target tend to perform worse than when we target a specific group of our audience. It will depend on many factors, such as the product or service that we are going to expose in the video, or the purpose for which we create this particular audiovisual content. It is something that we must have marked in our communication strategy in social networks and in our calendar.

·         Objectives: In video marketing, not all videos on social networks have to share objectives. We will create videos according to internal, external and commercial needs (Black Monday, Christmas, company anniversary, sale of a new range, etc).

Advantages of using videos in our business strategy

Advantages of implementing video marketing to our communication strategy in the different supports that our brand handles (web, social networks, newsletter, online and offline advertising ...):

·         Acceptance: As a brand, and given the saturation of commercial messages in the digital field, the audiovisual format enjoys the total acceptance of the audience when it comes to consuming third-party content, especially on social networks, where in all of them it is the preferred format and most consumed (always taking into account the specific singularities of each social platform).

·         Interactivity: Related to the previous aspect, engagement is significantly higher when we transmit our messages through promotional, corporate, product videos, etc. On Twitter for example, tweets that attach video receive 3 times more interactions from users (responses, likes, retweets…). In addition, they are easy to consume, with just one click, and users like that a lot, unlike other reading formats or that require greater interaction from the recipient.

·         Emotionality: Removing consciences and stirring emotions is not easy at all, but it is much more viable through video marketing. Combining and mixing image, sound, voice-overs, effects, text in labels ... in a creative and successful way according to our objective will generate brand recall and enhance our branding for the audience.

·         Virality: Linked to emotion. Really surprising and touching the grain of our target could result in a massive reach through shares. As we have already mentioned, it is not the objective of video marketing because it is difficult and unlikely, but if it comes, we will have double success.

·         Content: In accordance with our intention and objective, we can edit different types of videos with a variety of messages. Work on storytelling, video advice, corporate, product, tutorials, reviews, testimonials ...

·         Effectiveness: Video marketing within our Social Media marketing plan will seek, in one way or another, to sell our product / service, our brand as a benchmark in our sector. After viewing a specific audiovisual content of a product, there is a 40% more chance of purchase by the user.

·         Positioning: audiovisual social networks such as YouTube or Vimeo will allow us to position ourselves at the top in their organic searches if our content is relevant to the audience and we optimize it correctly. Also outside of social networks, for example on our website, a page with embedded video will make visitors spend more time on our website, helping us with SEO and opening the possibility of sharing that page / s generating links (backlinks ) external to our website.

 

Types of video marketing according to their function

We were highlighting right now the effectiveness of video marketing. And we know, for example, that 66% more leads are achieved through audiovisual content. This is one of the powerful reasons why companies opt for videos in their marketing and communication strategies.

But there are very different types of videos, which we must select carefully when undertaking a video marketing project:

·         Corporate videos

·         Product or service videos

·         Explanatory / informational videos

·         Advertising / promotional videos

·         Presentation videos

·         Videos summary event

·         Videos reviews (of products)

·         Testimonial videos

·         Videos interviews

Main platforms for videos in our Social Media marketing

The figures of the main platforms where to implement our video marketing strategy within the company's Social Media marketing plan speak for themselves. Therefore, it is not surprising that more and more brands are present and active in communicating with their audience through audiovisual content.

·         Youtube

The most popular audiovisual platform in the world with 2 billion users around the globe. A very high 79% of Internet users have a YouTube channel.

·         Vimeo

The preferred environment chosen by brands to display their most professional content. With many more features and privacy restrictions than Youtube.

·         Instagram (IGTV)

One of the latest functionalities implemented in the fastest growing social network in recent years. An occasion that is not even painted for brands to share their content, reaching an audience that is undoubtedly committed to the audiovisual format.

·         Tik tok

With 1,500 million users, many familiar faces and users mostly under 40 years old upload and share videos of very different kinds.

·         Snapchat

Close to 200 million active accounts make it another attractive showcase for companies and professionals who have a young target for their products and services, since the main users are under 25 years of age.

·         Facebook

Both in content strategies and in advertising, videos are one of the main elements of the social network, contributing to 80% of traffic from social networks to websites on this platform.

·         Twitter

Ideal space to search for the virality of the videos of our strategy, where establishing itself as a trending topic guarantees a reach almost impossible to reach if it is not through advertisements.

·         LinkedIn

The audiovisual format does not stop gaining share and more space in the timelines of profiles and company pages. Network users see it as the most effective form of communication with their audience.

 

Conclusions

We end with one more fact: according to a recent study by Hubspot, 81% of brands currently execute video marketing strategies. Although this figure may vary depending on the country we are talking about, it helps us enormously to gauge the importance of the audiovisual format when companies communicate with their audience.

 

It is not surprising that in the Social Media marketing plans of brands in almost all sectors, the main means to achieve their established objectives is video. A content that has the fervor of the public, that is consumed quickly and that creates brand memory. And it is that the text and the reading are less and less "appetizing" for users, who seek to optimize their time browsing: more content in the same amount of time.