3 Most Prevalent Video Marketing Mistakes Brands Should Avoid

by

With more and more people watching videos nowadays, the importance of including videos in your overall marketing strategy has become a necessity. A few years back, they predicted that in 2019, 80% of all web traffic will be video. 

This means failure to deliver video content to your target audience can translate to less traffic and even lesser leads coming your way. Of course, nobody wants that. However, while a “just do it” attitude is always welcome, some people choose to be daring and spontaneous.

While spontaneity is a good thing, it can sometimes result to a mistake (or two!). For those who are not expects in video marketing, it’s easy to make a few missteps every now and then. This article aims to help you become aware of those mistakes so you can easily avoid them.

Mistake Number 1

Making the video all about you and your brand

Those who are ardent video watchers can attest to this. You watch a video on YouTube which is more a sales pitch than an actual story. What do most viewers do? Most likely, tune it out and take mental note not to watch any video from that brand again.

When you make your video all about you, you make it very easy for your viewers to lose interest. When you lose people’s attention and interest, you’re also losing a prospect or a potential lead.

What You Should Do

Create videos targeting each stage of the buyer’s journey

Take a step back and look at examine your buyer personas and the buyer’s journey. What are some of the possible questions they want an answer to? What are their pain points? What are the things they want to resolve with the help of your brand?

Like any content you create, your videos should be designed to guide your leads through their journey towards eventually purchasing your products or service. For example, if you want to create a video for awareness, you should create a video educating people about your product or service.

If people are in the “consideration” stage, they are doing research on the possible products, services, or brands that can address their issues. Consider this the best time to dish out videos that showcase why your product, service, or brand is way better than your competitors.

Lastly, when they are already in the “decision” stage, creating tutorials, product demos, and testimonials is considered ideal.

Mistake Number 2

Forgetting about search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is not in any way connected to video marketing, right? Wrong! This might not be common knowledge but having a strong SEO strategy for your video is crucial.

In line with this, you can help ensure people can easily find your videos by keeping SEO basics in mind when creating descriptions and titles for your videos. You also need to make sure that when people are looking for a solution to their problems, they can easily find your videos.

If you leave out SEO around your video content, there is a high probability you’ll get buried in all the noise of the internet and your potential buyers will never be able to find you.

What You Should Do

While search engines can’t fully digest every word of your video, it does not mean you have no way of optimizing your videos for the search engines. For instance, when deciding on the title or description for your video, think of possible search terms it can be found under.

Also, it would be a good idea to create a video sitemap. It would be an excellent way to let Google (and other search engines) know where your videos live and what they are talking about. 

When looking for titles and descriptions, use YouTube’s auto-suggest results. Start by searching for a specific term or keyword that’s relevant to your video content and you’ll see the most popular search terms are already auto-filled.

You will also find long-tail options that can help you identify what you should incorporate into your description and title. You might also find great ideas for future videos. Just like written content, long-tail keywords in videos can help drive qualified traffic for keywords that are less competitive.

Mistake Number 3

Going for the hard sell

One of the biggest mistakes brands make when it comes to video marketing is always going in for the hard sell. Videos can be really effective when creating meaningful relationship between leads and brands.

In fact, 90% of users reveal video has helped them in their decision process. However, creating videos for your audience can be counterproductive when you’re constantly pushing people to buy.

Creating videos that people actually want to watch is ideal especially for your prospects that are in the awareness stage. If you stumble upon a similar video on your newsfeed, find out what keeps your attention. 

What You Should Do

It is important to keep in mind that in most situations (this is true on most video platforms as well), people don’t want to be sold to. On the contrary, they want to be educated. They are looking for answers to their questions. Some might also want to be entertained.

When creating videos, use it a great way to tell a story. While at it, share knowledge that will resonate with your audience while addressing their interests or pain points. If anything, it is essential to focus on your buyer’s concerns and give answers that are beneficial.

Wrap Up

If you have zero experience creating videos, the task can be daunting and overwhelming. Fortunately, we’re here to help. Get in touch with us today and we’ll help you create videos that will take your business to new heights.

Report: Companies Will Spend $65 Billion On SEO In 2016

by

seo_goal_target_2016 growth

When search engine optimization or SEO was introduced, many said that this marketing discipline was just a fad, and will eventually be irrelevant. However, with the recent development in this discipline, it seems that SEO is and will be playing a great role in improving companies and businesses for years and years to come.

In fact, according to data analysis of Borrell Associates, different agencies and brands will be spending $65.26 billion for SEO. In 2018, the budget for it will skyrocket to $72.02 billion, and then $79.27 billion come 2020.

According to a recently conducted survey where 357 marketers participated, they have found that over 90% of the marketers plan to either increase their SEO budgets or maintain them over the upcoming year. Online marketers are willing to invest in SEO as they are optimistic about its great impact on their business.

The survey has also shown the following results:

  • 75% of the marketers are planning to increase their budget on on-site SEO
  • 74% want to dedicate more funds on link building
  • 71% aim to fund their local SEO projects
  • 82% are planning to improve their social media presence

These budget estimates will also be used to develop SEO-dedicated teams and site visitor analysis. Although this data could change, this suggests that SEO has improved even more as compared to what experts previously expected.

Having SEO-dedicated internal staffs are important investments as they will be responsible in interacting with different social media, web development and website CMS platforms,  marketing tools and analytics. Moreover, having internal staff gives you better knowledge of what kind of SEO techniques are being used to promote your brand or service.

As for the site visitor analysis, it is vital for companies as it will give them leads as well as opt-in list members. By the year 2020, spending for site visitor analysis will triple up to $4.66 billion.

With these investments, what could be the reasons for SEO’s constant growth? And are these reasons enough for business to invest in building an SEO team? Below are some of the reasons why SEO could continue to grow in the years to come:

Increasing number of user searches – Researchers seem to think that the number of searches per user will likely grow well in the future. This is especially since Google has recently made it official that there are more searches now on mobile than on desktop. Mobile phones have made it easier for different demographics to do an online research about everything that they are curious about. The older generations, who are not really fans of the technology, will make way for the younger ones as they mostly rely on technology for almost everything. With the recent development, users will have easy access to technologies, and it will become faster. This will enable a bigger number of search traffic for every user in circulation.

Bigger number of users – Today, almost 40% of the world’s population has access to the Internet. Compared to the number of users in 1995, which was less than 1 percent, the number of Internet users has increased massively. Since the Internet is becoming more affordable and easier to access to different demographics, the sheer number of search users will possibly increase. It will also affect the per-user search growth. With the fast-paced and innovative technology, it would not be a surprise if soon we wake up enjoying universal availability of the Internet. The convenience of self-driving cars may also be easily available, giving users more time to do online research.

Decreasing need for traditional ads – we will be seeing less and less of traditional advertising methods on billboards and radios. According to marketers, traditional ads have been dying for years.  And with the continued rise of modern ad methods, the old ways of promoting brands and services will continue to dwindle in power until they fade away. When this happens, a bigger number of businesses that depend on traditional ads to promote their products will move to modern advertising. They have no option but to try the inbound marketing campaigns in the online world in order to supplement their achievement strategies. The reason behind its death is that traditional ads only talk to the consumers, and the consumers cannot immediately communicate back. On the other hand, online advertising allows consumers and advertisers can to effortlessly engage and have an interactive conversation. Brands can even depend on their loyal clients to promote their products, making it a cheaper and more efficient way to advertise.

Better SEO sophistication – SEO specialists are becoming better at managing and creating more effective SEO campaigns, and they are becoming even more competitive in understating SEO methods.  Take keyword research or link building for example – with the improvement in SEO ranking algorithms, these processes became intricate strategies for content development as well as publication.

Despite these great potentials, there are also possibilities of SEO having limited or little growth. For example, since more businesses are getting involved and are investing in SEO, this could mean that there will be more competition to deal with. But with lots of potential technological developments happening in the recent years to come, it’s more likely that SEO will continue to grow in popularity rather than dying outright. This is good news for those who are planning to shift from traditional to modern advertising methods as this could mean better job security. Just be open to possibilities and learn to adapt to changes.

Why Video Marketing Is Essential to Your Business

by

Video-Marketing-Services-01

1. WHY VIDEO MARKETING – VIDEO BLOGS & SEO?

A video blog is a great example of video marketing and can help you improve your websites SEO rankings and at the same time help to personalise your company making a real connection with a prospective client. By regularly updating your video blog you can indicate to Google that your site is worth keeping near the top of it’s rankings; as the search algorithms use the frequency with which a site is updated to help qualify it’s SERPs. Make sure the videos you upload are shot in HD, have a carefully written script and are embedded in your site using Youtube. This allows Google to use the transcript of your video to help move you up to the first page results for your chosen keywords. This then all has to be balanced out so you get the best ROI possible. Strategy is the key here. Your video will have to elicit some emotional response from the viewer and at the same time contain your keywords and a good reason for your viewer to actually click on your video. Video Marketing that is irrelevant to your clients will not provide the ROI you are looking for.

2. EVERYBODY’S DOING IT:

By mapping out a number of videos in advance you can target a list of keywords that suit your SEO needs. Once you have done this you can plan the content of your videos by thinking about the questions your prospective clients might ask. The new Hummingbird update to the Google search algorithms is designed to take into account the greater number of searches being made by voice search. These queries are usually longer than typed search queries and as a result the Hummingbird update looks for context. If you have a well thought out SEO strategy for you video blog you can take advantage of this new type of search by answering the questions your prospects might ask. For example, if you run a hotel in Dublin you might have someone in the States speaking to the their phone and asking for ‘a hotel in Dublin with Irish dancing’. A video script starting along the lines of ‘X hotel in Dublin is one of the best places to see some traditional Irish dancing while you eat’ would allow Google to associate your site, with it’s embedded video, with live Irish dancing. There are hundreds of Google searches for ‘Irish Dancing’ in the States everyday.

3. WHAT TO DO?

It is important to make the most of the benefits available from video SEO on your video blog.

Key concepts/techniques to remember include:

Social sharing: if you video is fun, interesting and worth a watch it will get shared. Mobile video has exploded and people use their commute time to amuse themselves with funny videos. If your corporate video is funny (in the right way) it will get more views and shares on Facebook and other social media sites.

Link building: by using these shares you can get some great organic link building benefits.

Youtube comments: Did you know 90% of all internet traffic is video? People love online video. In preparing to write this article I noticed that a lot of Irish hotels that have videos of their business on Youtube have past guests from all over the world commenting about how great a time they had in the hotel. This is the best sort of endorsement a company could hope for, as it is unsolicited.

Geotagging: Did you know that if your corporate video has a graphic with your companies name and address at the end, and it is uploaded to Youtube, then Google’s search algorithms will read this text and use it to help Geotag your video? If the video is embedded on your homepage this will help Geotag your website. You can further help here by going to the advanced settings of the video manager on your Youtube account and adding in your business address. This will help Google to push people searching for your product, in your catchment area, towards your site.

By using these strategies you can easily ensure that Google and the other search engines give your site the credibility it deserves.

 

Hopefully this can help you get a better understanding on the benefits of using video marketing to upscale your business.

If you are interested in having a collaboration with a professional video marketing company, please do not hesitate to contact us!

 

 

5 Reasons Why You Should be using Video for Recruitment Marketing

by

Technology starts to play a bigger and bigger role in all aspects of our lives. It is enough to only look at how the way we communicate have changed in the last years and we will be amazed of the speed with which technology evolves. For example, YouTube was founded in 2005. That’s only 10 years ago, and I am sure many of us can’t remember how we lived without it. It has become almost an instinct to enter YouTube when we want to search for a song, trailer, speech, courses etc.

We are more connected to technology like never before and online marketers are some of the first who know how to use this in their benefit. Let’s be honest – who haven’t checked yet the Superbowl commercials?

seo

Well, if it was made possible for simple tools like videos to reach incredible large audiences, why don’t we apply the same principles to other fields? So, if you are a recruiter, you should start thinking about how your strategy should also focus on using video for recruitment marketing. And because the possibilities about how you can do that are endless, it’s important to make sure you are aware from the beginning of the importance and all the benefits you can get from this kind of strategy.

So, we prepared for you 5 main reasons why you should be using video for recruitment marketing.

 

  1. Showcasing. First of all, using video will help communicate messages about your company more easily. People will find more credible the things they see and hear than the things they read. And long-term, this will help you build your employer branding which will help attract the right people to you.
  2. Transmitting emotions. We live in a competitive world, so, if today you might think you will attract the best prospects for a job because you are the leader on a market, you really can’t know on what place you will be tomorrow. Because of all these reasons, the way a company transmits feelings and emotions has become more important than promoting the company or the products itself.
  3. Engage communities online. As all social media channels become a more natural way to communicate than traditional methods, video is the perfect method to make sure you are engaging your audiences. All the studies in the field have shown that videos are the type of content that will engage the most (comment, share, embed etc).
  4. SEO. In a world that people use internet for communicating, finding information, comparing, purchasing, you want to be found by them. When a prospect employee searches for your company, you want him to find your website as a first result. Video is a great way to achieve this. By adding optimized videos to your website and all your social media channel you increase considerably your chances of first-page ranking.
  5. Development of video technologies. Because more and more benefits are discovered from using video content, the tech world is starting to focus more on ways of integrating easily videos in all kind of social networks. You can check the latest Facebook addition of auto-play and featured videos and playlist.

 

Hopefully these reasons gave you a glimpse on all the benefits you can easily get if you start using video for recruitment marketing, Just have in mind the values you want to transmit, the segment of people you want to attract and let flow your imagination and creativity.

 

If you are interested in having a collaboration with a professional video marketing company, please do not hesitate to contact us!