If there’s one thing all marketers can agree on, it’s that content is king. While blogging has been an industry staple, more and more marketers are turning to video. Video is more accessible than ever and it is an excellent tool for storytelling and engaging with your audience. Therefore, it’s only natural that you’ll want a solid marketing strategy for your business.

With statistics showing that 87% of video marketers say that video increased traffic to their website and 80% claim that video has directly increased sales, you probably want to start with video marketing as well. Here’s how.

Define your goals

The first thing you need to do is define your goals. Are you looking to spread brand awareness, promote a special type of service, work on getting new clients or further your bond with your existing ones?

Once you write them down, it will be easy to see what you should focus on and what your next steps are. If you’re not sure about what type of content your goals should entail, take a look at the following video content pipeline.

Start with an awareness campaign – this is where you introduce your company and services to a large audience. At this point, you’ll want to reach a large number of people, because you don’t have a fleshed-out buyer persona – think of it as throwing bait and seeing who takes it.

The end goal of a brand awareness campaign is high numbers of unique visitors. You can do that by creating videos that showcase how you differ from your competitors, or even more popularly – a “how-to” video that describes your solution to a well-known problem.

A good example of this would be creating videos that show how you go the extra mile for your clients (for example how you get people to look their best in video, how you relax their nerves and such).

After that, move into the next step of your pipeline – consideration. After your initial contact, your potential client wants to know why you’re the best solution for them, and how you have helped your clients in the past.

A good type of video content at this point is a case study overview or a product review that goes further into detail on how to use your product with all the benefits listed.

At the last step of your sales pipeline – the actual conversion, you’ll want to show them the most detailed video, showcasing a service specific to their needs. Once they’ve converted, you can show appreciation with a short thank-you video.

Automate your business

How much time are you losing on the non-creative part of your job? The best way to boost your efficiency is by automating as many of your daily tasks as possible. A great way to start is by automating your proposal writing.

Business proposals are usually the last piece of content you send to your potential clients before they convert so in a way they can make or break your business deal. The easiest way to automate your business proposal writing is with proposal templates, such as the ones Better Proposals offers.

The benefits of using proposal templates are the fact that you don’t have to do much writing yourself – you can just fill in the blanks and send a professional proposal in a matter of minutes.

The template already has all the necessary chapters, so you don’t have to have a lot of experience with proposals in order to create one.

Another benefit is the integrated signing option that automatically turns your client’s typed name into a digital signature, turning your proposal into a legally binding document. Your client can also pay you the first fee with an integrated payment option.

Know your audience

How well do you know your audience? Every marketing strategist should be well aware of their audience’s age, location, industry, lifestyle and spending habits. This will lead you to create better-converting content.

The best way to get to know your audience is by collecting all the data from Google, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter analytics and rearranging them into a buyer persona. A buyer persona doesn’t represent every single one of your customers, but a fictionalized “best-case scenario” person that embodies all of the characteristics your buyer persona has.

By creating a buyer persona, you’ll better understand your audience’s needs, pain points and aspirations.

Take part in social listening i.e find out what is being said about you on the Internet. A big part of knowing your audience is finding them and going to them instead of them having to go to you.

Social listening is an amazing way to discover new opportunities. If your audience is looking for tips on how to pose for their LinkedIn profile pictures, create short video tutorials for LinkedIn.

If they’re looking for wedding inspiration on Instagram, help them out by sharing your previous work and tips for amazing wedding photos. The possibilities are endless, just make sure to create timely and relevant content.

Social listening also helps you keep up with your competition and any possible market changes that may occur. This way you’ll be ahead of the industry trends and you’ll easily shift your content strategy if needed.

Getting to know your audience is a great jumping-off point for creating content specific to their needs.

Make sure to put yourself in their frame of mind and showcase how you’ll fix their problems without being too technical. They won’t understand the industry jargon but they will appreciate content customized to their needs.

Having a great understanding of your target audience will also help you advertise your services more effectively and find partners, influencers and opinion-makers in your industry.

Create different type of videos for different platforms

Once you’ve understood your audience’s needs and the type of content to support them, all you have to do is distinguish between social media and find the right course of action for all of them.

With YouTube being the lead platform for videos, it’s perfect for longer, in-depth videos with a higher production value. You can easily share those videos to your social media, however, it is preferred to create native videos for each social media platform.

Facebook is the most popular social media platform, so posting your videos there will likely reach the widest audience as well as the biggest number of real people. Facebook videos can be up to 240 minutes long. However, we suggest you make them shorter.

The video rule Facebook has is that they usually show videos that are at least 3 minutes long to more people organically. Instagram, with 1 billion users, on the other hand, lets you upload one-minute videos to your feed and longer ones automatically get uploaded as IGTV.

The major difference between the two platforms are the targeted demographics and the nativity of the video ads. While you can reach a wider audience on Facebook, if your desired audiences are Gen Z and Millennials, you’ll fare better on Instagram, where you’ll encounter a highly concentrated younger audience.

The chances of your video ads grow if you target the right audience and use the right video formats for each platform.

Not only that, but Instagram’s video ads are far more organic to the platform and don’t feel as intrusive as Facebook’s video ads do. Instagram also puts your ads in the centre of your screen, without any interference.

LinkedIn videos have to be between 3 seconds and 10 minutes long, while video ads can be up to 30 minutes long. The biggest draw to LinkedIn is of course the audience since it’s the social network with the largest concentration of specialists for any industry. While you won’t reach a wide audience on LinkedIn, don’t discredit this network since it offers a lot of opportunities for different industries.

While it’s most likely you’ll choose more than one social media platform for your business, it’s important to curate your approach to each of them and create a cohesive story for every single one.

It’s natural to change the tone of your content when you post on different platforms, so don’t be afraid to get creative and test different things out.

In conclusion

With all the statistics showing the power of video storytelling, with its high conversion rates, engagement rates, and increasing traffic, it’s easy to see why so many brands are investing in video production.

If you’re working on a social media strategy, you’ll definitely want to include video content. Once you define your goals and set your content funnel up, you’ll easily distinguish which type of video content to produce for your short term and long term goals.

Remember to always think about your audience, their needs, and level of understanding when it comes to choosing topics for your videos. They are in the end the ones watching them, so make sure their input is heard and their opinion is appreciated.