How to Start a Video Marketing Strategy: 7 Tips for Business Owners ft. HubSpot

In today’s digital landscape, video has become a powerful tool for businesses to engage with their audience and increase brand awareness and sales.  According to a recent report, 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.  However, starting a video marketing strategy can be overwhelming, especially for business owners who are not well-versed in video creation.  And if that’s you, don’t worry – we created this article to help you get started!  Here are seven tips for business owners looking to create a successful video marketing strategy, ft. HubSpot.  

1. Define Your Goals

Before diving into video production, it’s important to define the goals of your video marketing strategy. What do you want to achieve with your videos? Why are you making them?  Your goals could be:

• Increasing brand awareness – show potential customers what your brand stands for, what makes you unique, and why they should choose you over your competitors
• Driving website traffic – provide viewers with engaging content that will drive them to your website and showcase their products and services in a way that text alone can’t provide
• Reducing bounce rates –  keep your audience engaged with videos that are both entertaining and informative, so they stay on-site longer
• Enhancing customer service – use videos to answer frequently asked questions or provide additional assistance when needed

Once you define your goals, you can design your videos with those goals in mind.  

2. Identify Your Target Audience

Imagine writing a letter to someone you don’t know. How would you know what to write?  It’s the same with videos. Your target audience is the group of people you want to reach with your videos (your ideal customer).  So, before creating your video, take some time to think about who you’re trying to engage and create a buyer persona.  To create a buyers persona:

• Identify who is likely to purchase your product or service
• Determine the age, gender and occupation of your target audience 
• Understand their needs and interests 
• Define their pain points 
• Learn about their online behavior (what social networks they use, what type of content do they respond to) 

Here’s a guide to how to create a buyer persona to help you get started.   

3. Plan Your Videos

Once you have defined your goals and identified your target audience, it’s time to start planning your videos.  Start by brainstorming ideas for your videos.  What kind of videos do you want to create? 

• Product demos
• Explainer videos
• How-to videos
• Behind-the-scenes
• Testimonials

Choose the type of videos that would best suit your goals and target audience.  

4. Create Your Videos

Now it’s time to start creating your videos. You can use different tools, depending on your budget, skills, and resources.

• You can hire a professional video production company. 
• You can use your smartphone and apps to create videos. 
• You can use a DIY video creation tool like Wistia. 

Whether you’re shooting a product demo, how-to video, or explainer video, make sure to plan your shoot in advance. This will save you time and money while giving you the best chance of creating an effective video. Make sure to keep your videos short and sweet, use visuals, music, and voiceovers to keep viewers engaged.  Finally, don’t forget to include a call-to-action at the end of each video. When creating your videos, make sure to keep your goals and target audience in mind, use engaging visuals and storytelling, and include a clear call-to-action.  

5. Promote Your Videos

After creating your videos, it’s time to promote them.  You want to make sure that your videos reach your target audience and achieve your goals.  You can promote your videos through different channels, such as:

• social media
• email marketing
• your website
• paid advertising

Make sure to optimize your videos for SEO by using relevant keywords, creating a catchy title and description, and using captions or transcripts.  And then monitor the performance of your videos and adjust your strategy accordingly. HubSpot Academy offers a free course on Video Marketing that can help you develop an effective video marketing strategy and learn how to promote your videos.  

6.Track Your Performance

Once you’ve developed your video marketing strategy and started producing videos, the next step is to track your performance.  You can do this by measuring engagement metrics, such as:

• views
• shares
• likes
• comments
• time spent watching your videos

Analyzing these metrics will give you a better understanding of what content resonates with your audience and which tactics are the most effective.  

7. Optimizing Your Videos

Once you have developed a video marketing strategy and tracked its performance, it’s time to optimize your videos for better results. This can be done by:

• making sure your videos are optimized for search engines (SEO)
• creating compelling titles and descriptions that target specific keywords
• using relevant tags
• getting backlinks from other sites

You can also optimize your videos for better performance on social media by sharing them in the right places and at the right times of day. Also, consider adding closed captions to your videos so that viewers who are hearing impaired can still engage with your content.  Finally, make sure you’re taking advantage of YouTube analytics to measure the performance of your videos and adjust your strategy accordingly. By optimizing your video content, you can ensure that it reaches its full potential and gets more views, shares, and subscribers! And that’s it!

Starting a video marketing strategy can seem daunting at first, but by following these tips, you can create engaging and effective videos that resonate with your target audience and achieve your goals. Don’t forget to define your goals, identify your target audience, plan your videos, create your videos, and promote them through different channels. With a well-structured video marketing strategy, you can increase brand awareness, drive traffic, generate leads, and boost sales.  Start creating videos today!

  Need some help combining your video and HubSpot strategies? We’d love to chat.