eCommerce has leveled the playing field for businesses. Now, up-and-coming brands can compete with established names thanks to online shopping platforms that welcome all sellers without bias.
However, this does not mean that success entails lesser effort. Conversely, the competition has become even stiffer. That’s because you’re head-to-head with many others just as eager to claim a piece of the proverbial pie.
Thankfully, you have reliable marketing strategies at your disposal. Consider video marketing.
As you may already know, photos can be pretty restrictive. They can’t tell the story you want to share in its entirety. Plus, a photo can only do so much even when matched with a well-thought-out caption.
So if your goal is an immersive experience for your would-be buyers, still pictures alone might not deliver.
That’s where videos come to save the day. A video for your business is sure to catch the attention of your target market. With it, the possibilities are endless. But that is if you get behind proven and tested video marketing strategies, such as the ones in this list.
- Prioritize Quality
It all boils down to quality. Keep in mind that the internet is home to innumerable videos. If you want to command your target audiences’ attention, your videos better look and feel worthy of people’s time. Otherwise, viewers will click skip before you can even say, “But wait, there’s more.”
So, how can you ensure that your videos get that professional vibe? For starters, refer to video production tutorials online. You can access free materials with just a quick Google search. That is if you plan to DIY the project. Outsourcing video production is also a good idea if you have sufficient resources.
The key video elements to focus on include lighting, editing, and writing. Make sure that all these details result in immersive content.
- Story is Key
All adverts are essentially stories in a nutshell. Failure to take to heart that fact puts your marketing collateral at a disadvantage. Remember that the most successful marketers are, first and foremost, storytellers.
So don’t just wing it. Take your time at the drawing board. Explore all possible angles when telling your story. Your story should be consistent with your branding so as not to confuse your audience.
As such, you will need to pinpoint what type of resonance you want to achieve. Are you gunning for something light and humorous? Do you like to share something serious? Perhaps you want to be partial to a delicate balance of those two temperaments.
Whichever way you go, make sure to ground the video in a compelling story.
- Look into Explainer Videos
An explainer video typically achieves multiple goals. For example, it can tell where your brand is coming from, showcase a product, and highlight your processes. A more comprehensive explainer video can aim for all these goals simultaneously.
So, for which marketing deliverable is an explainer video most compatible? There’s no clear-cut rule here, but if there’s a need to introduce something, this is the way to go.
Think of new offers from an established brand, an up-and-coming brand that requires customer recall, or complicated products.
For explainer videos to be compelling, they must have clear information and coherent details.
- Consider Educational How-to Videos
An educational how-to video is a roundabout way of selling a product. This is you telling your customers that your marketing efforts need not be hard selling. You’re confident in the trust and loyalty you’ve built among your target market that even if you don’t explicitly hawk a product with a video, you can still rack up sales.
Suppose you’re in the business of selling communication gadgets. Then, you can produce an educational video about how online users can protect themselves from digital scams.
Or, if you run an eCommerce beauty shop, you can sponsor video content highlighting ways to maintain healthy and glowing skin.
Again, the goal is to share relevant information with your customers. Do this right, and you will improve your street or online cred.
Rule of thumb: do excellent research. Do not fall prey to misleading online information or hot takes that might easily compromise your status as an authority figure.
- Maximize User-Generated Videos
Customers have become increasingly participative in the field of commerce. If in the past they would buy stuff, use or consume them, and move on, these days more and more people make it a point to share their unique experiences with a particular product. This comes in the guise of user-generated content (UGC), including videos.
Think unboxing, user testimonial, and product review videos. As long as they’re flattering to your business, there’s no reason to ignore these types of content. In fact, the opposite proves beneficial to businesses. Highlighting user-generated videos by sharing them allows you to amplify your marketing efforts without actually shelling out any resources. And that’s a deal you don’t want to miss out on.
- Have a Clear Call to Action (CTA)
A CTA is the soul of all marketing efforts. A marketing collateral that lacks a CTA is a missed opportunity. If you do not want to waste money on video marketing production, you better come up with a winning CTA.
Now, the question is, what makes a video marketing CTA effective? That depends on the goal you’ve outlined. Do you want your target audience to fill out a form so that you have their contact details? Or do you wish for them to follow your social media channels?
Whatever your intentions are, make them known. Just make sure to communicate them in a way that won’t rub your viewers the wrong way.
As mentioned earlier, your videos should tell an immersive and cohesive story. Now consider your CTA as the resolution to that story. Without it, the video lacks closure.
- Length Matters
Your marketing videos will compete with other adverts. It will also compete with your target audience’s Netflix and TikTok viewing habits, not to mention the tweets and statuses they scroll through on a daily basis. Therefore, length matters.
The shortest possible runtime you can tell your story, the better. That way, your marketing video won’t be too demanding and challenging for people’s increasingly decreasing attention spans.
Outside explainer and educational videos, keep your video marketing collateral between 30 and 60 seconds. Here, the challenge is writing a script that’s concise but complete. It’s in your best interest to work with an expert copywriter who can pull off that task. Alternatively, you could master the craft enough for you to DIY.
- Know Where to Shine
Ideally, you produce video marketing content tailored for a specific social media platform. Or at least have videos that you can easily repurpose depending on where you want to release them.
For example, TikTok caters to attention-grabbing short clips. That’s also where you find Gen Z online users. That means that if you’re selling a wardrobe meant for Gen Z, TikTok is where you want to be. Meanwhile, for millennials, you might want to explore Twitter, which is also partial to short videos. As for boomers, you can find them on Facebook, which is more or less tolerant of longer video content.
Get to know your demographic and learn which social channels they frequent. Then, adjust your video production accordingly.
- Utilize Video Across Channels
Do not restrict the videos you produce to social media channels. Use them across all online platforms connected to your business. If you have a website, use it to host your videos. This is one way for your social media pages and homepage to share a distinctive presence.
Try incorporating your videos into your blogs, too. Or, better yet, produce a blog post anchored to your produced videos. This way, you’re increasing the value of both marketing collaterals.
Lastly, consider including a video on your product pages. As mentioned earlier, sometimes, a picture does not suffice. That’s most true for products that require a more multi-dimensional approach for customers to gauge them adequately.
Take a camping tent as an example. A video can better capture its dimensions and functions than a flat photo. The same goes for a gadget whose features you can explain briefly with a quick clip.
Wrapping Up
If you wish to partake in eCommerce, it’s best to leave no stone unturned marketing-wise. No matter how excellent your offers are, if customers don’t know that they exist, they will remain in the shadows of online shopping platforms, un-ordered and unappreciated.
To prevent your products from fading into oblivion, level up your marketing game via videos. Tell your story with all the creativity you can muster. Utilize all available platforms that can give your videos the clout they deserve. Before you know it, customers will be knocking on your doors or, to be more accurate, clicking on your products.
And to ensure that those videos will stay relevant for as long as you need them to, make it a point that the products you ship out stay consistent with your promise.
