Inside Marketing: The Complete Video Marketing Checklist

This is an excerpt from the Breadnbeyond blog. Read the full post here.

Are you missing something in your video marketing strategy?

You may be creating marketing videos constantly, sharing them on all of your social media channels regularly and even adding them to your homepage. But still, you don’t get those significant benefits your fellow marketers have been talking about.

“Is video marketing only a passing fad, then? Or all those impacts are just a myth?” you wonder.

Well, what if you’ve actually missed something in the process? After all, a winning video marketing strategy is so much more than creating videos and making them available on the internet.

To help, Breadnbeyond has created a complete video marketing checklist to ensure that you are taking full advantage of video marketing.

A Peek Into the Video Marketing Field

Let’s kick things off by taking a look at some important video marketing statistics. These numbers, collected from surveys and research by Breadnbeyond, show that video marketing is here to stay and can be a powerful tool if used correctly.

• In 2022, online videos could make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic.
• Globally, 25% of internet users watch online videos every single day.
• At least 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.
• Nearly 61% of companies say that video content is a major part of their marketing plan.
• The most common types of marketing videos created are explainers (73%), social media videos (67%), presentations (51%), sales videos (41%) and video ads (41%).
• YouTube remains the most widely used video platform among video marketers.
• 68% of people will watch a full video if it’s a minute long or less.
• More than a third of all online activity is spent watching videos.

Video Marketing Checklist

Each item in this handy visual list has a textual breakdown in the next section to help you accomplish the task.

1. Video Content Planning

A successful video marketing campaign always starts with thoughtful preparation. Here are some points you should follow to make sure you come up with the right video marketing plan.

Write down goals and expectations. Clear objectives will guide your video-making process. If you know why you are creating all those marketing videos, you can come up with a relevant strategy that will support achieving those goals. Make sure those goals are reachable and measurable.

Analyze competitors’ tactics. Your competitors can be your best teachers. Find out how they use videos, how their audiences interact with them, what they’re lacking and how you can do better.

Understand your audience. Who do you create marketing videos for? Once you know your audience—demographics, interests, preferences, pain points and values—it will be much easier for you to craft relevant content that appeals to them.

Conduct topic research. The topics of your marketing videos are the main reason your audience engages with them. It’s crucial to conduct research to find out what specific topics—e.g., home loans—will resonate best with your members. 

Find your best-performing topic with a content audit. Conduct a content audit to find your highest-performing topic(s). See which types of content on your website, blog and social media already have high engagement from your audience. Then make a fresh new marketing video out of that content.

Address important news or trends. To create relevant video content, you need to constantly stay up-to-date with the latest trends in the industry. Ask yourself, “What has everyone been talking about lately?” In this case, you can use social media monitoring tools, such as popular hashtags, to find out.

Match video topics with each stage of the member journey. Each video has its own way of helping you achieve a specific goal. Some videos are best at attracting the audience’s attention, while others do a good job in generating trust.

2. Video Production

With some creative magic during the production process, your marketing videos will not only entertain—they can inform, enlighten and intrigue.

Make each video short and sweet. When it comes to marketing videos, less is always more. The rule of thumb is to keep most videos under two minutes. However, you also need to consider the platform or channel you’re using.

Make sure both visual and audio quality are balanced. Remember that videos are a combination of both visual and audio elements. Those stunning visuals should be complemented by crystal-clear background music, sound effects or voice-over.

Start strong with a question or by highlighting a problem. The old adage “save the best for last” doesn’t apply to video marketing. You have to start your videos with catchy, attention-grabbing lines to make your audience’s ears perk up. Start by asking questions, highlighting pain points or sharing thought-provoking facts.

No hard-selling content. No one wants to be a target customer. If you create a video just to brag about your awesome features, it probably won’t get you anywhere. Avoid the hard sell by continuing to be informative and educational.

Provide value and offer solutions. Your audience only cares about how your offerings will benefit them or the community. Focus on the solution you offer and how your products or services will make your audience’s lives better or easier.

Add graphics and animation to illustrate complex topics. When you have complex topics to get across, consider adding graphics and animation. Not only can they convey your message more clearly, but they will also help your audiences enjoy the explanation.

3. Video Optimization

If your content isn’t showing up on Google or video platform searches, all the effort spent on video content can be a huge waste of money and time. Relying on going viral to get into the spotlight is not a realistic or sustainable solution.

Optimize your video title. When you upload videos on a platform like YouTube or Vimeo, make sure you use keyword-based titles to help your search ranking. You can use tools like vidIQ, TubeBuddy, etc., to identify ideal keywords for your video title.

Add a description. YouTube and other video-sharing platforms use your description to understand the content (and context) of your content. A well-optimized description can also boost your video’s rankings in search results.

Include relevant tags. #Hashtags can lead people to your video from other videos that use the same hashtag. Also, relevant hashtags help video-sharing platforms better understand your video content, so they suggest show your video to relevant audiences.

Upload subtitles and a transcript. Including captions or subtitles with your video enables video-sharing platforms to understand what you’re saying, which can boost your video’s rank on the platform. Subtitles can also expand your reach—audience members who have hearing difficulties, mobile users that play the video with the sound off and non-native speakers can still enjoy your video and receive your message.

Create an eye-catching thumbnail. Along with the title, your thumbnail is the first thing that your audience sees when they find your video. You can use easy-to-use graphic design tools like Canva, PicMaker, VistaCreate, etc.

Tailor your content for mobile users. Videos are 1.5 times more likely to be watched through mobile devices. But the smaller the screen, the more the viewer will have to squint to see the information. Make sure the text or other visual elements in the video fit onto those mobile devices’ screens.

Add a clear call-to-action. Creating a marketing video without a clear CTA is like fishing without a hook. Your audience will have no clue what they are supposed to do after watching the video. Don’t forget to communicate the purpose of your video so they’ll take desired actions, such as visiting your website, following your social media profiles or downloading e-books.

4. Video Distribution

Creating a marketing video is one thing. Making sure that it gets the limelight it deserves is another. Video distribution has to be done on different platforms to ensure that the message you intend to pass reaches the largest number of people in the target audience.

Utilize social media platforms as video channels. With billions of active users worldwide, social media is a great way to distribute your videos. That said, it’s important to understand on which social platforms your target audience spends the most time online.

Consider collaborating with micro-influencers. If you have extra budget for a campaign, consider working with influencers to give your marketing video the exposure it deserves. 

It doesn’t have to be mega or macro-influencer. Even micro-influencers—for instance, a local celebrity—have followers and can help you gain more awareness.

Invest in online video platforms designed for business. Utilizing online marketing video platforms such as Wistia, Vidyard, Brightcove, etc., can help you reach potential members who are interested in your content. These platforms provide such video marketing features as audience targeting, reports and analytics.

Include video in your monthly newsletter. Email newsletters can be a great way to distribute your marketing videos while nurturing leads. Emails with videos are proven to increase open rates and decrease unsubscribe rates.

Add videos to your website. Not only does well-optimized video increase your website rank on search engine result pages, but it can also help users understand what you do and how you can help them in a matter of minutes. Place your videos on your homepage, landing pages or “About Us” page.

5. Video Monitoring

Video marketing is a data-driven marketing tactic, so you’ll have to monitor your videos and understand how well they’re performing to determine the success of your campaign.

Define the right metrics to measure ROI. It’s essential to choose the metrics that matter most for your video campaigns in order to identify which videos work and whether they help to achieve your goals. For instance, if your goal is to strengthen brand awareness, you need to pay close attention to views and shares.

Invest in stand-alone analytics software or use a built-in analytics feature.

Video analytics give you the power to improve communication and revenue. Consider tools offered by Vidyard, Cincopa or Vidalytics.

Track the performance every month. Track your video marketing regularly, so you’ll immediately know if there’s room for improvement and can adjust your video marketing campaign accordingly.

Recycle high-performing video content into evergreen classics. Coming up with new, fresh marketing content every month or even a week is hard work. Just like you can use other content to create videos, you can recycle your best-performing videos into blog posts, e-books or infographics.

Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).