Like mobile marketing, video marketing is no longer the exception to the standard of digital marketing. According to Colin Mulligan of Goldrock Creative, it’s routinely shared high-quality video content that’s key to effective SEO strategy.
“These types of videos can strengthen blog posts and buttress traditional content marketing strategies, making your content far more engaging and likely to be shared,” said Mulligan.
High quality video content can also help to make more powerful connections with your target audience across multiple channels in a unique way.
“Digital marketing continues to move towards the use of video to increase swell time, to communicate better stories, and to provide an additional means to digest information,” said Andrew Ansley.
But how do you go about using video marketing in a way that not only produces engaging content for your target audience but also provides a valuable source for backlinks and other marketing strategies?
Here are a few tips to boost your company’s video marketing and SEO strategy at the same time.
Don’t Center Your Video Around The Sale
It may seem counterintuitive to focus more on the story than the sale when you create your videos. But hard sells can actually annoy and repel customers. There are thousands of ads on social media these days, and you don’t want your company to blend in with them.
“People who take shortcuts are struggling,” said Kyle Thumm of Measure Twice Media. “Creating an authentic reputation of excellence is more important than ever.”
According to Thomas Petty, your business needs to be as clear as possible. “Make it 100% clear who you serve and what specific problems you solve,” he said.
Essentially, the same rules that apply for content marketing apply to your company’s video marketing strategies. You want to concentrate on the value you’re providing for your customers, not the marketing part of it.
“Hip, unique, relatable, and interactive content published on a consistent basis is key to driving traffic to your website,” said Chris Kirksey of Direction.
Make the most of your video’s emotive power to better appeal to your target audience’s needs. Focus your storytelling on your brand, your culture, your people, and your products/services. You can always market to your target audience with a call-to-action.
“Focus on articles [and videos] that answer questions about your industry and are commonly searched for on Google,” said David Alexander of Social Managed.
Optimize Your Videos For SEO
It isn’t just content that can be optimized for Search Engine Optimization. Your company’s videos can be, and ought to be, optimized too especially for voice search.
“Video marketing and voice search are just two areas that will continue to be extremely important for companies to incorporate into their marketing strategy,” said Alex Radin of Further Design Group.
“[Up to] 50% of all searches next year will be conducted in the form of voice,” said Salvatore Tringali of Proecho Solutions. “Video searchers have different habits than text searchers with different devices that need to be taken into consideration.”
There are a few tactics you can play out to boost your video’s SEO. Start by hosting the video on your own domain. Next, embed the video to increase the likelihood of receiving inbound marketing links.
Be sure that you’re also putting high-quality content into your video’s description. It’s your video descriptions that let Google’s search spiders make sense of your video.
“In 2019, because of Google’s sophistication, it is very important to optimize more around topics rather than exact match keywords,” said Juliette Tholey of RevenueRiver.
Your description ought to fully explain what’s happening in the video. It’s also recommended to tag your description with relevant keywords to help you rank better.
Use Your Content To Educate And Prove Yourself To Your Audience
Up to 65% of people are visual learners. That’s why visual content such as infographics and videos work so well for marketing.
It’s also why the topics in your videos are so important. They play a key role in your ability to prove yourself to your customers as an industry expert.
“All too often marketing teams and business owners approach lead generation without a strategy and end up wasting huge sums of money frantically trying to find something that works,” said James Nunn of Juuced.
Consider teaching your customers how to use your service or products. You can give helpful tips on how to make the most of your product. You can also host a webinar or answer frequently asked questions in a video series.
These kinds of videos help to showcase your company’s role in the industry, and you can use them again and again.
“Refresh, add, and include,” said Ed McMasters of FUSIONWRX. “Refresh the content, add content, include links to more content.”
Use The Right Tools
It’s vital that your company isn’t just developing and producing content for your website but also evaluating and tracking the data from your videos.
“Engagement and visibility metric are great to have from GMB, but tracking that data to actual sales in a brick and mortar continues to be a challenge for large multi-unit companies,” said Robert Lane of Buhv Designs.
The data that comes from your videos can help you determine what kinds of topics to focus on for future marketing campaigns. It can also help you learn more about what your target audience is looking for, which products and services they value, and what medium works best.
What’s more, evaluating your data can also help you identify which clicks on your videos are from your target audience and which clicks are fraudulent.
“A fraudulent click tool not only detects these clicks but also blocks them from future fraud,” said Michael Streilein of Blueprint Digital Marketing. “These tools not only save our clients money but also improves the perceived value that our clients receive from us.”
Video marketing can be incredibly beneficial for your company. By creating videos that meet your target audience’s needs and optimizing them for Google, you can boost your overall marketing strategy and watch your engagement rise.
