One of the biggest roadblocks when promoting a business is attracting viewers’ attention and engagement towards our content. To entice the audience towards your content, you have to consistently tell brand stories delighting and inspiring the audience. This aspect means that you need to keep creating content persistently, which:
- Entertains and hooks the audience
- Is shareable and relatable
- Educates people and answers their questions
Grabbing the attention of people is not a small task. And one of the best ways to accomplish this is video marketing.
Why Video Marketing?
Video marketing offers a fantastic opportunity for brands to stand apart from the competition. They work as a visual feast and communicate tons of information in a short span. A study has proved that social videos generate 1200 times more shares than images and text combined.
A combination of thought-provoking visuals, sounds, graphics, and narrations is the best way to get the audience hooked.
To avoid being left behind now is the time to join the cause and create amazing video content for your business. After creating the video, if you want to include advanced editing effects in your video, you must use a dedicated video editor. You do not need to hire a video expert just for making professional video content. Many video editing tools in the market come at affordable prices for small businesses.
However, the key to success is to ensure your videos target a particular stage of a customer’s journey.
Types of Promotional Videos
Let us look at some common types of videos that can help you reach customers in different stages of their journey.
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Educational Videos
Providing education to solve a problem or address a pain point of your target audience is a wonderful way to be noticed. Research high search keywords in your business niche and come up with educational videos related to them. Some popular educational videos include webinars, whiteboard videos, and live-action videos.
These videos need to be short but full of information. Whatever your business may be, whether you are selling consumer goods related to beauty and health or selling business tools, educational videos work great to start building long-lasting relationships with the audience.
Educational videos aim to educate and explain to people about social issues and encourage them to take the next step. If you are dealing in services/products that solve any social problems, educational videos can do wonders. These videos are also great for NGOs.
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Entertainment Videos
Most audiences these days love short, binge-able video content. Using this format, you can create entertaining videos that can make people laugh or inspire them.
Understanding your target audience is the key to creating videos that they can enjoy watching. These videos can imprint the brand name in the audiences’ minds and keep coming back repeatedly.
These videos work because they present the brand as non-intrusive and allow you to have a fun relationship with your audience. Whether you are an FMCG brand or a retail brand, entertainment videos help to strengthen brand rapport. It is one of the most popular video genres on social media and works great during the attention stage of a buyer’s journey.
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Demo and Explainer Videos
Explaining the unique points about your service and products is an integral part of marketing. Over 90 percent of consumers watch explainer videos to learn about different products and services.
Explainer videos are animated videos illustrating a product or service’s important features in easy-to-understand terms.
It can include animated characters, graphics, text, and narrative to tell your story. Explainer videos work great for startup businesses and companies selling technology products.
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Event Videos
Promoting events on social video works great for strengthening one’s relationship with followers and fans. Get professional videographers to record your corporate events and post them on your social media pages.
Live-streaming is another great tool that draws crowds with minimal resources. You can also stream short snippets of the event to create a buzz and attract more people to attend. These videos are a must for big brands with large audiences.
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Testimonial Videos
Whenever new prospects visit your social media pages or website, they want to validate the good points of your products/services. Once they know the pricing and features, they want an unbiased opinion about what you are offering. Get your happy clients to be part of your testimonial videos.
These videos must include:
- Problems they were facing before using your product/service.
- Essential features that helped in solving their problem.
- Testimonial videos go a long way towards triggering a buyer’s decision.
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Video Emails
Video emails work like a medium of offering more targeted content to the customers of a business. It is a great way to nurture the relationship between the customers and the company. You can use the contact information obtained from your existing customers to send them targeted video content to catch their attention or inform them about new product launches, offers, or upcoming events.
Video emails offer businesses an excellent opportunity to differentiate themselves from others by providing customers with special doses of surprises. These videos are usually followed with a CTA to encourage consumers to invest in more products/services.
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Corporate Videos
Corporate videos help in showcasing the company’s vision to potential customers. It is just like the ‘About Us’ page of a website. A corporate video contains details such as:
- Strengths of the company
- Details of the business infrastructure
- Quality standards
- Achievements and Awards
Corporate videos help build trust amongst audiences by focusing more on the brand, its objectives, and values. These videos are quite influential in converting prospects to clients.
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Tutorial Videos
If selling a complex product, it is crucial to demonstrate the proper usage of the product to the audience. Tutorial videos help teach the clients about the easy and effective way to use a product.
Research shows that 4 out of 5 people find demo videos extremely helpful. Most companies create tutorials as slideshows or screen-sharing videos. You can also make live-action tutorial videos.
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360° Experience Videos
Another new concept in the field of video marketing is 360° videos. These videos are a great, captivating, and stunning way for companies to share immersive stories about their brand.
You can also use them to share important places and experiences with the customers to give them an overview of the brand and its products and services. These videos can include behind-the-scenes (BTS) videos, sneak peeks, product features, and similar concepts.
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Video Documentaries
A new type of video that has gained immense popularity in recent years is video documentaries. They are similar to educational videos in that they teach the audience something new, valuable, and real.
Video documentaries work like a cross between educational videos and brand films. They help tell the story in a more stylistic, store-driven, and comprehensive way.
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Infomercials
Infomercials are long-form commercials (15-30 minutes) that highlight the benefits and features of a product. These videos are followed by a direct sales channel or link to buy the product immediately.
These videos were once the exclusive domain of night cable TV, but they have not moved to the interweb. These are direct promotional videos, and the best ones generate tons of sales.
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Work Culture Videos
Hiring the right team for your company is critical to its success. It can be a good idea to show people how much the company values its own people.
Finding the right people for your company who match your work culture can be challenging. These kinds of videos can help showcase the workspaces and work environment of the business. You can use them to give potential recruits a peek into the work-life of the company. It works great for companies growing and looking to expand their team.
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Loyalty Program Videos
Reward programs are great for retaining the business of your existing customers and encouraging them to buy repeatedly. You can promote the reward program by making a video showcasing its benefits and explaining how it works.
You can create loyalty program videos in various formats such as animated, motion graphics, and live-action. These videos work great in the growth phase of a buyer’s journey.
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‘Thank You’ Videos
Thanking your customer is undoubtedly the best way to make them feel special. ‘Thank you’ videos work well in helping businesses retain customers and get more business from them.
You can make these videos in any format, but a personal video would surely add the most value. Any business with a large customer base can significantly benefit from these videos.
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FAQ Videos
These videos usually answer any remaining questions that your customers might have. It is a great way to ease their fears and help calm any quibbles they may have before purchase.
You should make these videos as creative as possible using animations, graphics, and live-action. These videos are most effective when launching a new product/service or dealing with complicated technological products.
Conclusion
All types of videos have their own unique advantages. You have to choose the type of video that would work best for your target audience and marketing campaign.
The format of the video will also depend on the business goals and the marketing budget. There are many video formats that you can develop cost-effectively. Try to stick to one or two forms to maintain visual consistency in your videos.
