Believe it or not, 60% of firms are currently actively employing social media videos for digital marketing, as per a recent research report.
Therefore, there is a good likelihood that your rivals are using social media video advertising already — to market their goods, promote their business, and increase traffic to websites.
Why shouldn’t you then? Fortunately, there are several ways that videos can be utilized in social media advertising.
Digital marketers are not just confined to slick instructional content or TV-style advertisements.
It’s now simple to try out video marketing, especially with the emergence of streaming media, a focus on brand loyalty, and easily available editing software.
To develop an effective social media video marketing plan, you, as a digital marketer, can adhere to our 7-step process.
A 7-step guide with smart tips to create the ideal social media advertising plan for digital marketers
Properly executed social media video marketing can function as a funnel to assist you to gain more clients by enabling you to:
- Draw the interest of your intended audience.
- Engage with them by providing relevant content.
- In conclusion, make a pertinent offer to them.
- Convert prospects into leads or sales.
Now that you know the benefits of social media video marketing, let’s go through 7 tips to make your plan a hit!
1. Establish video marketing objectives
Whenever setting up a new social networking project, objectives ought to be established. What targets will your videos achieve? Where would these films fit within the sales funnel?
We advise only setting a few targets when you’re first commencing so that you don’t become swamped.
Brand awareness is an illustration of a video-based promotional strategy. This becomes especially related to the kind of content you’ll make and guide your upcoming videos.
Videos are frequently employed in advertising campaigns by some companies. They might begin on a product page before branching off to end up in advertising on social media. Others solely upload films for online advertisements.
Videos may easily fit into any of the 5 levels of the marketing funnel, as long as you create your content development approach with the five segments in mind. Think about where your video promotional activities will fit inside the funnel when you evaluate them.
Your call to action (CTA) in your media content will be a lot more powerful if you have established your targets and know if you’re within the funnel.
2. Select your platform(s)
Every significant social networking site, as well as others, would have its own type of video. Whereas more recent sites including TikTok and Snapchat mainly favor one style, older ones such as Facebook provide a selection of film types.
Start using video on platforms where you currently have an established audience base. Learning what every platform provides and what clip sizes can be broadcast is another factor to take into account when deciding on the best platform.
This is crucial since it’s preferable to pick channels that work well together if you want to reuse your films.
It could be challenging to keep note of what kinds of video footage can be shared where or if you should do further editing as various social media sites continue to introduce new functionalities.
Below are the types of videos you can upload on each prevalent social media site:
- Landscape and portrait clips
- Live Streaming
- Facebook Stories
- Portraits and landscapes
- Live Streaming
- Instagram Stories
- Long-form material via Instagram TV (IGTV)
- Instagram Reels
- Portraits and landscape clips
- Live Streaming
- Articles
- Landscape videos
- Live Streaming
YouTube
- Landscape and portraits
- Live Streaming
- Short videos
TikTok
- Videos in the portrait feed
3. Choose your video formats
Choosing the right type of clip for your business is a crucial stage in the marketing plan. Even while not all video files are created equally, it is still vital that they serve your main objectives.
Here are some distinct video genres and their advantages. You can also experiment with additional video concepts.
- Educational
These can raise brand recognition among potential new clients. They frequently adopt a less informal and more professional tone and position the company’s brand.
Tutorials on how to operate your product effectively may be the main subject if they were made for existing consumers.
- Behind-the-scenes
These provide insight into staff members and business processes. They occasionally serve to amuse the crowd or offer a fictitious glimpse behind the scenes.
- Banner ads
Video banner advertising provides digital marketing initiatives with a new dimension. In fact, it’s quite simple to make outstanding video banner ads and cross-channel advertisements. With an online banner maker, you can select the appropriate templates, customize your designs, and export your ad set in any type of format, including MP4, JPG, PNG, HTML5, AMP, and others.
After deciding which categories of videos to focus on, it is time to begin structuring the real video.
- Interviews
These are terrific methods to introduce your community to a fresh influencer or vice versa when using guest speakers. Giving a guest control of the virtual microphone can be entertaining and give your business more authenticity.
- Fun things
These include jokes, adorable animals, and even practical jokes. Although they only exist to amuse the viewers, they may be an excellent approach to emphasize your corporate identity and foster a feeling of camaraderie among your viewers.
- Testimonials
These videos, which in marketing resemble customer spotlights, help to build social evidence for your company. Videos that highlight how a consumer utilizes your service or product and how happy they are with it work on a personal level.
4. Schedule the content creation
Long-term time and financial savings are possible with a solid content production strategy. You must plan how films will be produced and shot, whether you use a chart or the more traditional notepad.
Here are the steps you should follow:
- Choosing the necessary tools and decorations.
- Developing a script.
- Making script edits.
- Planning the video’s plot.
- Organizing the shooting for the best possible filming. There won’t be much linearity in filmmaking.
- Assembling the appropriate featured individuals.
- Deciding on the location(s) for your shoot and planning your timing around natural light.
- Being aware of where to submit the film for editing.
- Choosing the person who will approve and sign off on each stage.
- Verifying that the audio you’re using has the required permissions.
Note: In the last step, when you’re using audio in your video files, it is better to accompany it with the appropriate text. Why? It facilitates simple knowledge transfer and expands your reach to an audience comprising diverse demographics.
When you convert audio to text, you may automatically generate text from the audio that you can then edit or have skillfully crafted by expert linguists and subtitlers.
If it is your initial attempt at creating a thorough video content strategy, you may discover areas where you might need to alter it or items you overlooked previously as you go through the schedule. After a sound plan has been carried out, post-production should begin.
5. Understand what involves post-production
Post-production should be given ample time, particularly when your videos are used for advertisements or require more extensive editing. Post-production is more than simply editing scenes and reassembling frames to the soundtrack.
Closed captioning, text overlaying, CTA panels, and other features are also included. You’ll require extra hours if you wish to film more and make your videos more polished.
Videos that are uploaded must go through post-production. You may add tags, closed subtitles in different languages, and comprehensive subtitles on YouTube, for instance.
6. Plan and publicize the videos
Now since the video is finished, it’s important to organize and market it. There are publishing capabilities for video on a few platforms and tools.
Do not consider social media clips to be one-and-done. Based on the social calendar, a completely created film can be posted to many sites over the course of a few months.
You may repeatedly advertise it via Tweets. You must frequently advertise live streams if you want a large audience to tune in at the appropriate moment.
Many videos could be created on a single filming day. Various videos can be edited together to make new ones or use for advertising. When publicizing videos, always think big.
7. Recognize and evaluate metrics
The most significant stage in any plan is the analysis phase, which comes last. If you don’t look at the data related to a video, you can’t be sure how well it does.
What is the number of views? When was the watch? The comments, likes, and shares? When you start work, it’s crucial that you are aware of the various metrics that each network offers.
Each platform includes built-in metrics that can be used to determine how well each video did, often down to the number of viewers who viewed the first 3 seconds of the clip.
Your success measures must be in line with the primary objectives you set. Your CTA for a video could be to provide a website address so that viewers can discover more about your product if you want to raise brand awareness.
It’s also critical to remember that viewers will still watch old clips. A 2-year-old video may be valuable to your clients even today with the correct keyword mix and a timeless subject.
Conclusion
Well you have it, then!
A comprehensive seven-step roadmap for developing your video marketing plan.
We hope that this motivates your company to develop its upcoming video series or to know more about social networking videos in general.