There are 8,658 organizations currently in California fighting for their eCommerce market share. The competition is fierce, so you will need every bit of advantage you can get to reach your target audience and meet your business goals.
One of the ways to set yourself apart from your competition is to hire a California brand agency to help you better understand your market’s demands and local trends.
Also, having strong video marketing in place can certainly help your cause as 88% of people state that watching a brand’s video convinced them to buy a product or a service.
We understand that creating a video marketing strategy can be challenging and time-consuming, so we’ve developed five easy-to-follow steps to help you tackle this task.
1. Specify your goals
2. Identify your target audience
3. Set your budget
4. Choose the right hosting platform
5. Measure performance
1. Specify your goals
Before you start making your videos set clear goals. Think about what you wish to accomplish with your video marketing strategy. Do you wish to:
- Increase your brand awareness – make videos that tell a story. Use short, attention-grabbing videos for social media platforms and provide industry analysis videos that demonstrate your expertise.
- Increase online engagement – create short, educational promo videos that lead back to the longer version on your website, blog, or YouTube channel.
- Educate your customers about your products or services – set how-to videos and videos that deal with Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on your website. You can also use these videos for your e-mail marketing campaign.
- Increase revenue – make product videos on your website to help you reach the desired number of sales.
- Increase website traffic – since Google favors links with videos included, consider creating videos for your website involving your business overview, product videos, or customer testimonials.
2. Identify your target audience
You don’t want your videos to be like shooting in the dark. Your videos should be tailored to fit your customers’ personas. Look through your customer base and identify the key demographic, such as:
- Gender
- Age
- Occupation
- Education
- Location
- Interest
- Habits
This will help you understand your customers better and create video content that corresponds with their needs.
If you are only just starting and you have no customer base, try determining the demographics of your organic followers on social media accounts. You can also look at what your direct competition is doing with their video marketing strategy.
3. Set your budget
Even though you can make your own videos and upload them, chances are you’ll still need professional help from some of the best video production companies that can ensure your video marketing campaign’s success.
To help you better plan your budget, we made a basic pricing list for video production:
- Animated Explainers – $5,000 to $10,000
- Scriptwriters – $100 to $300 per hour
- Video editors – $100 to $200
- Project running $200 to $800
There are four levels of quality for a paid video advertising:
- Semi-professional videos – $1,000 to $3,000;
- Professional videos – $5,000 to $20,000;
- Premium quality videos – $25,000 to $50,000;
- Hollywood videos – $100,000 and up.
These prices are based on 1 to 2 minutes of video length.
4. Choose the right hosting platform
You can choose between free and paid video hosting platforms. Free video hosting platforms are:
- YouTube;
- Facebook;
- Vimeo;
- Twitch;
- Dailymotion;
- Instagram;
- Twitter.
The paid video hosting platforms offer you customization, more control, better security, and audience insights. The top five paid video hosting platforms are:
- Vidello – starts from $39 per month and offers a free trial
- Wistia – a $100 for 10 embedded videos per month
- SproutVideo – starts from $24.99 per month
- Vidyard – $15 per month for 20 embed videos
- Vimeo – offers annual fees from $240 to $900
5. Measure performance
The key to a successful video marketing strategy is knowing what works and what doesn’t. Keep your eye on the following seven key performance indicators (KPIs):
- View count – total number of people who viewed your video
- Engagement – generated comments, shares, and likes
- Play rate – how many people voluntarily clicked play to watch your video
- Watch time – total time people spent watching your video
- Click-through rate
- Conversions
By measuring KPIs you will be able to identify weak spots in your video marketing strategy and act accordingly.
Conclusion
When we know that 73% of people prefer to learn about a product or a service by watching a short video, it becomes clear that your business simply can’t survive without a proper video marketing strategy.
We hope our article helped you understand why you need a video marketing strategy and how to best optimize it for your business’s success.