Video Marketing Tip 1: Website

Video Marketing Tip 1: Website

by | Feb 13, 2019 | General

To kick off our series on how to rock video as part of your content marketing strategy, we’re going to talk about how to get your video assets to complement and feed into your biggest online asset: your website. I’ll be sharing tips, tricks, and industry secrets to drive more business with video, so watch this space for future installments.

Branding videos can serve as the flagship of your marketing strategy and campaign, if you execute the right way. Your branding video is your handshake–it’s your opportunity to introduce your brand, company, and services to prospective customers, and you have to make a good first impression if you want a second meeting. All other aspects of your marketing strategy should tie into this essential piece. A successful brand video will put a face to your business and help potential clients relate to you and your unique identity. Here, we’ll provide some useful tips to effectively use a brand video on your website and optimize that “hello” to turn your audience into customers.  

Positioning Your Video on Your Website

You need to strategically place your brand video so that it draws the eye of the visitor on your page. You want to make sure that the video is placed above the fold on your homepage so that visitors don’t have to scroll down or click a link to another page in order to view it. Accessibility can be a determining factor in whether or not someone actually views the piece, so you want to make sure that it’s as easy as possible for your audience to reach. Remember, your viewers won’t search around for your content–you have to deliver it with a bow on top. Respect your site visitors’ time, and make it easy for them to find.

Avoid Autoplay 

While Autoplay has changed the game on social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, it’s a big unwelcome distraction when used on your website. If your brand video is your hello, then using Autoplay is like breaking into someone’s house instead of knocking on the door.

 When you visit a new site and you hear noise in the background, your first inclination is to immediately find the source and stop it from playing. This feature intrudes on the experience of your visitors and greatly decreases the chances of them engaging with your content. They need to make the decision to click the play button of their own volition, and forcing them to interact with the video when they first enter your page is a poor strategy (and, to some, an offputting one.)

Choose Your Video Thumbnail with Care; Avoid the Default  

Since you shouldn’t force viewers to watch your video, you need to entice them into doing it.  Choosing the right thumbnail is vital to achieving that. A thumbnail, as the name implies, is the small still image that you see on a video before you hit play. This image is the first entry point for potential viewers, and if your thumbnail looks uninteresting, there’s a much lower chance of them actually playing your brand video.

You need to take care in selecting the still image, and not just use YouTube’s default. Choosing an image of a person in mid-speech, for example, is much less appealing than an  up-close shot of a product or demonstration. You want your thumbnail to be as eye-catching as possible, so take the time to evaluate whether or not your image is sending the right message and get feedback from others (like a video professional).

Should You Use a YouTube Link or Embed to Your Website?

Deciding on whether or not to upload a YouTube link of your brand video to your website or embed it directly depends entirely on your goals and business needs. Embedding the video onto your site has an increased impact on SEO rankings, whereas a YouTube link is much easier to upload and provides viewers with an avenue to explore other video content on your channel.

Include a Short Description Next to Your Video

Including a short description next to your brand video is another marketing tactic you can use. This provides the visitor with some insights regarding the content they’ll be viewing and might make them more inclined to click the play button. Alternatively, you can also provide a brief description of your company or simply a list of services. Any text you can add can help with your SEO, as well.

Stay tuned for more video hacks and marketing strategies, and give me a call if you’d like to talk about how to execute this advice for your own website.

Include the link to the post on embedding videos here.

Why Shorter Videos are Often Better

Why Shorter Videos are Often Better

by | Feb 1, 2019 | General

Video is the new King of Content. It’s how you get your clients to notice you when you’re competing for precious screen real estate and even more precious attention spans. The most sophisticated brand building and marketing campaigns are starting to include video as a key component right alongside social posts and blog content. The only question is how to optimize the video content you create to engage your distracted and time-crunched viewers. As a general rule, shorter videos have a higher chance of impacting your target audience than longer videos.

We’re living increasingly digitized lifestyles, and your clients expect and demand information to be easy to find, easy to digest, and succinct. Your audience has limitless options available for information and entertainment, and they’ve forgotten how to devote their focus to any one thing for an extended period of time. In other words, they don’t feel obligated to spend time with your video, and they have no problem clicking away if they don’t see what they are looking for quickly.

Due to the new marketing challenges of this digital age, it’s more important than ever that the content and length of your videos are carefully curated to align with your audience’s expectations. That’s the only way you’ll convince them to actually watch, click, and call.

What’s the Optimal Length for Video Content?

There’s no hard and fast rule that can tell you exactly how long your video should be to accommodate your viewers. You have to figure out what type of content you’re promoting and who your target audience is before even going into production.

For example, if you were leading a sales meeting, you wouldn’t want to open with a five-minute video. That will ensure that they’ll be more absorbed in their bagels and coffee than your pitch.  Instead, you would want to set the tone of your meeting with a much shorter piece, and then fill in the gaps for prospective customers and partners afterwards. If you were creating a branding video, you would want to ensure your content doesn’t exceed about two minutes in order to give yourself a better chance of grabbing attention.

That said, there are situations where longer pieces are appropriate. Educational videos can be significantly longer because viewers are specifically seeking out this content to learn something they think is valuable, which means they’re willing to spend more time on your piece.

Do What it Takes to Create an Engaging Video

If the content of your video isn’t interesting, even three minutes can feel like an eternity for the audience. This is why it’s critical to spend the time and resources to create engaging videos that truly resonate with your viewers. An unscripted blurb on a handheld iPhone isn’t always going to cut it.

Don’t assume that filming a shorter video means that it’ll take less time to shoot and edit. A high quality, effective 30-second video can take over 20 hours to produce. A 15-minute training video may only take four hours to deliver. Production time varies greatly depending on your unique marketing needs and goals, but it’s always worth it to go the extra mile in creating truly compelling video content that grabs the attention of your audience and doesn’t let go. If it’s not worth doing right, it’s not worth doing. Give me a call at Monzo Media if you want to talk about a good target length for your next piece of video collateral, and how we can use video to get your audience’s attention.