Over the years, video marketing has revolutionized digital marketing, especially social media video marketing. With over 3.6 billion users across platforms, social networks have emerged as a new, convenient, and affordable option for businesses across the globe. 

New platforms like TikTok, Facebook Live, Twitch, Snapchat have become an overnight phenomenon, not to mention the good-old YouTube, which remains a fan-favorite. And the kind of reach these platforms have, it’s hard to imagine marketing with conventional ways.

Videos offer versatility. You’re not limited to using the same style or type. Live-streaming videos, editing apps, in-built platform features – all offer you a much easier way to tap into this new world. But being a new medium also means that you must continue to revise your strategy as the technologies available to us continue to evolve and change.

Let’s help you figure out how you can build a successful social media video marketing strategy by diving into these steps.

Define your goals

What is it that you’re looking to achieve through videos? After all, creating a video strategy is same as any other marketing channel strategy. Are you looking for more conversions? Sales? Engagements? Awareness? Or simply delighting your customers?

In a typical marketing funnel, there are four stages:

• Awareness: Here, marketers identify a challenge or opportunity for the customer and define the problem. 
• Consideration: Here, customers take matters into their own hands by finding a solution to fix their problem through research like recommendations, watching product reviews, etc.
• Conversion: Here, marketers present the prospective customer with their solution or product to solve their problem.
• Loyalty: Here, customers are satisfied with a product or service, and start opting for repeat purchases, triggering brand loyalty.

You must start with a few goals initially to not get overwhelmed. And considering these stages in your marketing funnel will help you figure out how you can target these stages to achieve your social media video marketing goals. Your videos must be planned according to the stage your customers are in.

At the awareness stage, you must create videos to attract customers by creating more awareness about your brand or product.

At the consideration stage, you must look at videos educating the prospects about your industry and the type of problems you can solve; think of “how-to” videos.

At the conversion stage, you must look at convincing the prospects to buy your product through testimonials or product videos.

At the retention stage, you must look at adding value for your customers with education, new feature launches, or even your company culture videos.

Identify your target audience

Once you figure out what you want to do with your videos, your next step must be to identify your target audience. This is a crucial step for social media video marketing. For instance, if you market innovative meat delicacy videos to a largely vegan audience, they might watch it, but they won’t convert!

Your videos must always be created with a specific target audience in mind. And one way to help you identify that audience is by developing buyer personas. This exercise is typically conducted when your business is launching a new product or service. But the personas will also help you find out the set of people who you’d want to reach.

So, here are some strategies you can employ to find your target audience.

• Find who is most likely to use your product or service.
• Where do these people fall within the marketing funnel stages we discussed earlier?
• Which platforms can you find these people on?

Identify the type of videos

You can make countless videos to attract and engage your customers, right from how-to and FAQs to products, testimonials, or plain brand videos. Knowing which videos to create as per your goals and target audience will get you a lot ahead in your social media video marketing strategy. And you can create these yourself with the help of a good DIY solution.

Product videos

These videos are meant to tell your customers or prospects about your popular products and their features. You can also use them to inform about new service offerings or features. With such videos, the goal is to attract new customers. These videos are short, typically about a minute-long. Through these, you tell your customers why your products are the best and how you can help solve their problems.

Testimonial videos

These videos are meant to serve as social proof for your prospective customers. These show your loyal customers talking about their positive experience using your product. Sometimes, these videos can also show numbers or statistics to back up your claims instead of actual customers. These videos act as a great tool to build your credibility. People trust others’ experiences before committing to something, and these videos help to build customer trust.

Explainer videos

These videos teach your prospects about your brand, service, or product. They are typically three or four-minutes-long, and usually answer questions like your customers’ pain points, how your product will help fix it, and why prospects should choose you. 

Tutorial/instructional videos

All the “how-to” or “FAQ” videos fall under these. They are meant to educate a customer about how to use your product in a step-by-step manner and inform about any other information that might be relevant.

Live/interview videos

These videos are meant to showcase your expertise. You can get your experts to talk about customers’ challenges and how your business can help solve problems. These videos can be either pre-recorded or live.

Event videos

If your business is hosting a conference, fundraiser, webinar, or discussion, you might want to create these targeted videos. They can contain presentations, talks, interviews, and demos from the event.

Animated videos

This is a fun category. You can explain hard-to-grasp concepts in an informative and fun way through them. Such videos are generally a minute to five-minutes-long.

Before and after videos

This category of videos typically applies to lifestyle products such as food or fitness. Here, you can demonstrate the transformative power of your products with the stark difference in product use.

Personalized videos

This is a new category of video that many brands are exploring. Usually, these are meant to form deeper connects with the customer by urging them to repeat purchase or convert prospects into a customer. For example, sending video to a prospect about how your solution has managed to increase sales, or talk about specific challenges of customers.

Choose your platforms  

There are countless social platforms available. However, you can’t go overboard by making and posting videos for every platform out there. Without a strategy, this plan will not give you any engagement. You must know the purpose of each platform and the audience you will find there.

YouTube

This is the most popular platform after Google and is also the largest video hosting platform. It allows you to create a channel, so you can build a dedicated audience of subscribers. You can also make playlists, enabling your viewers to search for your content easily.

Facebook and Instagram

While Facebook boasts of a demographic of all ages, Instagram has a younger demographic. Both platforms offer great features and options and have a wider reach. These are great for posting quick how-to’s or recipe videos. And you have an option to make videos without sound.

Twitter

This platform is popular to drive social, business, and political discussions. Brands of all sizes use it. But brevity is a core aspect of this platform, so if you’re considering long-form videos, then this might not be your best bet; it’s great to drive conversions to websites, though.

LinkedIn

This is a pure B2B platform. You can be more creative with the video you share, and it’ll reach a wider audience. The platform also offers you four themes for video sharing.

TikTok

This platform has virtually exploded and caters to a mostly younger demographic. It’s all about really short videos, so you need to be super creative. Videos can be up to 15 seconds long, but users can also connect multiple clips for up to 60 seconds. If you’re in the higher education business, this is “the” platform to drive visits to your site.

Snapchat

This platform is popular among the millennial crowd. With features like cameo and 3d snaps, you can get creative with the videos and show your brand’s playful side.

Deciding on key metrics

Merely creating videos would be no fun if you can’t measure the key metrics through which you can measure success.

View count: When you’re only creating awareness about your brand, you must aim for maximum exposure, reaching a wide audience. Use this metric to measure your success. How many times people have watched your video.

Time spent watching: This metric is helpful when your goal is user engagement. If your content is effective, people will stay on longer and consume more content.

Sign-ups: if your goal is to get more conversions, then you should measure this metric. This will tell you when a user is going to become your customer.

Plan the production

To ensure that your video comes out well, you must have a pre and post-production strategy. 

Here are some steps to guide you:

• Fix a budget
• Have an effective script in place
• Acquire the right equipment to shoot your video
• Get the right talent to assist you in shoots
• Finalize a location
• Choose the right music and lighting
• Ensure solid editing
• Add hashtags, closed captions, sub titles, and tags post upload
• Schedule and promote your videos on social platforms as per your strategy

SEO optimization

Of course, you can’t forget SEO! It’s not just for written content. If a person has landed on your video, they must have searched for some keywords. Or, in most cases, a user might click on a video if you’ve keyword-rich captions and titles.

While creating videos, storytelling should be a priority. Keywords tell a story, and they must be in the description section of your video, so it can reach more people. You must also use hashtags and tags that connect with the audience. And adding subtitles to your video will ensure your users don’t have to turn on the sound, reaching more people in a public setting.

Conclusion

There you have it – a complete guide to building a successful social media video marketing strategy for your brand. There is no one-size-fits-all tactic. You must devise and change your strategy as per your business and goals. So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to get started!