First published on Dec 20, 2017. Updated on Dec 19, 2018.

Video is the new blogging. If you want to reach more people and build your reputation, then you need to be producing video content on a regular basis. But you can’t just churn out any old videos to succeed. To get results from your campaigns, you’ll need a solid video marketing strategy.

Whether you want to create your first video strategy or overhaul your existing one, you’re in the right place. Keep reading to learn how to craft a holistic video marketing approach that takes your goals, your audience’s needs, and relevant practical issues into account. Follow these steps, and you’ll end up with a video strategy that’s tailor-made to get results for your company.

1. Define What You Want to Achieve

Figuring out your end objective is a key part of goal-setting. When you know why you’re making videos, you’ll have something to aim for and a standard to measure your performance by. Companies that start making videos without defining their end goals often have problems with unfocused or unproductive campaigns, which waste time, money, and morale.

When you know why you’re making videos, you’ll have something to aim for.

Maybe you already know exactly what you want to achieve with your video marketing. If so, that’s great! Put your goal into the most specific terms you can – for instance, “get 100 new email sign-ups in a month” – and move on to the next step.

If you don’t have a well-defined goal yet, an easy way to find one is to look at your sales funnel. Are there any obvious “leaks” you’d like to plug? For instance, maybe you’re having trouble keeping your middle-of-the-funnel leads interested in your product or service. Producing some great video content aimed at these leads might help you keep them engaged and make more sales down the line.

2. Decide What Type of Video Content You Want to Make

You’ve got a lot of different kinds of video to choose from. A few of the most common types of marketing videos include:

• Webinars
• Instructional or how-to videos
• Company culture videos
• Product demos
• Testimonials
• Humorous videos
• Behind-the-scenes videos
• Interviews
• Case studies

To figure out which types of video are the right fit for your video marketing strategy, look for areas of overlap between your audience’s needs and your company’s goals. For instance, if you sell a product that’s complicated to use, you might want to create a series of product demos and explainer videos. This will help your audience feel confident about being able to use your product, and it will bolster your company’s reputation for being friendly and helpful.

For instance, take a look at the SEMrush YouTube account. Apart from helpful SEO videos, they have a separate list with all the walk-throughs for their users.

Give some thought to the style and tone you want your videos to have. For instance, do you want your company to come across as serious and reliable, or laid-back and irreverent? Are you planning to shoot traditional videos, or are animated videos more your style? Your creative choices affect the way people see your company, so choose carefully and aim to keep your video style consistent.

Length is also something you’ll want to take into consideration. Viewer engagement tends to drop off past the two-minute mark, so you may see better results from keeping your videos relatively short.

Viewers are less likely to abandon videos that are under two minutes long. Source

3. Make a Plan for Video Creation

If you’re planning to keep your video creation in-house, decide who will be in charge of the process, what equipment you need to buy or rent, and how often you’ll be able to create new content. All this is an important part of your video marketing strategy.

Make sure to keep your goals realistic. For instance, don’t plan on producing a new video every week if your team is already spread thin. In order to be aware of the workload that you team handles at the moment, use project management tools like Wrike or even free ones like Trello.

An example of a Trello board. Source

A simple Excel sheet will do, too. For instance, in our team, we use a Trello board to track all our marketing activities. If we notice too many cards in the list “Current sprint”, we know we gotta slow down and not take any more tasks on.

If your video marketing strategy implies outsourcing some or all of your video creation, start shopping around for a freelancer or agency that fits your needs and your budget. Discuss your goals with them, and make sure they can deliver the kind of work you’re looking for. Finding a professional ahead of time will help you stick to your publishing schedule later.

4. Make a Plan for Distributing and Promoting Your Videos

Creating your videos is only half the battle. Once they’re finished and ready to be published, you’ll need a plan for ensuring they reach as many people as possible.

YouTube is a logical first place to upload your videos, but don’t stop there – consider reaching a wider audience by uploading them to Vimeo and DailyMotion as well. Don’t forget to place your videos somewhere on your own website as well. Video content is a valuable way to enrich your own home turf on the internet – it keeps people on your site longer, and it can even help you rank better in search engines.

Email and social media are a couple of simple and effective ways to promote your videos. If you use Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or Instagram, add your videos there. You may want to promote each video twice over the course of a day, to ensure that a wider swath of your audience sees it. If you send out a regular email newsletter, you can embed or include links to your videos there too.

5. Decide Which KPIs You’ll Track

The quote “What gets measured gets managed” is certainly true when it comes to video marketing strategy. As you create, publish, and promote videos, you’ll start accumulating lots of interesting data. Knowing how to read and interpret this data will give you a good idea which videos are moving you closer to your strategic goals and which aren’t.

You might be tempted to measure your videos’ success in views. However, while getting lots of views is gratifying, this isn’t the only metric – or even the most important one – you should be tracking. A few other KPIs you may want to keep an eye on include to your video marketing strategy:

• Unique views. In other words, how many different people watched your video? This gives you a more accurate idea what your video’s reach is than views alone.
• Impressions. How many times did your video show up in search results?
• Watch time. Are people abandoning your video in the first few seconds? This can be an indicator that a video is poor quality or simply isn’t a good fit for your audience.
• Clicks, sign-ups, and sales. Is your video inspiring people to take action or get in touch with your company?

Choose your KPIs based on your goals for each video. If you’re trying to drive email sign-ups with a particular video, for example, that video’s views might not matter so much.

Some of Google’s suggested KPIs for video marketers to track. Source

All the videos displayed on our website are hosted on Wistia. We love the tool as it provides thorough analytics in terms of who and for how long watched the video. You can even see where the people are located, which might give you an idea what videos to shoot next.

6. Adjust Your Strategy as You Go

As your company grows and you become a more practiced video marketer, you’ll probably want to adjust your strategy. It’s perfectly fine – and a good idea – to set new goals and revise your expectations as you gain experience. Use your analytics data and your overall marketing vision to update your approach as time goes on.

Wrapping Up

Before you jump into video creation, take the time to lay out a strategy. A good video marketing strategy will help you allocate your resources wisely and maximize your ROI. While every company’s video marketing strategy will look a little different, a good plan should include specific goals, a clear understanding of what your audience needs, and a reasonable production schedule. It’s also important to select and track some key KPIs that will tell you how you’re doing.

Do you have questions, comments, or tips about creating a video marketing strategy? Share your thoughts in the comments below!