Video has become a leading digital marketing strategy for businesses. According to a report by HubSpot, more than half of all marketing professionals worldwide cite video as offering the highest return on investment (ROI) of all content types. By investing additional money and resources into video marketing, you’ll generate more sales. But if you want to take full advantage of video marketing and the benefits it offers, you must scale your campaigns.
Use Video for Search Engine Optimization
One way to scale your video marketing campaigns involves search engine optimization (SEO). According to one study, web pages with video are 50 times more likely to rank in the first page of Google for their respective target keyword than web pages without video. Video offers rich content that both visitors and search engines like. So, by publishing videos on your website, you’ll have an easier time of climbing the search results and ultimately generating more traffic.
Get Social
Another way to scale your video marketing campaigns is to publish your videos on social media. Statistics show that videos receive 1,200% more shares on social media than text and images combined. Maybe it’s their visual nature, or perhaps it’s their ability to connect with users on a more visceral level. Regardless, you can rest assured knowing that video will receive more social shares than any other type of content.
There are two ways to publish videos on social media:
- Share a link to the video hosted on an external site (e.g. YouTube or your own website).
- Upload and embed the video directly to the social media network.
Of the two aforementioned methods, it’s generally best to upload videos directly to social media instead of simply posting a link. This ensures that users can play and watch your videos without leaving the social network.
Go Beyond YouTube
It’s no secret that YouTube is the largest video-hosting website. As of 2017, the Google-owned and operated platform has more than 1.5 billion monthly users, whom watch approximately 5 billion videos a day. For business owners, this means a powerful marketing channel for promoting their products, services and brands.
While there’s no substitution for YouTube in terms of traffic and reach, you shouldn’t limit your video marketing efforts to only using YouTube. There are several other video-sharing platforms, including DailyMotion, Vimeo, Metacafe and Vevo. Granted, these alternatives will generate less traffic. On the plus side, however, they also have less competition. So, while your videos won’t receive as much traffic when uploaded here, there are fewer publishers with whom to compete.
Paid Video Advertising
If you really want to scale your video marketing campaigns, you should consider using paid advertising. Google AdWords, for instance, allows publishers to advertise their videos on YouTube. Granted, some business owners may turn their head at the thought of paying for video ads, believing that most users click the “skip” button instead of watching the ads. With AdWords, however, you only pay when someone watches at least 30 seconds of your ad.
Creating video ads for YouTube is also easier than it sounds. Once you’ve made your video, you upload it to YouTube, after which you can log in to AdWords and specify your target audience and budget.
Post-Play Screens
Are you using post-play screens in your videos? As the name suggests, a post-play screen is a screen found at the end of a video, typically featuring a call to action (CTA) like “Visit our website to learn more” or “Call us today to schedule an appointment.” Post-play screens are designed to entice the viewer into taking action. Adding them to your videos is a quick and easy process, but it can yield substantially more leads and conversions when done correctly.
Diversify Video Content
Of course, you can also scale your video marketing campaigns by diversifying the content of your videos. Publishing only promotional videos and video ads is a serious mistake. Even if these videos yield leads and conversions, they restrict your ability to reach certain users. Some users seek informational videos, such as explainer videos, as opposed to promotional videos. Therefore, you should diversify the content of your videos by creating both promotional and informational videos.
Repurpose Content
Finally, try repurposing your content to expand your video marketing efforts. If you have an informational slideshow, for instance, you can easily convert it to a video, after which you can upload the newly created video to YouTube, Vimeo and other video-sharing websites. Or, you can take your videos currently hosted on YouTube and other websites and embed them in emails.
These are just a few ways to scale your video marketing campaigns. Perhaps the most important thing you can do is analyze your videos and optimize them accordingly. After allowing your videos to run for a given period of time, view the analytics logs from the respective network on which they are published. Using this information, you’ll have a better understanding of viewers’ behavior.
