This is What Your Video Marketing Strategy is Missing

Rapport Building

One of the principles of good salespersonship is a process called know, like, trust. When you strip away all the chaff, the process is about building rapport. The person needs to know you exist, decide they like you, and find you trustworthy. With those things in place, it’s easy to communicate in a non-combative, mutually understanding way. Video can do this for you, but so often fails to do so. Why? Lots of videos are little more than online advertisements posted on a website. There is a time and a place for those videos, but not every video should be one. People hate feeling like they’re being sold a product. These kinds of videos fail at rapport building because they fail to create like or trust in the viewers. Think of it this way. Imagine a complete stranger ringing your doorbell. As soon as you open the door, they say, “I want you to buy something from me.” That’s a pretty off-putting situation, right? The stranger hasn’t given you a reason to like or trust them, so why would you buy from them? Creating rapport with video means offering viewers authenticity. Does your CEO ride a scooter through the halls? Do your customer service centers run best zany outfit days? Make and share videos about those things. It makes the business, brand, and people who work there relatable and likable. Is the business a personal mission for the founder because of some event in his or her past? Was the business founded because of some industry-wide blind spot? A video about those topics establishes trust.

Video Marketing Strategy For Social Media

If you aren’t thinking about social media sharing as part of your video marketing strategy, you aren’t taking full advantage of the power of video. Recent research says that 45% of consumers want to see more social media posts and 43% want to see more video. It’s a small step to say that those same consumers would like to see more video-based social media posts. The caveat here is that you need the right kind of social media sharing. The pie in the sky dream is to have a video go viral and get viewed by millions of people. The logic behind it is that all the coverage will lead to more business. The logic is accurate, as far as it goes. The problem with chasing that dream is that there is no reliable way to engineer a viral video hit. Online viewer tastes change almost by the minute. A lot of great content languishes in obscurity for years before going viral, if it ever does. What’s a business to do? Aim for social sharing in your target market. After all, getting 5000 views from your target market will also do a great job of generating business. This means posting your videos to your social media accounts. It also means your videos need to be live on your website with social sharing buttons. When you do post a video to your own site, your video player must be responsive to mobile screen sizes. Around 52% of all video viewinghappens on phones.

Keep It Short

That attention spans are shrinking is an accepted truth with one big problem. It’s probably untrue. What is true is that attention spans vary based on the task and the individual. Drop a chemical engineer with a Ph.D. into a Principles of Chemistry class and you’ll see someone with a non-existent attention span. Deliver a droning, endless lecture in a video and viewers will move on unless they are desperate for that information. There is a different and more compelling reason to keep your videos short. It’s a matter of securing psychological buy in to watch. It’s easier to decide to watch something short. How much consideration does it take to decide to watch a sitcom? It’s minimal because sitcoms run 30 minutes, making the time price low. Deciding to watch all 3 hours and 41 minutes of Gone with the Wind takes a lot of consideration because the time price is high. A good rule of thumb is to make it as short as possible while still achieving your goal. If you can do it in 2-3 minutes, you should. If you need ten minutes, consider breaking it up into several videos.

Consistent Posting

Delivering video on a consistent schedule probably sounds like a trivial facet of your video marketing strategy. Why should it matter if you post every week or every once in a while? It turns out that consistent posting of video content, along with most other kinds of content, is a critical element in brand building. In addition to cementing your credibility, it boosts site traffic, brand awareness and engagement. You’ll often see improvements in lead generation as well. Another reason for consistency is habit formation. If you post on a consistent schedule, it encourages people to return to your site over and over again. Repeated actions become habits. The more exposure a person gets to your business and brand, the better the odds that they think of your business first when they need it. It’s the same top of mind principle that gets people to buy name brand retail products year after year.

Parting Thoughts

Developing an effective video marketing strategy doesn’t require you to be on the cutting edge of innovation. An effective strategy uses existing technologies, like video sharing on social media, and leans on principles like rapport building and consistency. Combine those with some judicious editing for length and a dose of authenticity and you’ll be on your way. Based in Toronto, VivaMedia is dedicated to creating bar-raising videos that get noticed. To learn more about our video production services or to discuss your upcoming video project, please contact us today.