Stop making videos!
If you are creating videos because you heard that is the best way to spread your message and make sales but you don’t have a marketing plan that supports your videos then you are just wasting your time.
My name is Corrina and I am a Social Media Navigator helping you find your way through the social media wilderness and generate new leads by incorporating videos into your marketing plan.
So now you may be asking yourself why would a video marketer be telling you to stop making videos? No, I’m not having a Jerry McGuire moment, the opposite actually. I want to help you grow your business.
What’s the difference between the videos you are making now and the ones you should be making? There is a lot more that goes into video marketing than just picking up a camera, talking about a subject and publishing it online. Let me be perfectly clear, I’m not saying that you can’t produce a video that goes viral without a game plan, but most likely that would be a fluke and you probably wouldn’t be able to replicate the same results again.
So, how can you make a video that gets the results you want? Now, let me add a disclaimer here, I’m not saying there is a formula out there to make a video go viral, but I am saying that with a little planning your video marketing can get you better results.
Who, what, where, when and why; how = video
Who is your target audience? And let’s get a little more specific than everyone. Of course it’s everyone’s desire to sell to everyone, but if you narrow down your focus you can create videos that talk directly to a specific person. Since most of my followers are Real Estate Agents, I will focus on their scenario.
For this article our target audience is the 25 – 30 year old crowd, with student loans and have been on the job for about 5 years. They don’t have kids, they are newly married, thinking about buying a home and starting a family, and they currently have one dog.
Now that is pretty specific and we could even go further and list their job and yearly salary and as a matter of fact we will say that combined they make 80K a year.
That is your ‘who’ for this video series, your ‘who’ for your next series might be completely different which would change your ‘what’, ‘why’ and your ‘where’.
Notice I said series. You should be thinking about a series of videos rather that a one and done. You are going to take this young couple down the video marketing funnel and to do that you need a series of videos that are created for different purposes. We will dive deeper into the video marketing funnel in another blog, for this one we will focus on how to create a single video.
WHY & WHAT
Why does our young couple need this video? What problem are you solving for them?
In our scenario, our couple thinks they won’t qualify for a home loan because 1. They have student loan debt and 2, the Denver market is growing faster than they can save for a downpayment. I would advise my client to make two separate videos tackling each of these issues.
Take your time and come up with a great script that captures their attention and let’s them know that you can identify with their problem. Then tell them what you can do to fix their problem and end with a call to action at the end.
WHERE & WHEN
These items refer to, where are you going to publish this video and when? Believe it or not there are key times to publish videos on every platform to ensure that your target audience sees your content.
Our couple is most likely on Instagram instead of Facebook, so you’re going to want to make sure that your video is less than a minute long so it can be posted in its entirety on Instagram. I’m still on the fence about IGTV and their longer videos and I’m a big supporter of YouTube and I believe every video you create should be posted there.
Each platform that you decide to publish on needs to be tailored to that channel. At the end of a YouTube video you should be telling people to subscribe and hit the little bell so they will get notified of future videos and you should also be pointing them toward watching the next video in the series and don’t forget to create a catchy title and upload an eye-grabbing thumbnail. On Facebook and Instagram you should be telling them to like and share this video and direct them to your YouTube channel for more helpful content on the home buying process.
This is just a quick overview of what you should be thinking about before you create your next video. If you’d like to sit down with me and come up with an actual marketing plan for your series of videos, reach out to me; call, text, or email. I’ve been told I’m a pretty good mind reader but I wouldn’t rely on mental telepathy or smoke signals as a way to let me know you need my help.