Why and how do you create an effective marketing video?

Content Marketing and Video: The Winning Combo

Why Create Video Marketing?

Video marketing has become an essential format for digital marketing strategy. Case in point: YouTube totals over one billion hours of videos watched daily worldwide. That's not counting the billions of videos uploaded...

This number keeps growing because internet users—and therefore your prospects—increasingly favor content that's easy to "consume" and allows multitasking. Traditional blog articles are still effective but require greater concentration.

Since 2016, the number of companies using video as a marketing tool has jumped from 61% to 85%.

And 88% of video marketing specialists report that video gives them a positive ROI—a 5% increase from last year's figures. Moreover, video significantly boosts social media post reach, generating 1200% more shares than text and images combined.

Different Types of Videos in Content Marketing

Depending on your topic and target audience needs, one video type may be more relevant than another.

The different video formats include:

• "How-to" videos: explain a concept or notion

• Presentation videos: showcase your offer or service

• Tutorial videos: short video sequences with practical advice

• Webinars: themed live videos

• Live videos: you get it

• Company culture videos: convey the company's internal mindset

• Customer testimonials: client feedback on your work

• Vlogs: videos filmed to share moments or experiences

Among these video types, the most commonly used are: "How-to" videos (72%), presentation videos (49%), and testimonial videos (48%).

#tip: Observe what's being done online and choose the video type best suited to your topic to make it relevant.

How to Choose Your Video Marketing Topic

For a video to be considered relevant by internet users, it must address the right person. Video marketing is like a phone call—you need someone on the other end and must adapt your message to create connection.

The key question: Who is my video for?

Once you've defined your target, develop your personas. A persona is the representation of an imaginary character describing a coherent set of potential buyers and their common characteristics. This fictional representation helps deepen target audience understanding by comprehending their typical day, interests, needs, and concerns. For proper persona development, I invite you to read the article: [buyer persona: why and how to implement them?]

After developing your personas, you'll extract valuable information to identify the problems they encounter.

When facing your personas' problems, ask yourself: What content topics can emerge from this?

By asking this question, you'll identify content topics that precisely address your target audience's expectations.

Creating Your Content Marketing Video

Prerequisites Before Filming

Creating High-Performance Videos

The Content Marketing Video Mindset

In content marketing, there's a real mindset for making your content relevant and generating leads.

Adopting the content marketing mentality means:

• Creating high-performance content by addressing your target's needs

• Providing value through concrete information

• Talking about what you know, not about yourself

The key to successful video is working on your content's substance.

Defining Your Video's Objective

If you decide to start creating content, it's not simply to follow trends. You're aware of video's potential in your strategies and possible ROI.

Defining an objective gives you a clear vision of what you want to achieve in terms of results.

By analyzing different performance indicators related to your objective, you can enter a continuous improvement process.

By asking yourself a series of questions, you'll identify various problems that prevented achieving expected results.

Producing Your Video Marketing

Write Your Video Script

Relying on improvisation in video is definitely unwelcome... If you improvise content, you'll lose credibility with your target audience because the video won't be perceived as quality, potentially damaging your image.

The script helps you work on the video's substance and structure your message, link ideas, and develop storytelling. Storytelling allows you to craft your content's narrative by telling a story, keeping the viewer engaged throughout.

By introducing this technique into your script, your content becomes more attractive and maintains your target's attention—they'll appreciate not being bored or put to sleep. Additionally, you'll add more value to your video and create stronger connections with your audience.

Of course, don't lose sight of your persona when writing your script. Adapt your message by choosing words that resonate with them.

Beyond structuring your content, you'll have a clearer vision of your desired outcome, facilitating your storyboard creation.

6 Steps to Create Your Video Storyboard

The storyboard is important when creating a video. This way, you'll have a precise idea of the result and maintain the thread from start to finish. Proceed step by step:

• ‍Step 1: Define Your Target: Never lose sight of your target—it's the golden rule. You're making this video for them, not yourself. ‍
• Step 2: Define Your Objective: You're not making a video just to make a video. You must have a precise objective in mind—it's your guideline. For all other questions during filming, ask yourself: "Does this meet the objective and speak to my target?" ‍
• Step 3: Define Your Video Duration: Don't make videos longer than 1:30 on LinkedIn or Facebook. Save longer videos for YouTube or Instagram IGTV. ‍
• Step 4: What CTA(s) for Your Video? The goal is for your target to contact you. Examples: website link, LinkedIn logo, Twitter logo... ‍
• Step 5: Structure Your Video: Your video structure is important for adding rhythm and organizing ideas. During editing, you'll save time by linking sequences more easily. Example: #1 Hook phrase, #2 Title card (logo appearance), #3 Topic introduction, ... ‍
• Step 6: Choose Filming Location: Based on your video structure, choose a location for filming. #tip: Have a Plan B ready—if problems arise, you can pivot quickly.

Filming Your Video

Film Like a Pro with a Smartphone

Convincing the boss to invest in video equipment can be an uphill battle...

Fortunately, we all have smartphones with good-quality cameras. And don't panic if you don't have equipment—you can achieve great results by applying these filming tips:

• #tip 1: When filming, make sure to put your smartphone in "landscape mode." Filming in portrait creates black bars on videos, making sequences unusable for your video. Portrait format works well for Instagram IGTV videos. ‍
• #tip 2: To maximize device stability when walking while filming, bend your knees to cushion movement-related shaking. ‍
• #tip 3: For dynamic close-ups of scenery or objects, use available edges and slide your smartphone to keep shots straight and create image fluidity. ‍
• Final tip: Take multiple sequences to select the best during editing.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

1. Don't film in noisy locations

2. Don't leave anything lying around when filming indoors—it draws the eye

3. Watch your exposure. Lighting may seem ideal to the naked eye but not on video. Test before filming

4. Take time filming different sequences—don't rush or your sequences will lack stabilization

5. Don't film from just one angle outdoors. Vary viewpoints to add rhythm

6. Don't say "um" in videos. Practical tip: if you forget what to say, pause, then continue. This technique eliminates "ums" by cutting silent moments during editing

Getting Started with Video Editing

7 Video Editing Mistakes to Avoid

1. Not preparing your video folder beforehand. You'll spend more time searching for files than editing. Organize videos in a dedicated folder to save time

2. Using overly long sequences. Break down actions to add more rhythm to editing

3. Not stepping back from your edit. Being too close to the software makes small details less noticeable. Take regular breaks to catch minor errors

4. Testing all gimmicky transition effects. This creates amateurish results and deteriorates video quality

5. Using overly fancy fonts and flashy colors for video titles. Prioritize simplicity

6. Neglecting sound. It's crucial in video for creating ambiance and emotion

7. Selecting low-quality videos and photos for editing

Free Editing Software

You can create videos without hiring professionals for editing. Free editing software is available—the most popular being Movie Maker (Windows) and iMovie (Apple). Many others exist: Blender, Lightworks, Shotcut...

These programs have user-friendly interfaces enabling video editing without complexity. Available features are designed to help video editing beginners. However, these programs remain limited compared to paid software.

For more software options, check out: [Top 20 Free Video Editing Software 2020]

Paid Editing Software

Unlike free software, these programs are much more comprehensive for video editing and allow creative freedom. The two most popular and powerful market options are:

• Final Cut Pro: Apple's software priced at $329.99

• Adobe Premiere Pro: Adobe's video software with various pricing options available on their site

Don't be intimidated by the interface—YouTube tutorials are available for both programs.

#tip: Once editing is complete, show it to people around you and improve it.

Distributing Your Video Online

Using YouTube for Video Distribution

Several distribution platforms exist: Dailymotion, Vimeo, Brightcove, Libcast... And of course, YouTube, which we'll focus on. You might ask: why specifically YouTube when other platforms exist?

Answer: YouTube is the market leader and the world's second-largest search engine after Google. Daily, 400 hours of video are uploaded every minute, and over one billion people watch videos on this platform. It's also the most-used platform by marketing specialists—85% used it in 2019.

Generally, YouTube feeds B2C communication plans through ads or sponsored videos. In B2B, it's often overlooked because there's seemingly no interest for the target audience. However, there are other business benefits regardless of industry:

1. Website Benefits:

For those unaware, YouTube belongs to Google—the market-leading search engine. Using this platform for your website boosts SEO. Video causes a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines.

When you embed video directly on your website without using YouTube's player integration (available in your site manager), it impacts page loading times—negative for users who'll leave immediately and for Google, which will judge your site's SEO as poor.

Don't forget Google loves content diversity. Integrating your video on YouTube then on your website page positively impacts SEO.

Adding videos to pages improves your website's conversion rate, especially on landing pages—they can increase conversion rates by 80%. On average, users spend 2.6 times more time on pages with videos than without.

2. For Prospecting:

Video more easily conveys messages, identity, and service explanations, creating connections with prospects. Introducing video into email prospecting campaigns improves results, especially click-through rates that increase 200-300%. For email video integration, YouTube is your best ally!

Using a YouTube link anchored to an image (preferably your video's YouTube thumbnail) won't impact email deliverability. Embedding actual video in emails has major impact—it'll be judged too heavy and land directly in spam folders. That's YouTube's value for prospecting campaigns.

#tip: To maximize email deliverability, properly configure your domain name and SPF, DKIM, DMARC tags for different accounts.

Publishing Videos on Social Networks

Why Adapt Video Format for Social Networks?

You just read extensively about YouTube's advantages. Now this section tells you to adapt video format for social networks. This might seem contradictory.

Explanation: You can publish videos on social networks via YouTube links, but social media algorithms want traffic monopoly and will penalize posts with external links. When publishing videos on social networks, always prefer native video posts. YouTube mainly intervenes through video subtitling, which we'll discuss next. To proceed properly, adapt your video format to social networks both technically (ratio—video size) and duration-wise.

Technically, choosing the right video format is crucial—incorrect formats prevent publishing or impact quality and loading times. Additionally, communities differ between networks, as do video duration preferences.

What Formats to Choose?

LinkedIn:

• Landscape and portrait format: 2.4:1 (ratio)

• Preferred upload format: mp4 or .mov

• User-preferred duration: 1:30 maximum

Facebook:

• Landscape format: 16:9 (ratio) - 1280 x 720 (px)

• Portrait format: 9:16 (ratio) - 720 x 1280 (px)

• Preferred upload format: mp4 or .mov

• User-preferred duration: 1:30 maximum

Twitter:

• Landscape format: 2.39:1 (ratio) - 1280 x 1024 (px)

• Portrait format: 1:2.39 (ratio) - 1280 x 1024 (px)

• Preferred upload format: mp4 or .mov

• User-preferred duration: 140 seconds maximum

For all available social media formats (sponsored videos, stories, etc.), see: [Social Networks: What Formats for Your Videos?]

Adding Subtitles to Videos

Most videos are watched without sound. Yes, we tend to watch videos during non-dedicated hours. To give you a number: 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound. Whether publishing on distribution platforms or social networks, always add subtitles to optimize your video.

You have two options:

1. Add subtitles directly to your video

2. The most effective solution: add an SRT file generated by YouTube to your post alongside your video. This file can be understood by algorithms, and we suspect they consider it and favor post reach.