Video Marketing On A Shoestring Budget — Is It Possible?
When your organisation is in budding phase, finding economically cheap ways is not optional, it’s a compulsion.
In this article, I am going to share my tried and tested techniques that gives maximum output when you are on a low budget.
What is Video Marketing?
Using videos to promote or market your brand, product or service is known as video marketing. Businesses create 2-5 minute long videos about specific topics depicting their product and services and then upload it to various video sharing websites like YouTube for distribution and exposure.
As videos are very appealing & have better retention, videos serve as an alternate medium for businesses to convey their message to a wider audience and get more exposure.
What this Guide Contains:
I decided to segregate all the must know details about video marketing in this article. As this is a vast topic altogether, here’s what you can expect from this guide.
1)Video Marketing Trends
2)Types of Videos based on marketing funnel.
3)Video Marketing Statistics for 2020.
4)Video Marketing Tips for Any Budget- The Best Way to Start Video Marketing Yourself.
5)Video marketing Tips for YouTube.
6)Viral Video Marketing 2020.
Free Resources:
For creating and marketing a video, you’d need some free and low budget resources. By the end of this article, you can find following:
- How to Easily Create Marketing Videos from Images?
- Fantastic places to find background music for Video(Royalty free)
- How to Learn Video Marketing Online at free of cost?
Why Video Marketing is the Next Big Thing in 2020?
According to a marketing survey, the average person watches 1.5 hours of video each day. The engagement rate of videos is very high. If we look at some other stats, videos are proven to bring you better results than text.
1. According to HubSpot, including video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80%!
2. Over 70% of marketers claim that video produces more conversions than any other content.
3. About 90% of the total information transmitted to your brain is visual. The human brain is not only more used to seeing visuals but is also better at interpreting them.
4. People are over 27 times more likely to click on an online video ad than a static banner ad.
5. Videos encourage more social shares than any other format. And, videos can improve brand recall by making it memorable. Also, these can help buyers to decide by increasing their purchase intent.
All in all, video is proven to bring better conversion when blended with Email, landing page, blog or social media.
Popular brands like Google and Samsung are ruling the video marketing world with their unique strategies and engaging content. And, it’s not just for the big brands anymore, everyone should be getting on board with video.
Video marketing is only growing in scope and you’re only limited by your imagination. There is a wide range of opportunities for you to choose from. Below we have given the types of Video Marketing-
Based on Marketing Funnel:
If you are a pro marketer, who is expanding his/her expertise by venturing into the video marketing space. Here are some types of video that you should create for serving different purposes.
And if you’re new to marketing, I’ll let you know about the funnels in my next article.
Starting of the funnel: Awareness Stage –
This phase can be compared to seeing a profile on Tinder. When you do that, you might or might not swipe right.
At this stage, a visitor has just came across one of your page, video or product. This person might or might not know about your company and brand. Here your task is to create awareness. Let them hang around a bit and don’t force them to buy anything. The following kind of videos are for new visitors.
1. Brand Film/Introduction Video
2. Animation Videos
3. Explainer/Tutorial Videos
4. Documentaries
5. Basic Guides
6. How-tos/DIY Videos
Mid Funnel: Mature Stage
When someone swipes right on your Tinder profile, what does it means? A positive signal, right?
But not all right swipes turn into a date. Now you know what I mean by mid funnel. A good conversation is necessary to convert this right swipe in a date.
If the same person in first funnel decided to dwell and see your other pages or videos, it’s a good indication.
They liked what they saw on the starting funnel and now you can offer them something they are looking for.
If they decided to subscribe or follow you, you can get a potential customer by showing a video of mid funnel. Here are some examples:
1)Video Emails
2)Product video
3)Corporate video/ Company Culture / 4)Events Video
5)Testimonials
6)Announcement Video
7)Social Message Video
Bottom Funnel: Decision Stage
It’s the time to ask out for date, the decision stage.
Your visitor has interacted with you and now holds a positive or negative image of your brand or company.
Depending on that response, you can showcase following kind of videos to them.
1)FAQ Video
2)Demonstration Video
3)Personalized Videos
4)Webinar/Vlog
5)Thank You Video
Best Platforms for Video Marketing:
1. YouTube
2. Facebook
3. Instagram/IGTV
4. Snapchat
5. Twitter (Periscope)
6. Tiktok (Formerly known as Musical.ly) for personal branding
How to Create Awesome Marketing Videos on a Budget?
If you take the “traditional” route, you’d need three skilled people essentially in your team:
1)Scriptwriter
2)Actors and camera crews
3)Professional video editor
Technology is making marketing videos on a budget easier for the stand-loners and startups. Before you start, these guidelines will help you to keep important things checked:
• Think about what you can do. Think carefully about solving a Customer Pain Point and create videos. If possible choose a good story.
• Make sure you use catchy music and fun elements in the video. Forget not to make a video that forms an instant bond with prospective customers and adds personality to a product.
• Hire strategically or collaborate with influencers from your industry. Their large fan base will help to make your video viral.
• Keep your videos short. Various platforms have limit for video length. Keep the video within permissible limit.
1)Instagram Post – 20-60 Sec
2)IG Story – 15 Sec
3)IG Live – 60 Min
4)IGTV Post – 10-60 Min
5)Facebook Profile Video – 7 Sec
6)Video Cover – 20-90 Sec
7)Live streams – 4 hour
8)Fb story – 20 Sec
9)Twitter Video – 2 Min 20 Sec
10)YouTube Videos – 12 Hours (15 minute for non verified acount)
Ideal length – 5-7 Minute
(For monetization minimum 10 Min long video is recommended)
• If you are low on budget, make a video in PowerPoint or with images. Use a smartphone and natural light to record a video. Low budget videos can look just as good as more expensive videos.
Tips to Market YouTube Videos to Get More Views and Improved Conversion:
YouTube is the second largest search engine. If you are creating the video for this platform ranking will matter. Optimize your videos to rank highly on both YouTube and in Google search results.
How to optimize your videos?
Create the meta data such as Title, thumbnail, tags, description, subtitles, category etc, very carefully. The YouTube SEO process begins with video keyword research. To find right keywords, go through the YouTube Search Suggest.
Because these are terms that people actually type into YouTube. So, there’s no need to wonder if they’re popular or not. If YouTube suggests them to you, they 1000% are.
Check what your competition is already doing:
Stalk the already ranking videos on the chosen Keyword and go through their content. Make something even better and reach out the right people.
Here’s how you can take existing content to the next level:
1. Make the video longer to an extent where you’re not adding any filler content. In case if your competitor has created a list of “10 video marketing ideas for real estate”, you can create a list of “21 video marketing ideas for real estate that actually work.”
2. Create more up to date video with better designs to create a visually appealing experience.
3. With VidIQ chrome extension, check the right tags for your video. Specially target low-hanging fruits i.e. low competition keywords.
To rank your video in YouTube search results and Google both, you’d need to focus on following matrices
User retention
Ratio of likes vs dislike
Video Comments
Subscribers earned on that particular video
Shares
CTR
To promote your video, you can reach out the social media platforms/ Influencers/ Q&A sites like Quora.
How Can You Add Call to Action in Videos?
For directing your viewers to a clear next step is the key to strategic video marketing. You can provide the call to action in YouTube Videos through following ways:
Card
End Screen – watch another video/subscribe channel/click link
Button
Associate website link
Subscribe button
Description of the video
5 Compelling Benefits of Video Marketing:
1. Increase and earn new website traffic by telling brand story or testimonial, product in use.
2. Convinces potential customers to purchase a product or service.
3. Educating new users: It help prospective customers and new customers understand how to use a product or service while reinforcing the value it adds to their lives.
4. Answer FAQs and user queries proactively. It helps businesses reducing support queries.
What Is Viral Video Marketing?
Viral video marketing is a marketing technique used to promote brand awareness, products, services, or to achieve other marketing objectives. This technique uses social networking and other tools to gain traction for the video.
Viral video marketing relies on people sharing the video for it to be successful. So, what constitutes a video as hitting the status of viral? The number of views necessary to be considered viral varies from definition to definition.
When we say the video is viral,
a video needs to gain over 5 million views in a 2-3-week period.
Why You Should Be Using Viral Video Marketing?
Cost effective marketing
Better audience Targeting
How to Make Your Viral Marketing Video
• Focus on that points when you make a video for viral.
• What story will it tell?
• How does that relate back to your brand?
• Why will people want to watch it?
• Will people want to share it?
When you are putting together a concept for the video there are a few do’s and don’ts that you should follow:
• Make the story emotional, but not depressing. Eg. Vicks Video on Equal Rights for Transgenders.
• Keep the branding minimal/subtle.
• Develop a marketing plan for it.
• Quality and length of the video must be optimal.
• Know what is in trend and use this as an opportunity to create a viral video. Eg. Google’s video on India-Pak Partition.
Suggested Resources:
Best tools to Easily Create Marketing Videos from Images:
Animoto (14 days free trial)
Rawshorts
Powerpoint (Free)
Fantastic places to find background music for Video:
Bensound
Premiumbeat
How to Learn Video marketing: Best Resources
YouTube
Vidyard
Wistia
Brightcove
If you liked this article, I am going to publish following topics in upcoming weeks. Stay tuned with me.
• video marketing strategies
• video platform
• engaging video
• search engine
• online video marketing
• video marketing campaign
• customer testimonials
• product or service
• videos ads
• target audience
• written content
• thought leadership
• video content marketers
• creating video
• watching a video
• video production
• call to action
• content marketing
• social media
• successful video
