What Makes a Successful Video Marketing Campaign?

“Video will soon become a necessity for marketers” and “data will drive video content strategy for each platform.” These were some of the predictions given by experts on Forbes less than a year ago. For many industries, they are a reality now.

Gone are the days when video advertising campaigns were the stronghold of established brands. Once digital marketing arrived on the scene, it opened the doors for all businesses.

Digital video marketing campaigns aren’t just nice-to-have anymore. Stats show that 54% of consumers want to see more video content from their favorite brands.

So, how do you quench the audience’s thirst? Don’t forget, the competition is trying to do the same.

Read on to get essential tips to make your video marketing campaigns successful. Ready? Camera roll!

What makes video marketing campaigns so popular?

Let’s reflect on that for a second. Think of your own emotional involvement when consuming news. Imagine reading a story about a natural disaster or a political rally on a news channel compared to watching video footage. The information is the same, but your reaction likely is not.

When watching a video, you are exposed to audio and visual triggers. This makes video marketing campaigns more impactful than other forms of advertising that are primarily visual.

Another reason is that producing video marketing campaigns has been simplified. Technologies are more accessible and compatible without special equipment.

Most smartphones have cameras that can produce photos and movies with a good enough quality to get posted on social media. You can move around and publish video files as they are. All this also means you can produce video marketing campaigns at a reasonable cost.

So, what’s the challenge for video campaign creators? To reach the right audience more effectively than the competition.  

7 things that can make or break a video campaign

1. Know your audience

The first condition for video success is knowing who your audience is and what they like. There are countless types of videos and many different styles and approaches.

And you know what, most of them are great if done right. However, to be successful, the video content has to resonate with your target audience. Figuring out how to get through to your audience is your first task.

There are two aspects to reaching your prospects and potential clients: technical and personal. You need to know which communication channels they prefer and how to touch them emotionally.

Audience research is critical to understanding where and how your potential customers consume video and what gets them excited. Use a tool like Similarweb to get relevant data and insights on audience behavior, interests, and loyalty.

You can measure and compare how loyal audiences are to specific brands. This is one of many features for audience behavior analysis with Similarweb.

Remember, you may be hyped on telling your story, but to move the audience, you need to give them something they are looking for. We aren’t only talking about a product or solution to their problem, but a certain benefit or feeling.

An audience of consumers may seek a feeling of belonging or safety. Maybe they want to feel beautiful, adventurous, or successful. Your video campaign needs to provide that.

2. Do your research and use data

Researching your audience and market requires reliable data. You neither have the time nor the resources to implement all your creative idea for a great advertising campaign based on guessing. Like every other marketing activity, video campaign plans must be built on data-driven insights.

Your competitors are an excellent place to start your research. They target the same audience and likely promote similar products so that you can get relevant inspiration.

Measure traffic and engagement on relevant competitors’ pages to assess the success of their video campaigns. Additionally, examine how much traffic reaches the site from its various video marketing activities.

With Similarweb you can do competitive research for your video marketing strategy.

Similarweb provides a variety of accurate metrics to evaluate and benchmark traffic and visitor engagement.

See which campaigns work better than others and figure out how preferences vary per audience type. Your decisions when planning a marketing video campaign should be based on quantifiable metrics. For example, measure and compare how much time viewers spend on the relevant pages.

Also, investigate which marketing channels your competitors use for video marketing campaigns. You can identify the highest traffic-driving channels with Similarweb Digital Marketing intelligence, as well as find out which channels your competition uses successfully and identify audience preferences and trends.

3. Consider SEO

The right keywords can open doors to your most valuable audiences. That’s true for video content as well. Find out which search terms viewers use to get to the video content you are considering. See which search terms drive traffic to the relevant competitors’ videos. Those are the keywords to incorporate in your video SEO.

Use our YouTube keyword generator and keyword research tool to make this process easier. Discover additional keywords your audience uses to find the type of content you offer in your marketing video campaign.

Make sure to use SEO best practices for video marketing. This means spending some time on keyword research to identify the most valuable terms. You need one focus keyword for each video campaign and its related campaign assets. Incorporate the focus keyword in the video title and description.

Also add YouTube tags with additional keywords if that’s the platform you use. For social media, use the same keywords in hashtags to ensure keyword consistency throughout the campaign.

But keyword research can do even more. Identifying the most-searched terms by your audience can point you in the right direction for video content topics. Make sure to identify search intent to meet expectations.

4. Provide value

Your video needs to answer the searchers’ query. However, there are many ways your target audience can reach your video content, not always based on a distinct query. Make sure to provide something insightful for your target audience. The viewer needs to feel they got something out of watching your video. So you need to satisfy their desire for knowledge, inspiration, hope, or whatever desire led them to your video.

Take this successful Android marketing video campaign as an example. It isn’t selling tech. It is selling a feeling and the value of friendship.

O.k., it’s not always about emotion. Video advertising campaigns like the above usually aim to create a brand identity and build authority. Often your video’s purpose is product promotion and emotional engagement carries less weight, especially in a B2B environment.

With B2B marketing you have to be more subtle in your message and address the viewer on a more cognitive level. What you show should depend on the target audience’s buyer journey stage:

• Awareness stage: open their eyes to a challenge for which they’ll need a solution.
• Consideration stage: provide hands-on advice and insights that demonstrate your uniqueness.
• Decision stage: deep-dive into product features and provide case studies and customer testimonials.

5. Create high-quality videos

The video marketing space is already extremely crowded. The amount of video content is pushing up expectations for quality. Low or medium-quality videos won’t hold the viewer’s attention when they can receive the same content at better quality elsewhere.

However, quality is also a budget issue. Some video types can be created easily and cost-effectively and still be of high quality. For example, tech brands use animated explainer videos in their video marketing campaigns instead of investing in extensive video shooting.

If you decide to shoot real-life videos, invest in equipment that provides excellent image and sound quality. It may be fashionable to post videos that look like amateur footage on social media. But make no mistake, most viral amateur clips are professionally made to look that way. No one enjoys watching videos with blurry images or poor sound.

6. Promote through maximum channels

On top of distributing your video through your regular marketing channels, consider additional promotion options. You want your video campaign to get maximum exposure.

One idea is to create short clips from longer videos and place them as teasers. You may want to write blog posts that accompany your video campaign or present the information as a report or another written asset.

One promotion channel that is often overlooked, but works well for video marketing is employee advocacy. Have your employees share the video content on their social channels (make sure they remain aligned with brand values when adding text).

7. Measure, analyze, and optimize

Keep monitoring the performance of your campaign and keep benchmarking against the competition. Your rivals see what you’re doing. They’ll be quick to imitate your successes and outperform your less successful campaigns, stealing your best ideas on the way.

Be the one who’s always one step ahead of the competition. Reliable and timely competitor data is available so you can measure your own performance against theirs and evaluate success more accurately. Quickly find competitors’ video ad campaigns with Similarweb and identify areas where you can do something different or better.

Insights based on fresh data enable you to optimize content according to shifting keyword trends or add and remove promotion channels to increase reach.

Successful campaigns – whether your own or your competitor’s – can run for a long time. Learn from them and update based on the current audience preferences.

How can Similarweb assist in building video campaigns?

Four out of eight predictions marketing experts made in the Forbes article quoted at the start of this piece talk about data and/or AI. Data and AI are here already, and intelligent use can make the difference between reaching or failing your goals.

Similarweb Digital Marketing Intelligence provides the freshest, most accurate web data available today. You get tools to measure, monitor, and analyze your performance and that of your competition.

• Identify the keywords that drive the highest traffic on YouTube with Similarweb’s keyword generator.
• Use keyword analysis tools, such as ‘keyword gap’ and ‘keyword comparison’ to build your video campaign’s SEO strategy.
• Investigate which competitors successfully drive traffic and on which channels your audience prefers to search.

You know what? Why don’t you just look around to see for yourself how the platform can help you create successful video marketing campaigns? It’s free.