What exactly is video marketing, and how can be successful in it?

For a well-constructed digital-marketing plan, the team, marketers as well as video professionals need to bring videos into the fold. Although the concept of "video marketing" may seem self-explanatory (essentially the inclusion of videos into your marketing plans) however, it's difficult to figure out how you can go about successfully implementing this strategy.

The importance of video marketing

Thanks to the growth of sites such as and YouTube and social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter have now added video to their platforms, and significant improvements in video streaming's quality (bye goodbye to the dreaded buffering) video is now a feature throughout all the stages of what's known as the marketing funnel. The typical funnel is as follows: you introduce someone to your company (awareness stage) and then educate them on it (consideration stage) to justify the benefits of your offer (decision stage) to keep customers (delight phase).

So how do you do video marketing right?

Let's breathe some life into a standard video-marketing funnel by using an actual (but in reality, a fictional) illustration. WebThyme is a (imaginary) software business which helps users create and manage websites. Jenn is one of the potential customers.

• A good prospect Jenn is set to launch a health and wellness website. WebThyme's primary target market is entrepreneurs from small companies.
• The right channel: Jenn Googles advice on starting a business, and stumbles across WebThyme's videos in an article on their blog, one that profiles an entrepreneur's story. Excited, she subscribes to WebThyme's emails which deliver Jenn weekly emails filled with useful information.
  
• The correct action:Jenn clicks on a hyperlink in a newsletter that leads the reader to an online landing page which features a video delving into the latest WebThyme features available to small-scale business owners. She taps button linking to a no-cost trialcalling to move -- and chooses to try it.

It's just one instance of a possible video-marketing scenario. What happens when you play it out on a more precise or actionable basis? What are the top video-marketing practices for key channels like emails, social media and even your own web site? Let's dig in...

Exploring social media

Why is social so effective in promoting growth? If your current followers share, follow, like or share your articles, they essentially expose the content to their contacts and acquaintances, some who may decide to follow your account. One method to get more potential leads from this market is to add email capture forms, available with Business software, which allows you to gather viewers" details directly inside the player embedded. You can then easily import the email addresses to email marketing tools like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and Constant Contact.

Perhaps you'd like for your readers to be directed to a landing page to learn more. This is also possible! Business allows you to add clickable CTAs that allow you to guide people precisely where you'd like them to go.

Additionally, you can increase your reach and gain more followers by using the use of paid social media. Depending on the specific site that you are on, you may be able to target specific groups, and also promote your video via pre-rolls or sponsored posts.

Let your email campaigns flourish

When it comes to emails, videos play a significant role. time. They can improve click-through rates of 200-300 percentage (that's so many percents or people) in addition to reducing the number of un-subscribers. However, most email programs still cannot handle videos that are embedded directly in emailshowever, it's possible to get around it by adding a play button to a still image of your video then driving users to a landing page which features the full thing.

It's fairly simple to do with those systems for marketing via email that we discussed in the past along with marketing automation software like HubSpot. This is an ideal way to determine which thumbnails get you the highest click rates. As a rule to follow, you can enhance your campaigns" conversion rates by tailoring your design and copy to the pages that they direct traffic to.

Your website, packed with stunning videos

 Home Page

Most companies create an overview video for their homepage, one that describes what you're all about and why your work is important, and the problem your company is solving. It's an enormous influence the way you're thought of by people who are just discovering your company's name. Consider Canary, for example.

 Pages for landing

Your homepage can serve numerous purposes to serve a large audience Your landing pages can be great for educating specific segments of your target audience on the great things you have to offer as well as entice people to take an decision. Marketing professionals drive traffic to landing pages from online ads as well as social media blogs, as well as websites. Search engines and videos can help turn this traffic into leads and customers. Take a look at our Business page.

 Blog

This is an important source of visitors to your website, especially when your posts include informative information, business news, and thought leadership regarding topics that people are interested in because they're probably searching for these topics on Google. It is also a great place to share product and business news, special events, and the best practices you've learned from your community. Are you looking for an example? The very thing you're reading will be (hopefully) more interesting thanks to videos scattered throughout.

 Pages for FAQ and Product pages

Putting everything together

When your video-marketing strategy is implemented well and effectively, you build an ecosystem that grows the business of your organization Your social media videos are attracting new followers and engaging existing ones; your video-filled blog posts rank high on search results; your email campaigns -featuring stunning video thumbnails are directing users to your landing pages, and those boast relevant videos with distinct CTAs, all of which can be optimized to generate leads as well as driving the conversions. The best part is that everything you do is measurable, trackable, and can be adapted as time passes. In the context about...