With over half of marketing professionals worldwide naming video as the type of content with the best ROI, it’s no surprise that video marketing continues to rise in popularity. People watch more videos than ever before. YouTube is the second most popular search engine on the planet, and survey after survey shows preference for videos over other formats. So when you produce video content, how can you best promote it, and reap the rewards of the format?
Create An Engaging Thumbnail
Margot Whitney points us first to the videos’ thumbnail. This tiny image is a major determiner of whether or not your video is opened, so Whitney suggests making sure it includes a smile. “People relate to other people,” she correctly posits, and particularly with eye contact and smiling. Having someone smiling into the camera links your brand and video to positivity. It connects you with your customers.
Whitney also suggests promoting your video content by pairing it with your email marketing. With the word “video” in a subject line, an email’s open rate increases by 19%, its click-through rate by 65%, and unsubscribers are reduced by 26%. So promote your video content through marketing emails. It’s easy, free, and will increase the engagement of your emails and your video content.
Choose The Right Platform
You’ll also get better promotion of your video content by planning it around where it will be viewed. Is your video “mobile friendly,” or more suited to a monitor or television screen? Audiences choose to watch videos with a “more elaborate, theatrical experience” on a larger screen.
Knowing this, you can plan for an appropriate length and content. Audiences who are on-the-go tend to choose mobile video, by contrast. You should design these videos to be concise and contain simple visuals.
One of the best places to promote video content, mobile-friendly or otherwise, is social media. And as you plan your video’s content and specs to fit the context of its viewing, you’ll want to plan your video’s social media presence to fit your target audience’s preferred platforms.
If your audience made up of mostly older consumers, Facebook is probably your best bet; for a younger audience, target Twitter.
Make Sure It’s In Your Blog
The next suggestion might be a bit surprising, but Wyzowl encourages blogging to promote video content. While you should also use blogging to repurpose existing content into video, Wyzowl also suggests writing a blog post preempt a video. This will give your website visitors an easy way to be learn about and access your video.
It will also create some overlap between audiences with different viewing preferences. To an audience that typically prefers reading blog posts, a video getting uploaded might be met with disinterest—unless you herald it in the blog they read. Similarly, if your audience typically ignores your blog, you might see interest grow as they realize it’s the best place to find new videos.
Promote Through Email
You probably already promote your brand through a variety of email initiatives, so why not make email another place to promote your video content? Wistia.com points out that it’s free to include a link in an email, so link to a video landing page. With no risk and only potential benefit, it’s something you can do when you have video content to promote.
Worst-case scenario, you’ve spent a little time copying and pasting a single hyperlink into an existing email. Best-case, you increase engagement with your content, and consequently, your brand. You’ll grow your video audience and increase the chance of your email recipient’s conversion, in one fell swoop.
Make Sure Your Audience Can Engage
You should also ensure that your videos are sharable. Include links to your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Spend time with your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). You want your videos to be easy to find and share. Title them with high-profile keywords and use metadata tagging to raise their ranking on search engines. And by distributing them on social media, you’ll see more word of mouth and free promotion.
Finally, you’ll want to share your video in niche communities as well as broader markets. Specific forums and discussion boards online are another great way to drive interest in your brand. After all, it’s a challenge to convince the world to watch your video, and you’ll never get everyone. However, you might in some niche markets.
Let’s say you’re a flute company, and your video features people playing your instruments at various national parks and landmarks. Of the entire video-watching population, you might get a fair quantity of viewers. However, in the flute-playing community, your viewership might near 90% or 100%. You might only reach a thousand viewers, compared to ten thousand, but if the video drives 875 flute players to buy your products, you’ll end up a lot better off than with the 400 that might’ve converted from the more general group.
Where Should YOU Promote?
So, where should you promote your video? Like many questions in marketing, the answer has to do with your audience and their preferences.. From blogging to social media, niche promotion to email inclusion, you can augment your content in many ways.
What kinds of ways does your company promote its video content? Do you see blogging as a way to do so? What kind of audience are you trying to reach? Do you agree that a smaller audience with a high conversion rate is as worthy a market as a larger one? What ideas do you have about promoting your team’s video content?