Trends often get a bad rep for being the things that other people are already saying, doing, or wearing. In a world full of people and businesses who want to be unique and stand out among the crowd, it’s tough to promote anything that could be considered “trendy”.
Although there is nothing wrong with wanting to be different, in the marketing industry trends tend to be the practices that are proving the most beneficial for the businesses who are wielding them. The key is to take those trends, tweak them a bit, and make them your own. By doing so, you can start new movements and find yourself ahead of the curve.
Specifically, in the world of video marketing trends, there are many aspects to consider as you design your strategy and make plans for your content. Let’s take a quick look at the main points of a solid marketing strategy before we dive into how you can best use video marketing tactics.
- Situation Analysis– Prior to any other step, you must analyze your present marketing situation. Determine what you’re doing right, as well as opportunities for improvement.
- Target Audience– For some businesses, this can be a tough one to nail down, while other industries may find this step to be the most simple. You must define who your ideal customer is and how to best reach them.
- Marketing Goals– You must have something you are striving to achieve on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis. As you reach goals, set new ones to prevent you and your team from becoming content and stagnant.
- Develop Communication Tactics– Social media, email campaigns, and video marketing are just a few of the key tools to use in your strategy. Choose which of these and other tactics will provide the best ROI for your business.
- Budget– You must know how much you have to spend on your marketing strategy and how you want it to be dispersed between the tools you plan to use. As the availability of funds grows, be sure to revisit this number and make the necessary adjustments.
Take a look at your marketing strategy at least once a year to ensure everything is running smoothly and you’re heading in the right direction.
Now that we all know how to put together an effective marketing campaign strategy, we can move on to how video marketing fits into this process.
Video Marketing Trends
There is a seemingly endless number of uses for video when it comes to incorporating them into your marketing campaigns. To narrow down the field of options for you, we’ve put together this list of the top video marketing trends you should be using in 2018.
Social Media Ads
It’s no secret that every business in every industry can benefit from using social media as a part of their marketing strategy. With access to billions of users across platforms like Facebook and Instagram, social media advertising is one of the most fruitful video marketing trends to focus on this year. When planning for these videos, it is important to be mindful of the amount of time you have to promote your brand.
Facebook will allow 60 seconds and more for these ads, but Instagram requires sub-60, or less than 60-second advertisements. The key purpose of these video clips is to get the viewer to click a link which will take them to either a landing page or the company website. It is crucial to have some form of call-to-action in every video which invites those watching to take the next step in the process.
Live Video on Social Media
While live video does have its perks, unless you are a highly popular social media influencer or famous star, it can also have some serious downfalls. Even when you prepare a script and set the scene for a live video, there are numerous problems that could arise during the clip. If the person you have on the live video, does anything wrong, it could negatively affect your brand.
As a serious business, you don’t need to cut out live video altogether, but you should be careful and aware of any potential setbacks. It is usually a safer choice to hire a video production company who can help you develop a high-quality promotional video, avoiding the possible issues that can come with live videos.
Temporary Video Content
Snapchat joined the social media lineup back in September 2011 as a multimedia messaging app allowing personal and business users to share temporary pictures and videos with their followers. It experienced a tremendous amount of growth, but that slowed dramatically in August 2016 when Instagram launched their identical feature dubbed “Stories”. So, the question is why would a business want to use a feature with a seemingly short-term payoff?
Many may think the amount of people you reach with a marketing campaign is the most important aspect, but the truth is engagement is much more important. These temporary videos can be used to promote exclusive offers that only last as long as the video is posted, causing a sense of urgency for potential customers and boosting engagement. A video marketing company can help you put together the perfect temporary video for these short-term promo deals.
Mobile Optimization
In a recent study, comScore found that 69% of digital media engagement happens on mobile devices. People are using their desktop computers less than ever before, meaning it’s vital to your marketing efforts to optimize every advertising campaign and video for mobile. Videos should be easily viewable on any smartphone or tablet.
One of the newer video marketing trends is to film and format videos either vertically or square-shaped. If you think about scanning through your social media feed, a wide video will tend to take up less space on the screen, making it easier to scroll passed. A good video production company will be able to help you produce square videos, which occupy up to 78% more screen space, giving them a higher rate of engagement.
Letterboxing on Videos
Quite possibly the most effective way to make your video square is by letterboxing or captioning them. Not to be confused with a common form of scavenger hunting, this version of letterboxing is the process of putting a caption or the video title in a designated space above and/or below the video. This is a fairly common video marketing trend on Instagram especially as it can help your video stand out from many of the other plain photos or videos.
It can be a great way to highlight the key point of your video after it has been produced, catching the attention of those seeking out that specific message. You can add a letterbox to your video by using an app, designing it yourself in a video editing software, or by hiring a video production company to give it a truly professional look.
More Personalized Content
“One size fits all” marketing campaigns are no longer a thing. People want advertisements that connect with them on a personal level and promote products they are interested in. Creating more personalized video content is no easy task, but it has become an essential video marketing trend to incorporate into your strategy.
To do this, a great deal of time and research must go into learning about each demographic within your customer base. You may only cater to one or two unique demographics or there may be hundreds who follow your brand. The more videos you can create that are aimed directly at each of those character types will play a major role in how many of them engage with these advertisements.
360° Videos
This is one of the coolest video marketing trends to watch as it continues to grow and improve over the next few years. When done correctly, these videos can produce incredible experiences for the viewer, such as finding yourself right in the middle of a lion pride. Videos like this are especially engaging for companies like National Geographic.
The problem with 360° videos is unless you have some highly expensive equipment, you’re going to see the people behind the scenes, whether it be the producer or the lighting and sound workers. This can potentially have a negative influence on the viewers, who may feel it looks less professional than what is seen on television or other social media ads.
Decrease in Clickbait Videos on Social Networks
We’ve all seen the clickbait videos on Facebook that when you press what appears to be a “play” button, end up actually being a link to a company’s website. Facebook is constantly updating their algorithm to prevent these sketchy links from showing up as you scroll through your newsfeed
Instead, they are moving up posts from friends and brands that focus on sharing high-quality content. So, if you think you’re fooling Facebook’s developers by posting an image that looks like a video, you may want to re-evaluate your strategy. Real videos will always gain more traction and generate more solid leads either way.
Bite-sized Video Content
While Microsoft’s recent study claiming that humans have a shorter attention span than a goldfish is a subject of debate, we can probably all agree that people tend to move from topic to topic fairly quickly. This is a key factor to take into consideration when producing your video marketing content.
As we’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, an average of 45% of viewers stop watching a marketing video after only one minute, and that percentage increases with each additional minute. While Facebook will allow videos of up to 45 minutes, it may be wiser to stick to Instagram standards and keep them to one minute or less. If you decide to do a longer video for Facebook, it may be worth including some type of call-to-action within the first 60 seconds to prevent missing out on the opportunity.
Influencer Marketing
The dynamic of influencer marketing is always changing, but it is important to keep up with this trend. Right now, there are hundreds of social media influencers on platforms like Instagram and YouTube who could successfully advertise for your brand. These individuals can help boost the authenticity of your product or service and reach a specific audience within your market.
Powerful social influencers stay up-to-date on many of the most dominant video marketing trends and know the best ways to harness them. As professional entrepreneurs, they know how to market themselves and advocate for brands they trust. Taking the time to research influencers within your niche and building relationships with them could have an incredible impact on your future video marketing efforts.
Twitter for News Videos
A remarkable 86% of Twitter users say they use the social network as their main source for news, with 74% of those individuals doing so on a daily basis. Although many businesses, both large and small, aren’t often featured on news channels, they still have updates and news of their own to share. Twitter is a great place to share quick video blurbs and links relating to company changes, promotions, and improvements.
With 64% of Twitter users sharing news on their own profiles, it could be a great way to extend the reach of your brand and find some new potential clients. To prevent your account’s feed from being overloaded with marketing content, be sure to seek out some additional likes and retweets by sharing an occasional GIF clip as well.
Video Promotions on LinkedIn
(Photo courtesy of Dilbert.com)
LinkedIn is commonly referred to as the Facebook for professionals. You could likely find an individual with just about any skill set you need within their ranks. With a little over 500 million users, it is way behind the monthly activity of bigger social networks, but still offers great networking opportunities for numerous industries.
As they strive to keep up with the competition, LinkedIn has been slowly climbing the list of growing video marketing trends by releasing new video features, including native video uploads to personal profiles. Whether these are promotional videos or explainer videos, they will prompt more useful and practical profiles on this social network. Using online video on LinkedIn and other social networks could be the best growth engine for B2B companies in 2018.
YouTube Mobile Sharing
Though YouTube has always been a popular social platform of sorts, they are making some major changes to maximize engagement and make it more of a network. Around this time last year, they made it possible to share videos with friends and family directly on YouTube. Along with this feature, users will be able to chat about the video on the platform in a private message, reply with another video, invite other people to the conversation, and more.
This provides a new opportunity for marketers to create increasingly engaging video content that is worth sharing. Teaming up with other YouTube channels may also prove invaluable to reaching larger audiences and promoting more shares of your content. Even starting a company vlog could help build a deeper relationship with your customers and make for an easy way to turn previous blog posts into video content.
Consistent Branding
(Photo courtesy of San Diego Union Tribune)
What do you instantly think of when you see this guy with his big round head, long black nose, big smile, and pointy yellow hat? Jack was introduced as the advertising spokesman for Jack in the Box back in 1994 and is now one of the most recognizable brand symbols on television. While you don’t necessarily need a mascot for your branding, the videos you create should have a consistent look and feel to them.
This can include color schemes, the fonts you choose, proper use of your logo, and more. Most importantly you need to maintain your brand’s tone and personality across all channels you use for video marketing. As you decide on messages and information to share in each video, ensure it aligns with your brand identity.
Brand Hashtags
How could we leave hashtags off of any list involving so much social media talk? Though they often seem redundant and overused, including branded hashtags into your social posts can be a valuable way to measure the success of specific campaigns. If you use a brand hashtag on every post you share about a specific product and others begin to use the same tag, you’ll be able to track the conversation.
Over 70% of Instagram hashtags are branded, so it’s about time to add yours to the pile if you haven’t already. Another great hashtag tip is to join the Weekend Hashtag Projects every Saturday and Sunday where millions of viewers will end up looking as they click on the #WHP from one of their other favorite brands. Even though it’s a less targeted way to find followers, even the possibility of picking up a few new prospects every weekend could have its benefits for your business success.
Next Steps
Do you feel intimidated by all these video marketing trends and tactics? It’s okay to recognize how difficult it can be to create the type of content that will catch attention on social media, stay relevant, and maintain consistency for your brand.
If you want help with your video marketing efforts, reach out to our team here at Top Notch Cinema. We design and produce everything from promotional videos and commercials to whiteboard animations and marketing videos for your website. Take a look at our work to get an idea of our variety of video styles and what we can do for you.
Contact us today if you have any questions or if you’re ready to get started with your video marketing content.
