“That’s a wrap!”
You often hear that in the film industry, once a project is completed, particularly on the filming side. Sometimes we say this in the videography and video marketing world as well. It’s mostly when a final cut is completed, but I have to be honest with myself: is it really true? Are we actually finished? Is this actually wrapped?
The creation of the content is wrapped up, but now you’ve got this whole other piece to your video marketing strategy: distributing your videos and distributing them properly.
I’m sure you’ve heard of this phrase: “If a tree fell and no one heard it, did it make a sound?” That’s a similar concept when it comes to video marketing on the distribution side. If no one saw your video, was it ever made?
Of course, we know that’s true because there are people who created the video in this case. I see it so many times, for a variety of reasons, why school marketers get their final video and don’t take a ton of time to reflect on some of the best practices for getting it out there. Because of that, there becomes friction when it comes to utilizing the video with the target audience.
On top of that, there are a ton of “marketing experts” out there who don’t really understand how to properly distribute video. They treat it like an afterthought, and because of that, they’re giving bad advice. I can’t tell you how many times, once the video is completed, I’ll always offer, “Hey, let’s talk about distributing the video.” Mostly just in terms of best practices and whatnot. Oftentimes a client will say, “Oh, our marketing team is going to handle that.” Well, your marketing team might not know what it doesn’t know.Whether that’s an outsource partner or an internal team, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that line. I see the video they spent tons of time, money, and effort putting together, and they slap it in the bottom right-hand corner of the website like an unwanted child.
I think it’s really important to focus not only on the video itself (the creation) but also on how you’re going to get the video out there. Many times you might say, “We’re going to utilize it on social media, use it in lead nurturing campaigns, and put it on the website.” Go deeper than that: how are you actually going to do that?
- Are you going to use a YouTube link and copy it onto your social media post?
- Are you going to hide the video at the bottom of tons of different web pages, making it insanely difficult to see or find?
- Are you going to put it in an email without letting people know, like “Hey, there’s a video in this email” in the subject line?
All of these questions are things that should be asked during pre-production, and certainly during the finalization of the video.
When you get the video in front of the right audience, the audience watches the video. The audience is then interested in learning more, and you’re going to be able to have a lot more sample size to collect the data you need in terms of what’s resonating and what’s not resonating. You can make accurate decisions with your good data.
However, if you do not distribute your videos properly, well, you might as well have just thrown the money out the window.
In some cases, like running Meta ads, it’s generally pretty easy to utilize the video properly because Meta really only lets you utilize the video in one way. In other scenarios, particularly for organic social media, it’s a little harder because there are multiple ways to distribute the video, such as utilizing links (which is a no-no for the most part on social media). So what’s the right way?
If you haven’t checked out our blogs on specific ways to distribute your videos for each platform, I encourage you to do that on our website under video marketing mastery (exactly where you found this blog!). For today though, I’m going to give you a couple of quick tips:
- Make sure your videos are easy to find on your website. If it’s your main marketing video, make sure it is as close to the top fold of your website as possible. Other supporting videos should also be on the top fold of whatever specific page, such as an athletics page or an arts page or a specific grade. Utilize a good thumbnail graphic and ideally embed it via YouTube or Vimeo (My preference is Vimeo). This is NOT the hero video on your website.
- For organic social media, make sure you upload the video directly to that platform. This is pretty obvious with platforms like Instagram, but it might not be as obvious on platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn. The reason you want to upload it directly to those platforms is that they will prioritize videos that are uploaded directly to their platform. If you share a link, that link takes someone off their platform. As a whole, make sure that you upload the videos directly to the platform.
- For email marketing or lead nurturing emails, put the word “video” on the subject line of your email. In fact, it should be the first word in brackets. Example: [VIDEO] main subject line. Studies have shown that emails with the word “video” in the subject line have a 300% higher likelihood of open rates. Integrating a video into your email can be done in a few ways, depending on your email service. A method I favor is using a thumbnail image that includes a “play” button. Clicking this image directs the viewer to the video on the platform you are using to host the video like YouTube or Vimeo.
- For all of these examples, make sure you have a compelling thumbnail graphic. It should not be your school’s logo. It should not be a still image of one of the interview shots. It should be a compelling B-roll shot that is actually in the video.
Proper video distribution doesn’t have to be an overly time-consuming process. While it only requires a small amount of extra effort, this effort is crucial, as distribution can significantly impact whether your video is successful or not as well as potentially impact your overall marketing and enrollment goals.
If you have any questions about video distribution, please feel free to reach out to me at joe@monzomediapro.com.
