Ultimate Guide to Video Marketing
Outline of chapters
Understand Video Marketing Today
This video marketing guide is not like the others.
It’s not basic, outdated or regurgitated. It’s a genuinely useful, current and unique guide for both marketers and creatives. So, if you’re looking for the real ultimate guide to video marketing, you’ve come to the right place.
Stick with me and in 20-minutes you’ll know how to:
- Develop a video marketing strategy
- Understand the future of video marketing
- Explore different types of video marketing
- Nail video creation, distribution and measurement
- Scale video production using the best solutions
But before we dig into video marketing strategy, it’s helpful to understand how we got to where we are today. How has marketing changed? What’s driving the most recent shifts in video consumption? And most importantly, what does it all mean for your video marketing strategy?
The Video Marketing Landscape in 2023
We’ve reached an inflection point in marketing. Driven by technology like AI and TikTok, the way audiences consume media is changing.
There’s a step change right now with the creator economy, AI, the Tik-Tok-ification of everything, owned media, the way we actually reach audiences as marketers. All of it changes the way audiences are consuming media and therefore consuming our stories and messages.
With this step change, video is gaining even more ground. By taking a closer look at what’s causing the change, it’s easy to see why. Here are six factors playing into video’s prominence and evolution in the new era of marketing:
From shorter attention spans to higher quality standards, these shifts in marketing all point in one direction: More video. To capture attention, tell quick stories, share your POV and satisfy multiple search channels, there’s no better medium. In fact, the latest data clearly shows it’s not a matter of “why” video, but “how” video.
Move the Conversation From “Why” Video to “How” Video
If you ever have to answer the question why video, here’s a good place to start: Video is responsible for 65% of all internet traffic in 2023. The same study found video usage grew 24% in 2022.
With YouTube coming in second on the list of most visited websites in the world, this is no surprise. But contrary to popular perceptions, it’s not just a platform for MrBeast stunts and CoComelon singalongs—68% of users watch YouTube videos to help make purchasing decisions. What’s more, 72% of consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it.
Beyond giving the people what they want, video improves performance across all marketing programs. Need proof? Here are a few stats from our own experiments you can leverage to move the conversation from “why” to “how” video:
- Content with video gets 300% more clicks in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
- Around 63% of Superside’s videos appear on the first page of Google search results.
- Ads with video convert at a 30% higher rate than animation-only or static ads.
- Sales outreach with video receives four times more replies and eight times more clicks.
- Video content drives 50% of new opportunities at Superside.
There are a million more stats online to back up your video marketing efforts, like 92% of marketers report positive ROI on video content and 93% say they’ve acquired a new customer through video on social media. But since we’ll be sharing advice from Superside’s own video marketing experts, we thought it was important to back up our chops. And in this guide, we’ll show you exactly how to get these types of results.
So, without further ado, let’s dive into the “how!”
Craft a Video Marketing Strategy
Why do you want to do video? What purpose are you trying to fill with it?
This is the first question you need to ask yourself when developing a video marketing strategy. It may seem basic, but often, video is a medium marketers throw into their strategies without thinking through the different goals it can accomplish. In fact, in their State of Video Report, Wistia found 43% of companies don’t have a video-specific strategy.
People see video as a silver bullet, but you really need a processed approach of why, what and how. It’s not just make a video and you’ll find success. It’s really that pre-process that will set you up for the win.
For example, when McCoy was hired to lead video at Chili Piper, he knew the first thing they were trying to solve was brand awareness. For McCoy, hitting that brand awareness goal meant moving fast, focusing on quantity over quality and filling feeds with lots of different, interesting content pieces. Knowing the “why” dictated the “what” and “how.”
McCoy suggests keeping it this simple: Understand the why, who, what and how, and you’ll have the basis of a strong video marketing strategy.
Why Do You Want to Do Video?
For McCoy, the answer to this question was straightforward: Increase brand awareness. But as Chili Piper evolved, McCoy’s video marketing strategy did too. Having made a name for themselves in the market, Chili Piper diversified their video content to fulfill more down funnel goals, like educating and nurturing their audience.
In other words, he built out a full-funnel video marketing strategy.
Chances are you’ll have multiple goals you can map to the funnel as well. Though it’s well-established the marketing funnel isn’t linear or clear, it’s still a useful construct to ensure you’re creating with intention and covering all the stages where you might catch a person along their journey.
We still believe you need to create videos with the specific goals of the funnel in mind. It’s really important to be creating with the intention of where you might want to catch a person along their journey. But knowing they might see a BOFU piece first, storytelling across the funnel is key.
Here’s a breakdown of goals and video types by funnel stage to help you zoom in on your “why:”
Who Are You Making Video For?
Every marketer and creative worth their salt knows the success of content hinges on understanding their target audience. Video content is no exception. Before you decide on topics, formats and platforms to reach your goals, you need a solid understanding of your audience. If you’re an established company, your product or marketing teams have likely done a lot of this legwork already.
But when it comes to video, you’ll want to go beyond demographics and focus on the humans behind the data. Where do their interests lie? What are they engaging with? How do they interact with a channel? Focusing on the real humans consuming your content will help you craft beautiful messaging and package it in the right ways.
Connect with the person, don’t over-index on the employee. That person we’re marketing to is not just their job title, or their job description, or their KPIs. They’re a person that thinks and feels things. And that’s the version of them I want to connect with.
In sum, the best approach to answering the persona question is (predictably!) human-centric. Start by understanding who your audience is and what they want on a human level. Then, you can dig into where and how to activate them. But really get the human-side down first—if not, you might end up creating videos for King Charles when your audience is made up of Ozzy Osbournes!
What Are You Going to Make Video About?
Once you’ve established your goals, it becomes a lot easier to narrow down your topics and formats. For instance, you might have a strong legacy product, but you want to reposition it in the eyes of your audience who have a limited view of your capabilities. This is a real example from Vimeo.
Vimeo has a history as “the hipster cousin” of YouTube, known for being a great place to host and embed content. But people are less familiar with the suite of video solutions they offer beyond hosting. So, their main goal this year was to change their audience’s awareness levels.
How do we change the perception? How do we tell marketers that we see them, that we understand them, and also that we have all of these other video tools? That’s where the idea for our new campaign film came from.
Starting with their most pressing top of funnel need, Vimeo came up with a creative campaign film concept to capture attention in a fun, unexpected way. From there, they carried the main messages and imagery of this campaign across their programs at different funnel stages, making everything feel cohesive.
Top of funnel: Campaign film
Capturing attention with a fun, technicolor lifestyle video.
Middle of funnel: Monthly event series
Educating by sitting down with people who are using the tools today.
Bottom of funnel: Product videos
Selling by showcasing exactly what you get with each tool.
This campaign is a great example of ideating video content based on goals. For mid-market and enterprise companies, it’s inevitable you’ll have multiple goals. But if you start from your top priority, you can repurpose ideas across funnel stages and create a compelling brand experience, like Vimeo did.
How Are You Going to Make Video?
You have three options here: Build an in-house team, outsource to a creative partner or adopt a hybrid model of insourcing and outsourcing. The route you choose will depend on your goals, the maturity of your company and the resources available to you.
For example, Red Bull uses a hybrid model. They have an in-house team whose primary function is commissioning. These in-house producers, managers and content creators understand the brand and know what will work on Red Bull’s channels. Adopting a hybrid model allows them to retain creative control, while gaining access to a broad range of expertise, scaling production and experimenting with different video formats.
If you’re in a position where you have a relatively well-developed brand and you know what you want to achieve, then that hybrid model of retaining control in-house but upscaling your services out-of-house can really complement what you have going on.
For earlier-stage companies who need to prove the ROI of a program before investing in-house, it may make sense to start with outsourcing. This was the case for Curative, an affordable healthcare startup that needed to create more professional video for their B2B audience. Starting with an outsourced creative partner allowed Curative to maintain a lean team, while getting their video strategy off the ground.
We had to prove the ROI of video before investing in it internally. We’re a pretty lean staff, and we’re keeping it that way. So, it was an obvious choice to outsource. It felt like the only option to create more produced content for the B2B audience we’re trying to reach.
In contrast, Chili Piper went all in on video right away. Knowing they wanted to invest heavily in a video strategy to increase brand awareness, they started with an in-house hire. All this to say, there are advantages to all three models, and ultimately, the route you choose will depend on your business goals.
We’ll go into more depth about the different ways to outsource and strategies for scaling video production a little later on. But for starters, here’s a chart that breaks down the pros and cons of each model to help you start thinking through the right choice for you company:
Perfect Your Video Marketing Strategy
Creating a video marketing strategy from scratch can be intimidating, especially if it’s not something you’ve done before. But if you start with the “why, who, what and how,” you’ll have a solid foundation to build on.
You’ll also want to get into more detail about:
- The types of video you’ll create
- The video creation process, including resources, timelines and budgets
- The best distribution channels considering your audience
- The success metrics you’ll track
- The tools and services you’ll use to scale video
...all of which we'll cover in the chapters to come! To give you a starting point (and a one-pager you can share with your boss), grab a copy of our video marketing strategy template and fill it out for your brand:
Look to the Future of Video
The future of video marketing is bright. As we’ve seen, video consumption continues to grow and all signs point to an era of marketing where this format comes first. But like most technology, video looks different today than it did five years ago. And in another five years, we’ll all be immersed in 360-degree video experiences akin to real life.
Sound a bit far-fetched? We’re really not that far off!
Along with interactivity, 360-degree video is one the emerging trends marketers and creatives should be aware of. Here’s a breakdown of the top five video marketing trends shaping the future of the medium:
Top 5 Video Marketing Trends in 2024
1. Short-form video
From TikTok and Snapchat to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, short-form video is officially the most popular social media content format. But again, this isn’t just a medium for socializing and Gen-Z. According to HubSpot’s latest Video Marketing Report, short-form video has the highest ROI of any video format for businesses, surpassing common mediums like webinars and live streams by over 20%.
Though definitions vary, most marketers and creatives agree a short-form video is less than 60 seconds. Regardless of exact length, the idea is to deliver a bite-sized piece of content to captivate viewers while catering to limited attention spans. So, how can you work this type of video into your strategy? There are tons of applications in marketing, including social media content, ads, webinar cutdowns and more.
Here’s a light-hearted short we created for our customer, Intercom:
2. User-generated content (UGC) video
Hand in hand with the rise of the creator economy and the preference for real points of view, UGC has become an essential play in the marketing repertoire. It works because it doesn’t come across as a play—UGC feels authentic and trustworthy. Often, this type of video is low-budget. It’s usually recorded vertically on a phone from a first-person perspective with simple captions and minimal editing.
And here’s the thing: Even if you don’t have actual content generated by customers or the budget to pay an influencer to make videos, you can still dip your toe into UGC. At Superside, we tested UGC created by an influencer against UGC-style videos made with in-house talent, and we found the in-house videos actually outperformed the influencer videos, cutting cost-per-lead by 45% month over month. So, mimicking a UGC tone and style with in-house video can be just as (if not more!) effective as the real thing.
Here’s an example of a UGC-style video we created for our customer, Curative:
3. Interactive video
In the battle for digital attention, interactive video can give you the high ground. In fact, Magna, a media strategy group, found interactive video ads were 32% more memorable than non-interactive ads, even if viewers didn’t click on the video—just knowing they could interact with the video made it stick in their minds. The same study found interactive video ads had a nine times higher impact on purchase intent.
Interactive video is a way to think outside of the box on how you can engage your audience differently using technology. It’s all about engagement and getting folks to spend more time having an experience.
During our Standout Summit, Rhodes shared an example the Edinburgh Zoo created with Vimeo, where viewers can decide which animals to visit and click to reveal facts throughout the video. It’s easy to see how this type of immersive, active experience lends itself to deeper engagement.
Here’s a snippet of the Edinburgh Zoo’s interactive video experience: