What is video marketing? And how can you do it well?

For a well-constructed digital-marketing strategy, teams, marketers as well as video professionals need to bring videos into the fold. Although the concept of "video marketing" may seem self-explanatory (essentially including videos in the marketing strategies you are running), it is difficult to figure out how you can go about actually doing it effectively.

What is the importance of video marketing?

With the rise of sites such as and YouTube and other social networks like Facebook and Twitter now incorporating video, as well as dramatic improvement in the streaming quality itself (bye bye, dreaded buffering) Videos are now appearing throughout all the stages of what's referred to as the funnel of marketing. The funnel that is traditional is as follows: you intro someone to your business (awareness stage), educate them about the benefits (consideration stage), justify your offering (decision stage), and retain customers (delight stage).

So how do you do video marketing right?

Let's bring life to the typical funnel for video marketing using a real-world (but really a made-up) illustration. WebThyme is an (imaginary) software company which helps users create and host websites, and Jenn is one of the potential customers.

• The perfect prospect: Jenn is set to create a wellness and health site. WebThyme's target audience is entrepreneurs with small businesses.
• The best channel to go with: Jenn Googles advice for starting a new business she stumbles upon one of WebThyme's videos on an article on their blog which tells an entrepreneur's story. In awe, she signs up to WebThyme's emails which deliver Jenn a weekly newsletter with helpful info.
  
• The best action to take:Jenn clicks on a hyperlink in a newsletter that leads her on a web page with a short video, which delves into the latest WebThyme features available to small business owners. The button she taps will take her to a free trial -- the call to action -- and decides to try it.

It's just one instance of a possible video-marketing scenario. What happens when you play it out at a more specific and actionable scale? What are the best video-marketing methods for important channels like emails, social media as well as your website? Let's dig in...

Exploring social media

What makes social media so efficient to grow your business? When your existing followers follow, like or share your articles and share your videos to their own contacts and acquaintances, some who may decide to follow your account. Another way to increase the number of leads within this community is to include form for email capture, which is available in Business, so you can collect your viewers" details directly inside the embedded player. Then, you can effortlessly import these email addresses into email marketing services like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and Constant Contact.

Perhaps you'd like your visitors to go on a page that lets them discover more. It's possible! Business permits you to include clickable CTAs which allows you to send people exactly to the place you'd like to direct them.

Additionally, you can grow your reach and get new followers on a larger scale by using the use of paid social media. Depending on the specific site, you can target key viewers, as well as increase your visibility by promoting your videos by putting it in pre-roll positions or posts that are promoted.

Let your email campaigns flourish

When it comes to emails, videos matter big time. They can increase click-through rates up to 200-300 percentage (that's many percentages, individuals), and reduce the number of non-subscribers. Unfortunately, many email clients aren't able to handle video that are embedded directly in emailsHowever, you can get around it by overlaying a play button on the still images of your video and driving to a landing page that features the full thing.

This is fairly easy to implement in those email marketing systems we mentioned up there, as well as in marketing automation software like HubSpot. And #protip: this is an ideal way to test whether a particular video thumbnail gets you the best click rates. In general of thumb, you can enhance your campaigns" rate of conversion by adjusting your copy and design to match the pages that they direct traffic to.

Your website, packed with stunning videos

 Homepage

A majority of businesses create an overview video for their website, which explains what the brand's mission is the reason why your business matters, and what problem your company is solving. This vastly impacts how your brand is thought of by someone just coming across your business. Consider Canary as an example.

 Pages for landing

While your homepage serves many purposes for a wide range of people Your landing pages are ideal for educating specific segments of your customers about the great things you have to offer in order to convince people to take an decision. People who market to your landing pages come through online ads, social media, blogs, and search engines. These videos help convert these leads into customers. As an example, have the time to visit our business page.

 Blog

It's a major source of traffic inbound to your site -- particularly when you post useful information, news from the industry, and thought leadership on the topics that your audience cares about as they're likely to search for these topics through Google. This is also an excellent destination for sharing product and corporate news, events and the best practices you've learned from your audience. Are you looking for some examples? What you're reading will be (hopefully) more engaging with videos sprinkled throughout.

 Pages for FAQ and Product pages

All that is needed to put it all together

If the video-marketing approach you have chosen is implemented well and effectively, you build an environment that helps grow the business of your organization by attracting new followers and engaging those who already follow you; your videos-loaded blog posts are ranking highly in results for search engines Your email marketing campaignsthat feature stunning thumbnails of videos -- lead fans to websites that are your landing pages and those boast pertinent videos that have clearly-written CTAs All of these can be optimized to generate leads as well as increasing conversions. All of this can be tracked, measured, and able to be improved as time passes. And speaking about...