According to a 2023 study from Wyzowl, a video production agency, 91% of businesses surveyed use video as part of their marketing strategies. The 9% that aren’t using video report that one of their biggest roadblocks is not knowing where to start. That’s a valid impediment, given the number of video platforms and types of video marketing available.
What Is Video Content Marketing?
Video content marketing involves producing and sharing video content for your business to raise brand awareness, attract organic traffic, or drive leads and sales. Your business can use video on its websites or distribute it through other channels, such as social media or email, much as you’d share traditional written content.
Video provides a different and compelling medium for engaging with customers interested in your business. Plus, you can be as straightforward or creative as you want with it, capturing your business’s brand, voice and mission.
Fortunately, getting started may not be as challenging as you’d think. In this guide, we’ll share actionable tips to help you build (or perfect) your video content marketing strategy and become a more confident video content marketer.
The Benefits of Video Content Marketing for Your Business
Video content marketing provides another medium for reaching customers where they are, but it also has many other powerful benefits.
Seventy-nine percent of customers surveyed by Wyzowl reported that video convinced them to purchase an app or software. Further, 91% of people said they want to see more videos from brands, and over half indicated they’re more likely to share video content than other forms of online content with friends and family.
Done well, informative and authentic video content can have a significant impact, and customers are inclined to engage with it. Other benefits include the opportunity to:
- Build more trust with your audience.
- Educate potential customers about your products and services.
- Increase conversion rates.
- Increase your organic traffic.
8 Types of Video Content for Marketing
If you’re thinking about adding video content to your marketing strategy, there’s no shortage of options available, including:
- Demo videos.
- Brand videos.
- Event videos.
- Webinars.
- Expert interviews.
- Explainer videos.
- Customer testimonials.
- Live videos.
1. Demo Videos
Demo videos are a great option if you want to showcase a product. For example, you can create a demo video on how to use your app or help customers understand how the newest model of your best-selling coffeemaker works.
Hootsuite, for instance, does an excellent job using video content to explain the most common dashboard features to new customers.
Example: Hootsuite dashboard demo video
By creating this video demo, Hootsuite eliminated a barrier of entry for new customers, while adding valuable content to its user resource library.
2. Brand Videos
Videos can help you raise awareness for your brand, showcasing your company’s personality and voice. One recent example of an effective brand video comes from a collaboration between Bluehost and Vidico.
Example: Bluehost banding video
Bluehost is a web-hosting brand that aims to simplify website creation for small- and medium-sized businesses. In the brand video linked above, an entrepreneur launching her own dog-training business expresses how easy it was to launch her website and scale business using Bluehost. The video also showcases key product features and functionalities, allowing Bluehost to leverage storytelling to define its product and brand mission.
3. Event Videos
Event videos engage users by providing potential and existing customers a front-row, online seat to conferences, release parties, roundtables, speaker engagements, product announcements, and other special events your business puts on.
A video released by Tough Mudder, a business that organizes endurance events complete with mud and intense obstacle courses, does a great job of this. The video offers a start-to-finish recap of the race, participant testimony, and life footage of obstacles to inspire viewers to compete.
Example: Tough Mudder race recap
Event videos can increase your business’s reach, capture new audiences, and encourage people to attend future events you host.
4. Webinar
A webinar is a virtual event video that allows audiences to gain valuable insights about various topics, including a business’s product or service, relevant concepts, key strategies, or other types of content.
Webinars are often live, encouraging participants to engage in a real-time exchange of knowledge with the opportunity to ask questions. Afterward, the video can be stored online and distributed through various channels, including social and email.
For instance, you can create an onboarding webinar to explain to a new group of customers how a particular software works or provide an opportunity for them to connect with experts aligned with your business. The videos can then be used for future onboarding efforts or as part of a content library.
Sephora, a popular makeup retailer, regularly hosts webinars with beauty experts and influencers. These events are exclusively for Sephora Beauty Insiders who need to use their points to participate:
5. Expert Interviews
If you’re looking to build authority and trust, expert interview videos could help you accomplish that goal.
Expert interviews can be in-depth or short and engaging, offering insights, product plugs or simply Q&As to drive readership. Peloton, a fitness and lifestyle brand, leverages this type of video content well. It develops short one-question interview-style videos with its trainers and distributes them via its social channels. The questions come from Peloton customers, who benefit from the expert advice trainers share.
Example: Peloton Instagram interviews
No matter your industry, finding experts willing to be interviewed on video may be easier than you think. Start by talking to experts on your team—chances are you have marketing, product, sales, and tech experts in an office or Slack channel nearby
6. Explainer Videos
This video type is pretty straightforward—you have something to explain and use engaging video content to convey that information. Explainer videos can be used to support products, services, concepts, or other initiatives.
Take Venmo, for example. It created a clean, simple, minute-long video explaining product features and use scenarios that appeal to its target audience. The video is easy to watch and understand, and the = format makes the product approachable to a range of potential users.
Example: Venmo explainer video
If you have something complex to explain, putting it into video format makes it easier to consume and allows for multi-channel sharability to extend reach.
7. Customer Testimonial Videos
You have a whole team of loyal customers on your side, so why not leverage their endorsement for strong video testimonials? Written testimonials are great, but video provides an added boost, creating an authentic feel that can drive acquisition and foster brand trust with prospective customers.
Slack employed this video strategy to showcase how its product transformed business communications for Sandwich, a commercial production company. It’s particularly creative and effective because it starts at the very beginning of a customer’s journey.
Example: Slack testimonial by Sandwich
This customer testimonial proves these videos don’t have to be dry or formulaic. They can be funny, honest, and interesting, lending themselves to creativity and authenticity. T
8. Live Videos
Live videos provide a great opportunity to connect with your audience, building brand awareness and trust. They also offer a cost-effective way to engage with customers and increase traffic, followers and even conversions and revenue.
For example, the popular retail brand Nordstrom has a dedicated live shopping channel for its customers: Nordstrom Live. Customers can tune in in real-time to get makeup, fashion, and skincare tips from experts and influencers.
By creating live video content, Nordstrom provides a valuable service to customers and gains the benefit of real-time feedback from customers. They can then use that feedback to hone their marketing strategy.
Explore more fun and humorous video marketing ideas.
The Role of SEO in Video Content Marketing
You’ve probably noticed video snippets at the top of your search results when you’re looking for things online. For instance, if you search for “how to use chopsticks,” you’ll likely see a video appear as the first result. Ensuring your videos are optimized for search is essential, as doing so can help you capture a featured snippet or top-ranking spot in Google’s video search results.
Here are some tips for optimizing your videos:
- Conduct keyword research ahead of time and use that to guide decisions about video topics and align content with the customer intent.
- Ensure videos are professional and high-quality to establish trust and stand out among the competition as a reputable brand worth the viewer’s time.
- Create a compelling and SEO-friendly title and video description to attract customers while supporting your search initiatives and increasing social reach.
- Provide a video transcript, which can help SEO and UX. Users can skim it to save time or see if they then want to watch the video.
- Use an interesting and relevant thumbnail to encourage clicks and provide potential viewers with an accurate and enticing content preview.
- Develop a strategy for including videos across channels; this can include your website, social platforms, emails, etc.
- Optimize for watch time and engagement; most platforms will boost videos that users watch longer and interact with. Provide a hook early on in the video that grabs the viewer and encourages them to watch until the end, comment, or share.
How Can I Create Video Content?
Depending on your marketing team’s capacity, you can create video content in-house or partner with an outside agency specializing in video production. If your team decides to create videos on its own, here’s a simple process to follow:
1. Decide on Your Audience and Objective
Your first step is to identify your intended audience and video objective. Do you want to create an event video to attract future event attendees? A series of explainers highlighting how to use your products?
Knowing who you’re targeting and your goal can help ensure your video effectively supports your business.
Keyword research is also beneficial at this stage to identify the keywords people may use when searching for products or services similar to those you offer. Your findings should inform your video script and descriptions.
2. Create a Script and Outline
A strong script is often pivotal to successful video content. Of course, not all videos require a script. If you’re going the unscripted route, an outline may be sufficient. In either case, it’s essential to plan ahead so your video conveys your intended message.
If it’s your first time writing a video script, spend some time learning the craft. If it’s your hundredth time, find different ways to approach the task so it feels fresh and interesting.
Try separating your outline by audio and visual components, as in this example from Inbound Video Marketing:
| Visual | Audio | |
| 1 | Spokesperson speaking to the camera; Image next to speaker: Sales graph | “This graph shown us that there was a sharp increase in sales in Q3…” |
| 2 | Spokesperson speaking to the camera; Image next to speaker: Pie chart | “… and this pie chart may hold the key to understanding why.” |
| 3 | Spokesperson speaking to the camera; Text above image of pie chart: VIDEO MARKETING | “As it turns out our video marketing efforts in Q2 made a big difference.” |
