5 Steps To Create a Social Media Video Marketing Strategy

Advertising on social media is the most popular way to market products and services. Many companies rely on social media video marketing to generate leads, build brand awareness, and increase customer engagement.

If you’re ready to try this video marketing strategy for yourself, read on to learn the steps and best practices.

What’s Social Media Video Marketing?

Social media video marketing refers to content promoting brands, products, and services online. This strategy emerged in the early 2000s with the rise of video sharing on sites like YouTube and Facebook. Today, nearly 90% of businesses use social media video marketing to educate, engage, and influence customers.

From small, home video-style content to multi-million dollar productions, creators use video marketing to encourage more sales. There are several strategies for this — for instance, a makeup company may partner with influencers to create video tutorials featuring its products.

4 Benefits of Video Marketing

Anyone can benefit from using videos in their social media marketing. Here are the top benefits of this content to your marketing strategy.

1. Increased Engagement

Unlike traditional television or radio advertising, marketing on social media gives you a direct connection to your audience. This allows you to create content that audiences can engage with. For instance, you can add a poll to your video to gamify the ad experience and encourage audiences to interact with your post.

2. Improved Brand Identity

Videos allow you to show your authentic self to viewers. Over time, they learn to recognize your content, which generates trust in your brand. 

A great example of this is The Woobles’ YouTube channel. This brand sells crochet kits to help beginners learn how to make small stuffed animals. Their videos mainly focus on crocheting tips and Woobles demonstration videos. Through this strategy, audiences see that the creators are knowledgeable about the craft, making Woobles (both the brand and the product) seem more approachable.

3. Higher Lead Generation and Conversions

Video reviews, tutorials, and guides tell viewers how a product or service can improve their lives, encouraging them to become customers. As people interact with these posts, social media platforms will track viewers’ data, which lets you target audiences with future content. Overall, this increases the chance a lead turns into a conversion. 

For example, user-generated content provides viewers with valuable, unbiased information from other people. This builds trust that your products work, resulting in better quality leads. 

4. Boosted Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Algorithms analyze videos for contextual information to rank them on the search engine results page. Adding relevant keywords, descriptions, and hashtags to your video ads can boost SEO performance and help drive additional web traffic. 

How To Create a Video Marketing Strategy: 5 Steps

A successful video marketing strategy requires careful planning — here’s how to execute your own.

1. Set Goals

Before you start creating content, you first need to define your objectives. Without a goal, you’ll waste time shooting and reshooting videos, unsure of what you’re meant to achieve. 

Decide whether you want to raise brand awareness, increase conversions, or educate customers, then design your strategy to meet these objectives. Make your goal measurable and time-bound to ensure you can measure your progress. 

2. Know Your Target Audience

The best creators connect with their viewers personally — they understand what their audience likes and make content that meets these expectations. 

To do this for yourself, take the time to figure out your viewers’ demographics. Most social media platforms have an analytics page that provides information about your audience’s age, location, and income. You can use this data to tailor ads to your viewers’ needs and interests.

For example, if a fitness creator finds that most of their audience ranges from ages 18–24, they might make ads featuring trendy fitness gear or workout apps.

3. Pick the Platforms

Each social media platform has a unique audience and supports specific video formats. Rather than forcing your content to fit every platform, you could focus on one or two that fit your audience’s preferences and content style. For example, YouTube is usually better for long-form content, while TikTok is more suitable for short-form posts. 

But marketing across platforms can expand your reach and impressions. With Captions, you can easily reuse content and tailor posts to each app. For instance, you might create an in-depth product review to post on YouTube and snip a clip to share on TikTok.

Either way, seeing where you get the best leads and conversions before choosing your preferred platforms is worthwhile. 

4. Write a Content Calendar

A content calendar saves you time and money by organizing your production timeline, removing waste, and saving resources. Separate elements into pre- and post-production so you know which order to complete each task in. 

Decide how long you have to script, storyboard, shoot, and edit each video, and outline what resources you need.

5. Schedule and Promote the Videos

Consistency is vital to keeping your brand visible and relevant, so you’ll want to build a regular release schedule for your videos. Keep it realistic, ensuring you have enough time for rest and recovery. Although you should stick to a timeline as much as possible, leave some flexibility in your calendar to capitalize on popular video trends. 

With your schedule in place, you can devote sufficient resources to promoting your videos. Choose tags, thumbnails, descriptions, and titles to optimize your content. Even after you publish your video, think about when you’ll repromote or reshare it to your viewers. 

3 Types of Marketing Videos

Your marketing strategy can vary depending on the types of videos you make. Here are three popular video types you can adapt to support your goals. 

1. Educational or How-To Videos

Educational and how-to videos create brand awareness and build trust with your audience by positioning you as an authority with answers to your viewer’s questions. These videos teach your audience about your brand, services, or products and can be tailored to numerous formats. 

For example, if you run a cooking channel, you can create tutorial videos that teach viewers how to prep a specific recipe from your cookbook. Or, you could use a piece of sponsored kitchen equipment that viewers can buy on your website. 

2. Interviews

Viewers enjoy hearing exciting perspectives from people with unique knowledge or experience. When given a marketing slant, interviews allow you to inject authenticity into your promotional content. 

Say you’re designing an indie video game and want to interview other developers who have done the same. This discussion can cover industry tips while also building hype for your upcoming game release.

3. Reviews

Reviews inform viewers about a user’s experience with a product or service. Popular examples include unboxing videos, testimonials, and product highlight reviews. These help build connection and trust, so it’s essential to be as honest as possible. 

3 Tips for Social Media Video Marketing Campaigns

Below are a few social media video tips that any creator can use. 

1. Create Engaging Thumbnails and Titles

Your video thumbnails and titles need to grab viewers’ attention quickly so they don’t scroll away. So, use eye-catching visuals and keep your text concise. To help viewers easily identify your content, develop a template or style that you can copy across numerous videos. Just avoid stretching the truth, as using overhyped or misleading titles can come off as clickbait content. 

2. Add CTAs

A call-to-action (CTA) encourages viewers to complete specific behaviors. Each video you publish should include one or two specific CTAs, such as clicking a link to your online store or signing up for a newsletter. CTAs should be simple and strategically placed at the beginning or end of your video so they don’t distract from your content. 

3. Analyze Your Data

Before you start production, choose the video marketing statistics you want to use to analyze your performance. Popular metrics include views, watch time, video engagement rate, click-through rate, and conversions. These data points tell you how long and often people interact with your content and the effectiveness of your video campaigns. Analyze your performance and make adjustments as needed to improve your video quality.

Transform Your Social Media Videos With Captions

A well-designed social media video marketing strategy enhances your content’s visibility and effectiveness. With your plan in place, you can focus on creating captivating content — that’s where Captions comes in.

Captions has all the editing tools you need to enhance your video marketing efforts. Use our features to instantly create video ads, add subtitles, or make AI avatars to promote your products. 

Try Captions today and maximize your social media marketing strategy.