Video Promotion Tactics

At ImageLink Film & Media, we can assist with promoting your video online to ensure it reaches its target audience.  In this section we discuss some of the best options available for ‘Promoting’ your video online.  By Promoting the video, we are referring to various methods of making your video accessible from numerous locations online in order to reach the widest possible target audience for your video content.

This is to be differentiated from ‘Uploading’ your video file to websites or hosting platforms. We do not generally recommend that you ‘upload’ your video file to numerous video hosting platforms, or social media channels (or websites).  We instead recommend that you upload the video to just one major Video Hosting Platform (YouTube being the most popular) and then embed the video link in the appropriate webpage of your website.  Once this process is completed then it is appropriate to move to promoting the video on other websites and social media platforms.

To make the video accessible at other locations online (besides the chosen video hosting platform or your website) we recommend that you simply post a link to the video on your website. This will increase traffic to your company website. If you instead wish to just promote the video on your YouTube channel, you can then simply post a link to that online location for your video.  Whichever option you choose, each time someone clicks on the link and watches the video, (either on your website or YouTube directly) this will have a positive effect on the SEO for the video (and the website if that is where you point the link to), which will result in it raising in the search results rankings for any searches related to the content of the video.

For more information on SEO Tactics to increase the search engine ranking of your video click here … For more details of the SEO Benefits of promotional video for your company website click here ...

Promotional Options for your video include …

  • Promote your video on Social Media
  • Link to your video from Industry Discussion Forums
  • Run the Commercial Video as an ‘Advert’ on YouTube
  • Run the video as a Facebook Promoted Post
  • Run the video as a Linked-In Promoted Post
  • Create a Google Ads Campaign for longer videos
  • Embed the video in your company Blog
  • Embed the video on relevant industry Blogs
  • Show your video at Trade shows, Conferences & Industry Events
  • Create and email marketing campaign attaching the video (link)

Promote your video through Social Media Networks

As mentioned earlier an important way of promoting your video(s) is to share the video content on Social Media Networks such as Facebook, Linked-In and Twitter. It is totally free and any responses you get in terms of likes, shares or comments will help increase the number of views of the video. Replying to relevant comments can be a useful way of increasing engagement with the viewers.

Also, joining relevant ‘groups’ on Facebook and Linked-In can be beneficial in terms of keeping up to date on interesting developments in your industry.  Many of these groups will also allow you to post a link to your video, once it is clearly related to the stated interests of the group in question.  Also posting links to your own Linked-in (and if appropriate, your own Facebook account) can further broaden the reach of your video content.  As well as posting links to your video for free, most social media networks (such as Facebook and Linked-In) now also have ‘paid’ options that can be utilised for promoting your promotional video content.

Facebook ‘Promoted’ posts

Facebook now offers the option of ‘promoted posts’. Before posting your ‘promoted post’ video, you can pick a relevant target market demographic and (depending on the available budget) you can ‘promote’ your video on Facebook in a very targeted way - based on a number of precise demographics – including geographical location and the interests of the viewers. You can set your total and daily budget spend in advance in order to control the amount you spend and to test the market before allocating further resources to this option.

Twitter

It is possible to use your twitter account to promote your video. It is worth considering to tweet about certain aspects of the video content. You can stagger the tweets you wish to post and make sure that each post focuses on a different aspect of the video in order to appeal to different viewers – increasing the chance of them clicking the link to the video.  Twitter accepts links to videos that are uploaded to major video platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo.

Targeting Influencers

Social Influencers are online individuals that have a large number of followers or subscribers on their various Social Media Networks.  Though not relevant to all types of businesses (or promotional video), seeking out the assistance of these individuals to ‘like’, ‘comment on’ or ‘share’ your video content can result in a huge spike in viewing numbers for your video content in a short space of time. Naturally, your content needs to be relevant to the content that these individuals (and their ‘followers’) are focused on and interested in.

Create an Online Advertising Campaign

It is worth considering running a ‘paid for’ video advertising campaign online to promote your longer video content (or to encourage viewers to check out your company website).  You can create a unique video ‘advert’ especially for this purpose. Or if your promotional video is short (30 to 90 seconds) then you can consider running that as the advert.  Alternatively you could run a (movie trailer style) edited version of your full video -as the YouTube advert with the option to ‘watch full video’ as the call to action in the clickable link at the end of the video.

Note: The options for running your short ‘Company Commercial’ video type ‘advert’ include YouTube - as well as running ‘Promoted Posts’ and ‘Sponsored Updates’ on Social Media Platforms such as Facebook and Linked-in.

YouTube Video

YouTube gives you the option to specify the preferred target market for your YouTube advert viewership, through a process that is known as Video Remarketing (aka  Re-Targeting ). Using ‘Remarketing Lists’ you can show specially created video adverts on YouTube (and their video partner sites) based on the past interaction preferences of the YouTube viewers. Your advert will be shown (just before) YouTube videos that have content related to the content of the ad you have created. These viewers have been chosen as a potential audience for your advert content by the YouTube Algorithm because their previous viewing choices have indicated an interest in the type of content you are promoting. These ‘warm’ leads represent  completely new prospects that you may be able to convert into customers.

If you want to generate the lowest cost per acquisition, create a video re-marketing campaign. Within your custom audiences, you can serve the specific YouTube video just to individuals that have visited your website.  A pixel will need to be placed onto your website so you can serve the video advertisement to users that have dropped off your site.
Imagine if you are a retailer and target a video for a specific product to people who dropped off that respective page on your website! With video re-marketing, you’ll have the capability to do this.

Make the most of your video remarketing lists by exploring these features:

  • Targeting: Remarket to your potential customers by using specific categories, such as topics, interests, keywords, geotargeting, etc.
  • Creative formats: Build and target your remarketing campaign with the TrueView family of video ads and other creative formats (text, image, and rich media ads on the Google Display Network).
  • Detailed reports: Optimize your remarketing campaign based on performance metrics. For example, raise bids on specific topics or channels that generate the greatest ad response.
  • Ease of use: Use AdWords for video to easily create, manage, and target your remarketing lists.
  • Custom audiences: Customize your targeting by combining your remarketing lists. For example, you can target users who viewed your movie trailer but haven’t yet viewed your ad promoting the DVD release.

At ImageLink Film & Media we can assist you implementing an effective YouTube Video Ad Campaigne. We will help with the conceptualisation and production of the YouTube Video Advert. We can also assist you placement of the advert online as part of our marketing and online promotional services. We will then analyse and monitor the campaign and adjust targeting variables accordingly to ensure the most effective strategy is being implemented for your YouTube Video Advert.

If you are a mid to large sized business and generate more than 1,000 daily visitors to your website, the video re-marketing will get served to a large enough audience. If you have less than 1,000 daily visitors per day, your company will want to expand its advertising and choose precise targeting using Google Adwords to obtain more views and exposure.

Google Ads

Google Ad-words is the facility that allows you to run text based adverts campaigns on Google. These adverts generally appear at the top and the right hand side of Google Search Pages.  It is now possible to link your YouTube Account to your Google Ad-words Account.  This will enable you to create a text-based Google Ad-words ‘Advert’ that you can use to promote a specific video you have on YouTube. As well as the text describing the video content, the Google Ad-words Advert will also feature a ‘Thumb-nail’ Image of the Video – to further clarify the video content to the user performing a search using Google’s search engine. This way you can run a ‘paid for’ promotion to enhance the chances of your video appearing on search results pages for relevant searches on Google. Because you can run a PPC (Pay per Click) advert – you will only be charged if the searcher clicks on the link to your video.  You can also set your bid and daily spend so that you know in advance how much this promotional effort will cost and so you can budget for it accordingly (generally ad-word adverts that ‘bid’ a higher amount per click will be prioritised by the search engine algorithm).

Within Google’s Ad-word interface, you can use the AdWords for Video for promoting your Video advert. This is done by selecting the option to specifically create a new ‘Adwords for Video Campaign’.  Within the settings of this new campaign you can select the video you want to promote as well as customising the lists of potential ‘Viewing Targets’ that you want to aim your video content at. The lists of potential viewers includes users of YouTube (which Google now owns) and multiply other videos sites on the ‘Google Display Network’.

The Target Viewership can be selected using wide range of other criteria.  You can be very specific when specifying where you would like your Video Advert to appear and who gets to see it. For example you can choose to only show it to individuals that have visited your website. You can even target only customers that visited a specific page on your website.

These include previously demonstrated ‘Affinity’ interest in a topic (which is assessed by interpreting specific actions taken by viewers of YouTube videos, including ‘likes’, ‘dislikes’, comments and shares of video content (including any previous videos of yours that they might have viewed.  You can also select to display Video Advert on other specific YouTube Channels, (even on specific videos within these channels)    language and geographical location.

Rate your Keywords

It is very important to be very Keyword aware when creating the text content for the advert. This will maximise the chances of it matching up with relevant ‘search terms’ inputted by a user performing a search. To help find out what are the most popular keywords for your industry (or specific product/ service) you can use any of a number of ‘Keyword Research’ tools. If you are running a Google Ad-words campaign / paid PPC (Pay per Click) ads on Google the Ad-words interface allows you search the strength and popularity of given keywords and provides suggestions.

Note: For longer videos Adsense can be a way of making money from your video by allowing adverts to run before your video.

Email Marketing Campaigns

It has been shown that ‘open rates’ for marketing email campaigns are double if you embed video content in the email.  In order to be most effective such videos should ideally include a specific call to action such as ‘request a demo’ or ‘more information’. You can put a link to your video on an email that you send out to your existing customers. Alternatively you can obtain a list of potentially relevant prospects ( eg. a relevant industry body such as the Institute of Directors, or the local Chambers of Commerce etc ) and you can incorporate the video content as a way of enhancing an mail campaign that is aimed at promoting your company to this targeted list of recipients.

One advantage of email marketing is that you have control over when the video will be seen in a way that you do not have using other promotional methods. (It is generally not advisable to send a marketing email late on Fridays, at the weekend or early on Monday mornings – as the recipient is not likely to see the email – due to not being there or because of the backlog of other emails they are likely to have to go through). Also, you have control over who exactly it is that is being invited to view the video content and you can make sure that these individuals all fit the profile of your target audience for the video.

Analysing how your video is performing

Analysing how your video is doing is very important in terms of assessing how effective the video content is, in terms of achieving its stated objectives. Most Video Hosting platforms now offer powerful analytical interfaces where detailed video viewing statistics are gathered.  Using this analytics software you can ascertain vital video viewing statistics relating to the level of engagement with the content in terms of the number of Views, Likes, Shares and Comments for your video(s). You can also monitor changes or trends in key metrics over time

Viewer Statistics:  You can gather much information on the viewers and their level of engagement  (such as who likes or shares your videos). You can also see statistics relating to the general demographics of the viewers and where they are located geographically. Once you know the demographic that is most engaged with your content you will be better able to tap into this in the future.

You can also see the Traffic sources (which shows how viewers discover your content) as well as what devices were used most to watch the content.  It also enables you to see viewing trends and variations over time. For example, you can find out the days of the week,  or month with the highest number of views (and the lowest).

Video Content Statistics:  You also need to be able to monitor which parts of the video do people find most compelling, which parts lead to more ‘shares’ and when do viewers loose interest  (ie. how long do they watch before moving on).  This can be very helpful in showing if the video manages to hook the viewer early on and then keep them engaged enough so that the watch it right through to the end. If you are finding that there is a lot of drop-off early on in the video then this is where you need to analyse how you can learn from this and increase engagement on your next video production.

It is important that your video is Targeted and Focused (not just widely viewed)

Analyse and Adapt

The amount of information available is vast. Everything from average minutes watched per viewer to the total number of minutes watched overall. The most important thing is that you are mindful to decide how you can use these valuable insights.

One way of adapting your marketing strategy as a result of analysing the viewing statistics is to assess the Quality of Views (not just the quantity of views).  It is useful to be mindful of the attributes of your top existing customers (and most engaged audience for this campaign) and target these in future campaigns.

Such information can be very valuable for content creation in the future – because you will know who your ‘Brand’ resonates with.  It can help shape your marketing strategy for increased impact the next time around. Knowing where to focus your marketing efforts will help you achieve a better return on investment through improved marketing strategy.

You should really be making decisions based on the analytics (it is not just a scoreboard).

One possible adaptation to create more precisely focused video content might be to edit an existing video to create a separate shorter video(s) specifically focusing on the topic(s) that held most interest from the viewers (which can be gleamed from Sharing Statistics and drop off rates – at specific moments in the content timeline).   Smaller specific videos might also be more effective in terms of SEO.  Another option might be to vary the content mix to bring in new content and remove some – by creating a new edit of the current video. You can thus sharpen your ‘massage’ and target it more precisely. You an also analyse the data and continue to optimise for search terms.

Real Time Adjustments: Using the performance insights gained you can also adapt your campaign in real time by adjusting (or adding) Clickable Links information to be superimposed on the video (YouTube facilitates this option) as well as tweaking other meta information in the Description and Tags.  Another possible change might be to ad a promo code as a clickable link on this video (or within the content of the next video) – to reward viewers.

These changes, once implemented can then be tested over time and updated further if necessary.  Continual Testing and Optimising of your Video Marketing Campaign will ensure the best results.

Next Step - Create More Videos!

Using video to promote your business is an ongoing process and it does involve a learning curve to achieve optimal results. You can utilise the knowledge gleamed from your analysis to adapt your approach in creating, distributing and promoting your video - as well as implementing improved and constantly evolving strategies when it comes to creating and distributing your next video.

Each video marketing campaign will increase your knowledge relating to how to produce the most effective video content, as well increasing your expertise regarding the most effective video distribution and promotion practices for your target market.

At ImageLink Film & Media we can assist with this process. Our Video Production Experience and Creativity combined with our marketing expertise (including Video Distribution & Promotion) enables us to deliver added value for our clients and is one of the key factors that differentiates ImageLink Film & Media from our competitors.

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