Let’s be honest, videos and social media go hand in hand. You could even leave the post, go to your preferred social media channel, and will most certainly see at least one video with a quick scroll.
However, throwing money at something like videos without having an overarching goal will most certainly keep you up at night thinking – “was it really worth it?”
Video marketers around the globe have that task of intaking ideas, inspiration, creativity and messaging before filming one scene, they create and deliver on a concept that will put smiles on all of their clients’ faces – hopefully.
Why do businesses do it?
Setting goals is the foundation by which a business can continue its growth. The same goes for marketing. Diving deeper into the ‘why’ of your business, and the story you want to tell allows for a much stronger message to consumers.
Hubspot’s study on the state of video marketing shows that 81% of businesses use video marketing as part of their business. Interesting that this number continues to grow. A study conducted by the Cisco group found that by 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic — 15 times higher than it was in 2017.
Consumers need something to latch on to when they make their purchasing decisions, just like the buyer’s journey explains, one simple video could be the moment in which a stranger transitions into a paying customer. Not groundbreaking, but all it truly takes is to create something good.
Education has become the single most important part of business now that every product, service, and industry can be researched to death before any purchase is made. A video can be much more than a promotion or branding showcase.
The video medium has changed over time, education builds confidence, confidence is the feeling your customers need to stay on your website, reach out to your sales team and/or have the motivation to visit your location. With information at every turn, thinking outside the box to make your video entertaining and educational could be the difference between a customer choosing you over someone else.
Goal Types with Video Marketing on Social Media
The optimal way to identify goals is to begin with internal questions. They should be asked in such a way that allows you to understand the other side of the fence – from the customer’s perspective.
How are you trying to make the viewer feel?
What do you want the viewer to do after they have finished watching?
What message truly resonates with what you actually do as a company?
By asking these types of questions, it allows you to set in motion a mind map of what you are trying to evoke out of the viewer.
Traffic and Leads
Let’s say if your goal is to get more people to your website. Establishing effective messaging as well as a proposition that moves to action phrases such as “go-to”, “check out on” or “find out more”. Say if you are a company based in B2C in the product field, by including a promo in a video on social media is a fantastic way to get more traffic on your website.
As a goal, growth in traffic can be measured with resources such as Google Analytics. The data you receive can be extrapolated into audience demographics, genders, age segmentation and much more. Keeping in mind that more traffic to your website can absolutely lead to new sales, new clients and overall growth in awareness.
Tracking this metric is key to establishing progression towards the goal mentioned above. From the publishing date of a new video, measuring traffic based on that inception date can be a useful data point to assess the effectiveness of your new video. The more people visiting your website, the more people you can remarket your product or service to in the future, based on data that shows you who your most valuable audiences are – all from the creation of one video shared on social media.
Brand Awareness
Keeping it simple here, videos can and should be entertaining. The benefit of creating a video that could be liked, shared, or commented on, is that a human has expressed their form of interaction with your company. While these metrics are difficult to translate directly to sales, they have invaluable benefits to come from more and more people accepting to receive communciation from your company.
Once again, it is key to establish goals. The challenge is to understand the value. The overarching goal that is assumed – a video should capture who you are.
Social media feeds are commonly known as the new highway, where paid ads and organic posts are the new billboards. The difference – the new highway can be tracked, measured and reported in such a way that can offer real evidence of growth in public visibility.
It is also important to note that without real people making a cognitive decision to interact with your company on social media, organic posts (non-paid) will only be seen by your current followers. However, if one of your followers likes, comments and/or shares your organic post, that can have a beneficial effect to gaining more followers. The challenge – creating good content worthy of making those actions.
Taking a look at some datapoints for video marketing, for the purpose of growing your brand awareness it seems that video is here to stay.
- By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic — 15 times higher than it was in 2017.
(Cisco)
- 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool — up from 63% over the last year.
(Hubspot)
- Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text.
(Insivia)
What are the main obstacles faced by business owners for video marketing success?
A recent study undertaken by the Ascend2 group offers us some insight into the challenges faced when considering their version of success from investing in video marketing. Staying on the topic of goals, the results from the study offer some real insight and support for specifying what goals will adhere to these challenges.
All of the obstacles identified above can be overcome with a good strategy behind your video marketing. While we may see video being the most effective way to market your brand on social media for the foreseeable future, without understanding the value will never make you feel confident in your investment.
The takeaway here is to spend some time watching videos on social media and reflect on the purpose of that video. Reverse engineer your thoughts to put yourself in the shoes of a consumer looking to educate themselves on their purchasing decisions.
Working with not only a videographer but with a team of social media and branding specialists can allow for a far more effective video that aligns with real goals. To answer the question of this post – our bias answer is yes, it is definitely worth it.
