For the most part, people are visual learners. We like pictures, colors, videos, charts and graphs. That means if your marketing content includes videos, odds are a potential customer is going to click on it. That’s basically what video marketing is all about; it’s a way to transmit valuable information about your product, services or industry to prospective customers in a highly engaging way to generate traffic, increase brand awareness and encourage engagement with your brand.

Some of the effective types of marketing videos include:

The specific types of video you choose to create will depend on your business and marketing needs, but you should never consider them standalone pieces of content. They should form one part of a much larger, more dynamic marketing strategy that includes all other forms of content to maximize engagement with users across all channels and formats.

Video marketing is powerful because it doesn’t take much effort for users to click and watch videos (especially if they’re short), meaning prospective customers can access the information they contain faster and easier than other forms of content.

Here are some of the benefits video advertising can deliver for your organization:

Boost Engagement

Videos work best when they are embedded into other pieces of content as part of a larger content strategy. Done right, a great video can help you maximize user engagement on other pages. It increases the amount of time users spend interacting with your brand and improves the likelihood of goal conversion.

Increase Organic Traffic

User engagement is one of the many metrics Google and other search engines use to determine where your pages rank on search results pages. That means the better your videos encourage user engagement, the higher Google will rank your pages. It also means you’ll generate more organic traffic to other areas of your website.

Higher Goal Conversions

Users need to stay on your pages long enough to know what you want them to do (and to actually take that action). If they find your videos engaging enough, they’re significantly more likely to take the next step in the customer journey, whether that’s subscribing to your newsletter, filling out a form or downloading a report.

Enhance your ROI

Strategically embedding video into your existing content turbocharges engagement and accomplishes more of your goals with fewer marketing dollars spent. That means you’re getting more value from your existing budget, freeing up dollars to spend on other marketing (or business) initiatives.

LinkedIn Recruiter

Among LinkedIn’s various uses and capabilities is the facilitation of targeting recruitment efforts — AKA, LinkedIn Recruiter. LinkedIn Recruiter is a service that allows businesses to make data-driven decisions on how they conduct their recruitment efforts, enabling them to filter based on years of experience, skill sets, degrees, location and more. 

To shed light on this service, LinkedIn released a demo video, highlighting the features of LinkedIn Recruiter and speaking to its unique value propositions for businesses. It’s an engaging, lighthearted, yet informative video, letting recruiters know exactly what they stand to gain through the service.

MUD\WTR

MUD\WTR offers a selection of plant-based coffee alternatives that provide (mostly) caffeine-free energy. This “about us” video intertwines the founder’s personal background with the company’s foundational story to convey its vision and mission. It works because it maintains the casual, pseudo-crunchy style the company maintains across its other collateral, while directly targeting the artists, travelers and experience junkies through relevant graphics and imagery.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Given that Adobe’s software is known for its ability to facilitate eye-catching visuals, it only makes sense that their video marketing efforts are among the best. Adobe Creative Cloud — home to popular products, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and more — has inbuilt features bespoke to the needs of enterprises. These features include file sharing, central dashboards, and real time project collaboration, among others. 

To display the way its software benefits businesses, Adobe released a video titled ‘What is Creative Cloud for teams?’ which displays engaging motion-visuals and concise voice overs. The use of animation holds attention, while the message being portrayed speaks directly to how Adobe Creative Cloud can give businesses a creative edge — making for a convincing video marketing asset. 

True Classic

True Classic is a men’s clothing brand that makes shirts, pants and other pieces of clothing designed to provide a better, more tailored fit for men. Their videos are unapologetically honest — they know who their target audience is and what they want. They include a great balance of humor and messaging and are unafraid to take risks by poking fun at the brand, making them both approachable and relatable.

It takes time to plan and execute a good video marketing strategy. Here are some of the best ways to ensure you knock every one of your marketing videos out of the park:

1. Define Your Goals

Before you hit the record button or get into the production studio, it’s important you understand exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. Your goals will serve as your North Star and guide all production and distribution efforts.

For example, if you’re trying to drive more traffic to your blog, a shorter video explaining one or two key concepts will do the trick. A product demo, on the other hand, might be a little longer and should include a clear call to action at the end.

2. Know Your Target Audience

Don’t just create videos about topics that you find interesting. You should shape all video content marketing around the information your audience actually wants and needs. Interviews, surveys and user engagement analytics are all great ways to learn about your customers’ pain points and the information they find most valuable.

3. Be Consistent With Your Branding

If you typically maintain a serious, professional tone in other marketing materials but your videos err more on the fun and whimsical side, it might make your brand appear inconsistent and disorganized. Customers won’t like that.

All video scripts, images, graphics, colors and other elements should be consistent with your existing brand guidelines. Viewers need to know that when they click into your video, they’re actually consuming a piece of content made by you.

4. Keep It Short, Sweet and to the Point

Users like videos, but that doesn’t mean they’re willing to sit through 20-minute-long documentaries explaining every detail of your product offering. Most video content consumers still have short attention spans, and they want to be able to consume an entire video in as short a time as possible.

You should ideally condense your message and convey it in a maximum of two minutes (and ideally much shorter than that). Eliminate the fluff, avoid long-winded intros and get straight to the point; you’ll get your message across faster and encourage viewers to engage with your marketing video longer.

The short answer — anywhere and everywhere! Video content is one of the best ways to share information and increase engagement with other online collateral, so embed relevant videos anywhere you want users to engage with your brand.

Of course, some videos have their own legs and deserve exclusive real estate. These are your “about us” videos, product demos and other forms of video that don’t require other content to convey a message. In those cases, consider creating purpose-built landing pages to house your videos and direct traffic.

In the end, standalone videos will never see the light of day, so you should never shirk on a good distribution strategy. Don’t be afraid to chop your videos into smaller, snackable chunks and include them in email marketing and social media posts, sending them out to your network and beyond.