Adding Video To Your Digital Marketing Mix

Intro

Hi there, it’s Sam from Shot Blast Media. We’ve put together a new series, which we’re calling ‘Adding Video to Your Digital Marketing Mix’, which will map out a journey for you and your company on how you can utilise your videos in a digital marketing area.

Mapping Your Customer Journey

Mapping your customer journey will help you understand the stages in your customer relationships, including research, consideration, purchase, post- purchase and loyalty. Along the way you’ll identify touch points where your customers come in contact with your company and brands, as well as uncovering obstacles that prevent them from moving forward in their journey.

Look for opportunities where different messaging sources – email, video, website, social media, direct mail – can move your customer down the path to purchase. There’s a lot to choose from, so the possibilities are endless!

Enhance the Customer Journey

As you identify touch points, you’ll begin to see where video can tell a story, answer questions or create excitement. You might find gaps in messaging that a well-timed demonstration or behind- the-scenes video (live action or animation) could fill better than an email message or straight web copy. Similarly, you might discover places in the journey where contacts frequently stall – perhaps a strategically positioned video might help nudge them along more effectively than your existing touch point? It’s all about stepping into your customer’s shoes!

Set Specific Goals

You don’t have to spend a year in meetings or scribbling on whiteboards. But you must hash out some thoughts on what you want your video program to achieve and to make sure that your marketing team is on board as well.

Remember two things as you work up goals for your video program:

• Be customer-centric. It isn’t just what you want to say to your customers; what do you want them to take away from your video, and how does your video help them?

• Decide what you want your viewers to do with your video. Your videos need calls to action, just like your emails. Setting a goal for your video will shape the action and the content supporting it.

Create a Video Promotion Rollout Plan

We know what you’re thinking: “I haven’t shot even one frame of a video yet, and already you want me to think about promotion?”

Yes, because your video can drive greater results when you seed it across other communication channels,

apps and offline sources (in-store displays, training programs, white papers, etc.).

Also, optimize the platforms where your videos will display, especially third-party sources such as YouTube, where you can house all your videos on your own channel. Promote your platforms such as a YouTube channel, Facebook/Instagram pages, and a Snapchat user name in cross-channel promotions, too.

Audit Your Video Content

Look around and find what other departments have produced, such as product or service demos, training videos, even animated slideshows and screencasts. What can you improve or expand on? Where are the gaps in your video story?

Review print sources (digital and paper) for content you can repurpose for video, such as customer-service training scripts that could double as troubleshooting videos or buying guides showing products in use. Anything can be produced into a video if you adapt it properly and well, so there will always something you can create into video content.

Shine the Spotlight on Customers

Instead of having the same old talking heads, bring in people who are naturally engaging or newsworthy or who have strong connections to the material.

Product designers, buyers and merchandisers know the ins and outs of your products better than anybody. Ask the authors of popular white papers to highlight or expand on the material in brief videos.

Don’t overlook your natural cheerleaders and evangelisers, such as happy customers or enthusiastic employees who use your products away from work.

Choose Your Hosting Platforms

Where you host your videos will affect your strategy and goals. Besides your own websites, you’ll also want to host on third-party platforms for greater exposure and sharing.

YouTube is the 600-pound gorilla among hosting platforms and better suited for a video library and long-form videos. Short-form Instagram video benefits from its Facebook integration but doesn’t lend itself to YouTube-style browsing. Snapchat, Periscope and Instagram cater to niche audiences and real-time captures in brief video bursts.

At some point, you might want to host high-value video on your website, where you can gate the content. With the right integrations in place, you can capture more behaviours (and act on them) than you’d be able to on a third-party platform.

Video Behaviours as Triggers

Your videos on public platforms like YouTube or Facebook should direct viewers to your website, where you can put up a simple lead-generation form that collects identifying information to unlock premium content.

There are a couple of ways to achieve this. A basic method would involve placing a link in the video description (or an unlinked URL at the end of the video) directing viewers to a landing page on your site. For example, a video on content marketing could include a link in the description to a landing page on your website with an offer to download a related white paper.

A more sophisticated approach might involve integrating with a video marketing solution and linking from a shorter video on YouTube to a longer gated version on your website. This method would typically give you access to a deeper set of video-viewing metrics.

Either way, you can use this data to launch a drip campaign to these viewers. Track their video viewing choices for indications that they’re moving closer to buying, and change your messaging approach accordingly.

Metrics and Monitoring Results

Video views are like email open rates: Everybody counts them, but they don’t tell the whole story.

More meaningful metrics include measuring leads or sales generated from video views, fewer calls to your call centre, fewer returned products, or increases in upgrades to premium, paid or enterprise-level products.

You should be able to make basic data integrations between your web analytics program and your e-commerce and email databases. But, at some point, you might need to move from a basic video platform to an enterprise-level program that provides more data management and integration with your marketing automation program.

Implement Results

The results you get from your data should be implemented into your future work. With analytics, have you assessed who watches your video, and when? What did they watch it on? Analytics go into very deep detail, allowing you to understand everything about your audience. When you know what works well for your company, you can map out future decisions based on your findings. If a certain type of video is going down well with your audience, you can do something similar next time that may be tailored towards the different demographics in your audience. It’s all about adapting and innovating.