Why Your Marketing Strategy Might Fail Without Video?

Have you figured out a strategy to promote your brand, product, or services on the internet? Chances are it has a publishing plan that already consists of text-based articles, social media graphics, and infographics. Some marketers use podcasts too.

What about video? Did you skip the video content once again? You might be thinking that it would be resource-heavy and might not be needed right away as you are just starting to promote. Or, because you find it overwhelmingly difficult to create content in too many formats at once. You have taken the risk of being left behind while your competitors might be leveraging the video format.

Did you know that video is one of the most effective content formats for marketing? Regardless of what marketing channels and tactics you have chosen to utilize for your marketing strategy, video can play a significant role to increase engagement rates and conversions.

People love visual content as it is easy to consume and there are some topics that are best described only if delivered visually. Internet speed is increasing day by day globally, and smart marketers have identified the potential to push more and more video content for users with high-speed internet.

Many tech companies have already signaled that video will dominate all content types by 2021. Today is the best time to include video content into your marketing strategy, if you have not done so already.

Where to begin?

First thing first, video content can be created in many lengths and forms. There is a misconception that video requires a huge budget, it not true. Not all video content is made with high-resolution professional filmmaking cameras, neither all videos that people watch online feature top models in them.

A brand can make many types of videos to support its objectives. It can make video ads to promote its products via paid ads, a video content campaign that compares its product with another product from a competitor, and a screen recorded how-to tutorials can be made to help existing users know how to use the product they have already purchased.

Companies that use video content in their ads have seen a major difference in click-through-rates after they started promoting video ads. A written how-to tutorial might not be easily consumable to your audiences either.

The journey of your potential customers remains the same with video. From the awareness phase to advocacy, videos can address what you used to tell through written materials and imagery. It is not a question to replace traditional content with video, it’s about incorporating both of them to create impactful marketing materials.

Now, that you have decided to create some video content and place it wherever possible, let’s see how does it affect the resources you need to host and distribute video content.

Social media platforms that have video hosting:

• YouTube
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Snapchat

If you continue to read, you will learn how videos can help your SEO campaign.

Video for Search Engine Optimization

This one might surprise you! You might only have heard that from an SEO perspective, web pages do rank in SERPS and optimization means placing a certain ratio of keywords in certain places inside your articles. That is true but there is more to that!

Putting together a successful search engine optimization campaign is far beyond stuffing keywords here and there, and requires a deep knowledge of search engine result pages, also known as SERPs.

Google SEO

Let’s have a look at what kind of content formats does Google offers to searchers.

Other than articles, it includes knowledge cards, knowledge panels, image packs, top stories, people also ask, featured snippets, shopping results, a tweet box, thumbnails, and video. It is Google’s algorithm that decides what kind of content to return on what query.

See, our search for “how to make the best pizza dough recipe” returned many types of results including videos. You can see rich snippets for recipes, frequently asked questions, and videos. Interestingly, all videos are from YouTube, which means that having a video uploaded on YouTube can rank in Google SERPs if properly optimized.

In short, it is possible to rank your videos on Google for a topic where the Google algorithm favors visual content. Let’s not confuse this with the VIDEO tab on the Google search page, here we are talking about the default tab, that gets most of the traffic.

YouTube SEO

YouTube is a video discovery platform, only so many people search for their favorite videos on YouTube. Most visitors rely on the genius algorithm of YouTube to suggest videos based on their previous engagement history.

Making engaging content is the key when it comes to convincing YouTube bots to recommend your videos to new users. But, that’s not all, there are still a few optimizations that you can do to help YouTube understand what your video content is about.

Optimizing the following would help YouTube better understand your content:

• Video title
• Video description
• Channel description
• Channel tags
• Video hashtags

Conclusion:

Video is the next big thing when it comes to visual marketing, ignoring it can cost you and your business. While leveraging it can give you a competitive edge over others. YouTube is the biggest video hosting platform where you can upload your brand videos, interviews, tutorials without having to worry about performance issues. Additionally, the Google search engine would recommend YouTube videos to relevant audiences.