Video Content Marketing is still the rage! It’s been trending over last few years and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. In fact 86% of marketers want to do some sort of video marketing!
This is great news for video content creators and digital marketers. Not only can you leverage video to help you grow your business quickly, it’s also evident that you’ll engage your customers better. Video content lets you provide a more personalised or meaningful experience for your customers.
We’ll take a look at some video content and video marketing ideas in this post.
A few words of warning: This is a 5000 word+ guide!
- Get this guide emailed to you as a PDF for reading later
- Try out Imvidu – Smart text based video editor and get ready to pump out your Video Content Marketing faster*
* Yes, I’m fully aware the second call to action is a shameless self promotion on our software. Deal with it 😉
So First of All…
Why Do Video Content Marketing?
Simplest answer: Your customers prefer to watch video than read text!
Cisco predicts video content will make up 82% of all internet traffic in 2022.
Cisco
Besides my personal bias towards video content marketing, there’s this stat I pulled off Google:
68% of consumers prefer watching videos to learn about new products or services, as compared to articles, infographics, ebooks, and presentations.
DesignHack
… and it’s no wonder the stats are that high for video content. With the explosion of smart phones and tablets, it’s easier than ever for your customers to watch a video on the go. It lets your audience see, hear and feel something, where as text is just…well, text!
Video is also shown to build trust with your customers– especially when you’re in it! By using video (and you in it), you will easily stand out from your competitors who either don’t use video at all or they don’t do it well.
…and guess what? Google loves video too!
By optimizing for video content marketing for your site (or blog) you can retain users on your website for longer. Seeing engagement on the page when users click on your page and navigate to more content also reduces the ‘bounce rate’ that is tracked by Google. This helps provide some nice ‘SEO juice’ (i.e. it helps your pages rank well in Google).
Case in point
Insivia
A website is 53 times more likely to reach the front page of Google if it includes video.
It’s not just Google. All social media platforms encourage video content marketing these days.
Facebook and LinkedIn are pushing videos in feeds, encouraging live streams, and even allow video messaging. Over 500 million people watch videos on Facebook alone.
A host of other social media channels rely solely on video – like TikTok, Twitch, Instagram (Reels). TikTok, having only been founded in 2016 has nearly 700 million users! Each and every one of those users consuming video.
Case in point
96% of customers watch a video only to learn more about the product or service before a purchase.
CXL
Types of video content
(As you no doubt know…) There are several types of videos that you’ll find online. The following can be used as part of video content marketing (which I’ll go through bit later on):
❖ Talking head video (you are talking into a camera to your audience – vlogs, selfies, presentations)
❖ Animation video (doodles, cartoons, stop motion, 2D and 3D animated imagery)
❖ Live Action (recorded video of people, locations and objects)
❖ Screen-cast (recording your screen and webcam)
❖ Live Streams (Popular as screen casts and talking head videos – are a great way to connect and communicate with your audience in real time)
❖ Video podcasts (blend of the above, primarily as interviews) – see the equipment you need to start video podcasts here
You can edit videos superfast
with Imvidu.
Use actual text to edit your videos. Cut a word? Cut the video!
* Like it or hate it, this call-to-action is a shameless plug of our own tool. Seriously though, you should try it out at least.
Screen-cast and talking head videos are the cheapest to create. So you’ll be able to roll out your video marketing faster. You *could* even get away without editing these – unless you’re a strong communicator, you’ll probably want to edit these videos though!
Creating animation requires some serious skill sets – best handled by dem pro’s. Alternatively, you can use online video editors to create basic animated videos using stock animations.
Live Action is an option if you have at least mediocre editing skills or can outsource the video production. Regardless, it is time or resource intensive. You also need to have a set (outdoor/indoor), actors (or at least yourself!), and relevant props if required. This isn’t something you’ll be able to do as a one-man job. Ideally you need a cameraman at the least.
Ummm… like… word of warning…? Editing Videos, like totally… takes time y’all. So best outsource it, like, yeah.
Video Content Marketing Ideas
Before you can turn your videos into marketing material, you’ll need some video content! Let’s go through some video content ideas. I’ll also cover the marketing strategies that use video to help grow your business.
1 Share tips to common problems that your customers experience
Short ‘how-to’ or valuable tips are a great way to capture your audience’s attention. It works because you’re not ‘asking’, instead you’re ‘giving’ value to your audience. You can answer FAQs, support questions, or questions you feel your audience would really like to know answers to. Otherwise, you could
distill any online courses or blogs you have into short video tips (see
next tips).
Turn your videos into blogs easily using the video to text converter.
2 Create Video Courses
The online coaching industry is BOOMING currently – and it’s for a reason
You audience is hungry for practical & valuable knowledge. If you can package your content up into short video courses, it will help you build a loyal audience and even help you monetize your business further.
Video courses can be easier to create than text, image and HTML based content.
Talking head videos work well for video based courses. Platforms like LinkedIn Learning, Thinkific, Kajabi, GO1, Udemy and many more exist to help you launch your video courses. You *could* launch a course yourself (and on a budget) if you use WordPress. Plugins such as Learndash, MemberPress, LifterLMS and many more options are available.
Be mindful though as making any customization to a WordPress based solution requires tech knowledge and expertise.
You *could* even use YouTube to host your videos if you don’t want to charge directly (but if you can get enough views, there’s a chance you can monetize your YouTube channel also).
Tip! A quick way to get started with creating self-paced courses for your customers are if you’re already running live group coaching sessions. If you record, edit and reuse these to create a library of courses for newer participants, it’ll save you time in having to come up with newer content. It’s a great way to utilize existing content to add more value to your customers.
3 Do special announcements or progress updates as video
Special announcements on video let you create a more personalised experience for your audience. It doesn’t have to be an announcement; it can just be a greeting or a simple business update.
It’s easy to think that consumers don’t really care about you as a business. But content marketing like this helps create a better brand that consumers build relationships with – and as we know already– customers buy from people they trust.
Better yet, influencers have made a killing (aka millions) by vlogging. Topics can range from living out their lives, to talking about tech, hobbies, and anything in between.
4 Do product demo videos, tutorials or explainer videos
If you offer a product (SaaS or tools) also, then doing product demos also ads a lot of value to your audience. Try not to make these ‘salesy’… yuck! …so you can better engagement. Even if the viewer isn’t interested in your product, they may still share it with friends that might be interested.
Product tutorials –Whether you only use them for support or knowledge base, or whether you decide to use these as marketing – help you create more engagement with your prospects and customers.
According to (Hubspot), nearly 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store.
5 Interview your customers, partners, or other experts
Interviews are a great way to create new content. Although the quality of the expert and what they have to say matters, the art of conducting an interview is what really creates engagement.
Ask relevant questions, have genuine conversations with experts, education and entertain your audience.
If you doing interviews through podcasting then turning them into video podcasts for marketing is a great way to increase your reach.
Are you doing podcasts already? Then you may want to Learn How To Make Money From Podcasts here.
6 Get Customer Reviews On Video
Social proof is almost necessary for selling your product or service online. Video reviews are hard to fake than text reviews, so it creates more trust. Here are some ways to use video reviews as part of your video content marketing strategy:
- share the reviews on social media
- embed them to your blog or your website
- embed in you emails
- show them on your sales funnels
- show them during pitches, webinars and events
7 Get Customers to Record Themselves Using Your Product
Getting customers to provide feedback or a review in a video that you can use for marketing is okay. But why not get them to create videos of them using your product? Yeah yeah… I know… this is easy if you have a great product! But it’s not too hard if you have loyal customers that love your business or product anyway (I mean you have that right?)
8 Personalize Your Videos
Go past just marketing, instead sell directly to your customers through personalised video marketing.
I know how hard it can be to grab attention is hard when you’re doing direct outreach (been there, done that!). The usual methods are email, social media, cold calling. But next time, if you want to do cold outreach try this:
- Record a short personalised message for your prospect.
- Keep it short (under 1 minute).
- Attach a personalised thumbnail.
This works really well for social media and even email. Most social media platforms let you record video now. So sending a personalised greeting- whether it’s in Facebook or LinkedIn is easy to do. You can opt to use something like Loom to record a greeting from your computer, save it to the cloud and attach a thumbnail like shown above.
9 Personalized Videos Marketing At Scale
If you want to do the above strategy at scale, well… you can do that too. If you want to, our friends over at Nexweave can help you send personalised videos to a large audience easily. This can work amazingly well in e-commerce, SaaS, or any business where you need to communicate with a big list of users. Adding a personal touch to to your videos, help increase click rates and engagement (when sent via email).
10 Turn ‘How-To‘ Articles into Video Content Marketing
How-to guides are amazing from a customer experience perspective, but also from a marketing perspective. Firstly, Google loves ‘how-to’ videos. You’ll notice that YouTube videos often rank highest in the search engine when a direct answer exists as a video.
If you’re creating ‘how-to‘ guides as videos and putting them into your knowledge base, you might as well put them up on YouTube as well. This will help get your video content in front of a wider audience. This isn’t just because of Google Search, but also because of YouTube’s very own search functionality. Remember, YouTube itself is a search engine (for videos!) and a very effective one.
As a bonus, if you monitor your YouTube video, you might even get some great insights from your customers and prospects through the ‘comments‘ section under your videos. Who knows, you just might get more content ideas based on what your audience is commenting!
11 Start an Weekly Video Newsletter
I still remember when I signed up to MyStoryBrand. Not only do they offer killer content, the CEO also used to send a video tip of the week. Simple (well produced) but effective value bombs right into my inbox. I actually loved these short bite-size videos that I got in the email. And no, I’m not affiliated with them. You seriously should read their content – top notch.
So why did I fall in love with their content as an email series:
- One – they were actual value bombs and offered amazing knowledge within 1-2 minutes. I wasn’t being sold anything in these email series.
- Two – I got them straight in my inbox. The subject, the body and the video had a specific purpose – teach me something.
- Three – It was different to almost all my other emails that are essentially text and image.
In fact, do you need 300% more clicks on your emails?
Video content marketing, when done (well!!) via email can:
› increase your email click-through rate by up to 300%
› reduce your unsubscribe rate by 75%
› have a 96% higher click-through rate than those without
12 Social Media Video Marketing
Love them or hate them, but short bite-size videos are all the rage these days. With YouTube and Instagram both taking on TikTok through their ‘shorts’ and ‘reels’, almost every video is using the fun, fast, energetic style made popular by teens. It’s usually in the form of some crazy dance moves, funny jingles, stunts or pranks.
You really have between 10 seconds to 30 seconds across these platforms to hook your audience in. If you do, then the chance of the video going viral are pretty impressive. A lot of the content on these types of video is primarily geared for B2C markets.
But used effectively by businesses, video marketing using these types of content can have a profound impact to your marketing outcomes.
Here are some places to go to create and share some short bite size video content:
- TikTok Videos
- YouTube Shorts
- Instagram Reels
- Twitter Videos
- Facebook Stories
- Instagram Stories
Become a Content Creating Machine
Create and edit video content the easier way*
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13 Go Live on Facebook
Facebook lets you stream your videos live to your audience very easily either from your mobile OR from your desktop. Great for sharing status updates, announcements, explainer videos, webinars or just hanging out with your audience!
Facebook Live videos produce 6 times as many interactions as traditional videos and they get 10 times more comments than regular videos. Definitely worth spending some time getting used dong Live streams!
14 Stream video across all your channels at once
You actually don’t need to stop at Facebook. Most social media channels (and YouTube) let you stream your videos. In fact there are plenty of platforms to stream on including:
- Zoom Live
- YouTube Live
- Facebook Live
- Twitch
- Periscope
Some of these, like Twitch and Reddit operate on a vertical. That is, it’s not suited to all business types. For example Twitch is mainly used by gamers and music live streaming. Whereas something like YouTube lets you attract viewers from a broader audience base.
You can stream across multiple platforms using specific video streaming tools.
15 Paid ads
Getting paid ads to work require a lot of moving parts, testing and iteration. However, keeping all other variables constant, video ads generally perform better than image and text ads. Here are some examples of small tests where videos convert better. Databox shows they achieved twice the engagement from video ads compared to image ads.
This is not to say video ads are superior to image and text based marketing. People consume digital content differently. Views alone don’t necessarily mean more conversions. Even according to Facebook, you should experiment with different video, text and images to find the optimal converting ads.
Repurpose Existing Content for Video Marketing
Turn your podcasts into video content
Turning podcasts into video gives your content an engagement boost. The benefits include:
- Ability to put it up on YouTube
- Put it up on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram
- Creating better engagement as it becomes a visual medium
Turn your blogs into videos
If you’ve been pumping out blog content then you’re sitting on a gold mine of content. You can turn your entire blog post (or sections of blog articles) into video marketing content. There is a 2-fold benefit here:
- You can publish the video across various marketing channels and spread your content further
- Embed the video back into the blog posts – if users watch video then it increases ‘time on site‘ (better for SEO!)
Turn Long Form Video into Shorter Video Clips
If you already have courses or will create video courses, you can simply cut out 30-second to 1-minute snippets and post them on social. This lets you utilize existing content more meaningfully.
The other benefit is that if people enjoy and engage with these video clips, they are more likely to engage with your course as well.
Split your videos into multiple clips
This is how easy it is to split your video into clips using Imvidu.
Push Video Content Marketing through a Sales Funnel
A sales funnel consists of multiple stages a consumer goes through to buy your product or service. There are several moving parts to creating an effective and highly profitable sales funnel. But utilizing video is not just a popular way to take your buyers through the journey, it’s highly effective.
In fact, a sales funnel will let you utilize a number of the above video content types to maximum effectiveness. Educational based marketing (where you use content to teach your audience) is an effective strategy, that people actually enjoy consuming. Video is naturally a great medium to teach.
For example, typically you may decide to use videos the following way:
Boost Video Content Marketing by Repurposing It
Let’s face it. Creating, editing and producing video can be difficult. Even though there are plenty of video production tools that help you with the process (including yours truly imvidu.com), it still takes a lot of time and effort.
But remember folks:
You can spin your existing video content!
This works especially well for interviews, podcasts, and live streams. If you’re doing any of these, you’re sitting on a goldmine of content that you can repurpose.
Yes! 10x your video content from your existing content!
You don’t have to whip out the camera every single time you want new video content. Instead, spin existing video content into short form video marketing content.
So…. here are some ideas that let you repurpose your video content.
Convert videos into text
Converting your video into text lets you write articles. You can extend the ROI on your work by pushing the article to your blog (alongside your video), pushing it to text based platforms like Reddit, Medium and Substack.
You can simplify the process by transcribing your videos into text, exporting the text and formatting it into a blog post.
Turn a long video into bite size video clips
A decent sized video, say 20 – 30 minutes long can give you weeks worth of bite size content. Done right, you can split long form video content into short clips that are 30 seconds to a couple of minutes long. Simply clip, edit and schedule these into your social media.
Some examples where you can pull video bites from:
- Facebook Live
- Presentations
- Courses
- Group coaching
- Interviews
Grab favorite quotes
You can also grab some nice quotes from your videos. Simply copy out the quotes as text or turn them into images that stand out.
Turn Video Content into Documents
Most educational videos can easily be turned into other educational collateral such as PowerPoint or e-books. You can find plenty of people online to convert your videos into styled PowerPoint/Keynote presentations or PDF documents.
The beauty of this is you can use these as marketing and sales collateral (Download-able lead magnets) that help you collect emails. See our own example.
Turn Your Videos into a Podcasts
Podcasts are really blowing up (in a good way). This could be an effective marketing strategy that you can use to promote your business and get your message further.
Keep this in mind though:
A simple conversion to audio is not really enough as you need to make sure the dialogue is suitable for someone only listening in. You may need to edit your audio to make it suitable as a podcast. You can actually do this fairly simply with Imvidu Studio. Simple upload your video, do any rough cuts and delete unnecessary scenes, then export as an audio file.
In fact, do you need 300% more clicks on your emails?
Try this!
1. Go live on Facebook
2. Your video will be available under your Facebook Videos to download
3. Download your video and import it into Imvidu Studio
4. Do any minor editing, then split your video into multiple clips (A good length is 30 seconds to 1 minute)
5. Imvidu also gives you a transcript, you can now use this in a few ways.
6. Extract some juicy quotes from your transcript that help you stand out as an authority, are ‘actionable’ advice, or can be used inspirational quotes.
7. Style the quotes as images in any photo editing tool (Photoshop/Canva/etc) or paste them straight to your social media feeds (e.g. Instagram).
8. Download the transcript. Although you’ll need to spend a bit more time on it, you can use the narrative to turn the transcript into a proper blog article for your blog.
9. Schedule video content (multiple clips created above) over time into your social media feeds.
10. Export the original video into YouTube
Other things you can do:
- Add these to your marketing calendar
- Post these consistently on social media and/or YouTube.
- Also add these to your email newsletters campaign
- Embed the full long version of the interview into your blog
- Extract the transcript from your video and convert it into a blog to support SEO efforts so that your page can rank in Google!
- Distribute your content using paid ads or try these Free Ways to Promote Your Content
Become a Content Creating Machine
Create and edit video content the easier way*