What is video marketing, and how can you make it effective?

In order to develop a successful digital marketing plan, the team, marketers as well as video professionals must bring video in the mix. Although the concept of "video marketing" may seem self-explanatory (essentially including videos in your marketing plans) but it's far from obvious how you can go about actually doing it effectively.

The importance of video marketing

With the rise of sites like and YouTube and other social networks like Facebook and Twitter have now added video to their platforms, and dramatic improvements in streaming quality (bye goodbye to the buffering, the dreaded thing) Videos are now appearing throughout all the stages of what's referred to as the marketing funnel. The funnel that is traditional appears like this: You introduce someone to your company (awareness stage), educate them about it (consideration stage) and then justify the offer (decision stage), and retain customers (delight the stage).

So how do you do video marketing right?

Let's bring life to a standard video-marketing funnel by using an actual (but really a made-up) example. WebThyme is a (imaginary) software firm which assists people in creating and host websites, and Jenn is one of the potential customers.

• The right prospect: Jenn is about to launch a health and wellness website. WebThyme's target audience is entrepreneurs with small businesses.
• The right channel: Jenn Googles advice on starting a business, and comes across one of WebThyme's videos on an article on their blog in which they tell an entrepreneur's story. Excited, she subscribes to WebThyme's emails, and they send Jenn weekly emails filled with useful information.
  
• The correct action:Jenn clicks on a hyperlink in a newsletter that leads her to a landing page, which features a video delving into WebThyme's latest features for small business owners. Clicking on the button will lead to a trial for free -calling to action -- and decides to give it a go.

This is just one example of a scenario that could be used for video marketing. How does it play out on a more precise or actionable basis? What are the most effective video marketing strategies for the most important channels such as social media, email, as well as your web site? Let's dig in...

Investigating social media

Why is social so effective for growth? If your current followers share, are able to like, comment on or share your content and share your videos to their own contacts and acquaintances, some who may decide to follow your blog. Another way to increase the number of leads within this community is to add the email capture form, that is included in Business software, which allows you to get the viewers" details directly inside the embedded player. You can then seamlessly import those email addresses into email marketing services like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and Constant Contact.

Maybe you'd like for your readers to be directed on a page that lets them find out more. You can do that too! Business allows you to add clickable CTAs, so you can guide people precisely where you want.

You can also grow your reach and get new followers on a larger scale through the use of paid social media. In accordance with the site you are using that you are on, you may be able to target specific viewers, as well as increase your visibility by promoting your videos via pre-rolls or promoted posts.

Let your email campaigns flourish

In the case of emails, videos are crucial to consider all the in time. They could boost click-through rate up to 200-300 percentage (that's hundreds of percents or users), and reduce the number of un-subscribers. However, most email programs aren't able to handle video integrated directly into emailsHowever, you can solve this problem by placing a play button over the still images that you've created, leading to a landing page which features the full thing.

It's fairly simple to accomplish with the emails marketing tools we talked about up there along with marketing automation systems like HubSpot. It's an excellent method to test whether a particular video thumbnail gets you the best rate of clicks. And as a general rule of thumb, you could improve your campaigns" rate of conversion by adjusting the design and content to correspond with to the landing pages they lead to.

The website is packed with stunning videos

 Homepage

A majority of businesses create an overview video to use on their home page, a video that shows what your brand's about, why what you do is important, and the problem you're solving for. It's a huge influence how your brand is perceived in the eyes of anyone who is just observing your brand. Take Canary For instance.

 Pages that land

Although your website serves many purposes for a wide range of people Your landing pages are great for educating specific segments of your audience about the great things you have to offer in order to convince users to take the desired action. Marketers drive to landing pages via online advertisements, social media blogs, as well as search engines. These videos assist in turning the traffic to leads and customers. Take an look at our Business pages.

 Blog

It is a significant source of traffic inbound to your website, particularly when you post informative information, business news and thought-leadership regarding topics that the people who visit your site are concerned about as they're likely to search for the topics they're interested in on Google. This is also an excellent destination for sharing product and corporate news, events and best practices with your audience. Are you looking for an example? This article is (hopefully) much more enjoyable with videos sprinkled around.

 Page for FAQs and product pages

Then putting everything together

If the video-marketing approach you have chosen is executed correctly and effectively, you build an environment that helps grow your business Your social media videos are attracting new followers and engaging existing ones. Your video-rich blog posts rank highly in results for search engines and your emails -featuring stunning video thumbnails will direct users to your landing pages, with pertinent videos that have distinct CTAs All of these have been optimized to bring leads and increasing the conversions. And all of that is trackable, measurable and can be adapted over time. And speaking of...