Video strategy for business has become an integral part of marketing strategy. And it’s no wonder: We live in a world where YouTube (owned by Google) has become the second largest search engine online (Mushroom Networks). In fact, video content accounts for 80% of all consumer internet traffic (Cisco), and the volume of mobile video consumption increases by 100% every year (Incivia). It’s no wonder that most companies, regardless of size, are not only utilizing video as a part of their marketing strategy, but have actually grown it year-over-year from 2019:

Yet, in order to have a robust and effective video marketing strategy for a business, you need to do so properly, so your videos don’t get lost in the ether that is the 157 billion hours of YouTube video that are created each year (FortuneLords).

1.) Have an SEO strategy in mind for your videos.

As with written content, your SEO strategy for video should begin with a clear idea of your goals for your business. Many companies come to us at AEK Solutions with one of three goals:

1. Brand awareness. Measured in terms of video views, engagement (length of time a video is typically watched by a viewer before exiting), frequency of mentions and links to the video or video channel, quality of mentions and links to the video or video channel, and brand recall and recognition, this strategy is best for a company who depends on name recognition to build and maintain trust and brand equity in a crowded market. Think McDonald’s, State Farm, or Nike. This also works for smaller brands who want to establish a face of an expert, like Gary Vaynerchuk, Neil Patel, or Dr. Axe.
2. Engage with existing customers on a deeper level. Whether due to challenge (i.e., customer service issues, product or service disaster, etc.) or opportunity (i.e., new product or service offerings, sale or discount, etc.), many companies benefit from engaging their audience about these topics through video. Customers are researching, asking for recommendations, watching product demonstrations, and engaging with videos regularly.
3. Sales. Probably the most common reason why companies come to us at AEK Solutions, sales online via video are measured by lead count, and opt-in/conversion rates at each step of the funnel. At times, the pipeline generation via creation of a newsletter list or social media follower count can be just as valuable (if not more so) in the long-term than the actual up-front sales count. At any rate, with a robust video strategy, all key metrics should be increasing over time, including clickthrough rates, opt-in rates, and lead generation and sales creation rates. 

Once you’ve determined your goal, it’s important to create the buyer’s persona. Not surprisingly, with few exceptions, the buyer’s persona developed when a company is developing its product or service offerings, is typically the same as the buyer’s persona developed for video. (The only exception is if your target demographic is 65 and older — these customers tend not to be watching videos at the same rate as their younger counterparts, at least at the time of this writing). Your buyer’s persona should include:

1. Who your product or service is for
2. What the goal of your videos are
3. Where the target audience is going online

Overall, these goals and target personas should tie together into a video mission statement. Your video marketing mission statement should look something like this:

“At (company name), we make (type) video content for (specific buyer personas), so that they (exactly what you want them to do).”

That’s it. It’s that simple.

2. Create amazing video content.

The best video content provides value to your audience. Period. You have to ensure that the video content is in line with your video mission statement. And yes, you have to make sure that the video content is optimized according to best practices (more on that later).

But, overall, the best video content for business is simply high-quality, informative, engaging, and something that your audience will want to bookmark and return to later, and/or share with their friends or colleagues. In other words, valuable.

There are two major types of video content. First, there’s evergreen, “business as usual” (BAU) content, with a long shelf life. This can include:

• Product (or service) marketing videos. The most common type of video, these focus on the key attributes or benefits of a product or service. These can include breaking down a product or service into specific features and explaining them, Q&A or AMA sessions, and straight selling videos. 
• Corporate interview videos. Experts, thought leaders, and other fascinating people in your area of focus are interviewed by a member of your team. These videos are most effective in B2B marketing, where there are typically long sales cycles and relationship-building is key.
• Explainer videos. Often done via animation or a whiteboard, these videos are valuable for explaining complex or virtual products that are otherwise difficult to understand.
• How-to content for support. 
• Customer testimonial videos.
• Customer success story/case study videos.
• Product demonstrations.

Second, there are campaign videos, which usually run for a shorter period of time. Campaign videos tend to have a shorter shelf life. Campaign videos are often retired after they’ve served their specific purpose. They can include:

• Live video. Popular on Facebook and Instagram, this is best for making announcements, typically about a product or service development, sale or discount offer, or company news (such as winning a distinguished award or being present at a conference or trade show).
• Launch videos.
• User-generated video content. 
• Un-boxing videos.

3. Optimize video content according to best practices.

Once you’ve determined your video mission statement and nailed down ideas for content creation, it’s time to optimize your video content.

With trillions (yes, with a T) of YouTube videos out there, it’s important to make sure you’re utilizing best practices so it’s not something trivial that is holding you back.

First, you want to be sure that your video is optimized for video viewing, as most videos are watched on mobile, and that proportion is only growing. The video should also be short.

• There’s a lot of advice to suggest that short and simple videos perform better than long ones.

Secondly, the title is very important. The best titles are informative, short (60 characters or less), and based around your keyword SEO strategy.  You can use the SE Ranking keyword suggestion tool or the YouTube keyword tool to find relevant keywords.

Third, you want to create a brief synopsis of what the video is about. Keywords should definitely be included in your video description. These also need to be informative, letting your audience know exactly what the video is about, and short (70 characters or less). In fact, John Bottom says on his blog that people skim the titles at first before watching the video, so it’s vital to make sure that people know what they’re getting into in advance.

Third, add tags to your videos. These should not be the same keywords for every video day after day. Instead, think about all of the relevant things customers could be searching for in order to land on your video. These are the ideal tags.

Fourth, create the best, most eye-catching thumbnails you can.

Fifth, transcribe your video. This allows for the audience to skim the content before deciding to watch, and is also key for SEO strategy.

Sixth, make sure there is a clear call to action on your videos. Often, the mistake made by companies is that there are too many requests: Subscribe, like, share, follow, etc. It’s best practice to have these buttons, but not to emphasize every one. Instead, it’s important to make sure that you have one clear call to action on your videos and site(s) where the video is featured, as seen below:

Seventh, make sure that you’re uploading your video at the best time. Videos tend to get the most views in the first 48 hours. And the more views you get, the more YouTube will recognize the significance of your video content and recommend it to other viewers. The best way is to analyze the times video tends to be most popular amongst people in your target demographic. Most video types are popular from 2-4 PM EST (Edgy), but for business types, the best times to capture your demographic may be 5-9 PM EST (Influencer Marketing Hub ), as these professionals are coming home from work and looking to unwind.  

Eighth, have a robust link-building strategy. Although the distribution of the video content on your own channels is certainly very valuable, it also helps to remind your audience to subscribe to your channel and share with their audience.

Ninth, make sure the video is placed on your website, video channels (YouTube, Vimeo), social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram), and embedded in emails. Depending on the content, you may want to share with your sales and marketing reps as well, and encourage them to utilize these videos in their work. Be sure that you check back often and/or have alerts and notifications set up so that you don’t miss a comment. 

Finally, pay to promote your video. Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn are increasingly more “pay to play,” but with large, robust audiences of professionals, you don’t need a huge budget to grow your audience and achieve your goals. We recommend working with an agency like AEK Solutions to help you optimize your ad spend, engagement, and clickthrough rates.

4.) Analyze video performance.

Finally, the only way to determine if your videos are achieving your goals is to measure their performance. Using YouTube Analytics, Google Analytics, as well as the SE Ranking position tracking tool is vital to determining how well your video is performing in terms of gaining traction and views.

For all goals, knowing the number of views and unique viewers, as well as the attention span and drop-off rates, of your video is vital. A good rule-of-thumb is that 60% of your viewers should be making it to the end of the videos, on average.

For brand awareness, the number of shares, number of mentions, and subscriber count from the video are also important.

For sales and lead generation, the click-through rate is also vital. Which calls-to-action or offers are generating the most leads? Which are not? Typically, a good video campaign will have a 1-2% opt-in rate, with less effective campaigns falling well below this mark. It’s important to gauge how well your campaigns are performing on a regular basis (we recommend weekly, if not daily).

Bottom Line

The best video strategy for business includes having an SEO strategy in place, creating top-notch content that provides value, utilizing all best practices, and regularly analyzing the video’s performance.

If you want top-notch digital marketing strategy, or have questions about your own digital marketing strategy, reach out to us at AEK Solutions for a free, no-obligation Q&A session. AEK Solutions is dedicated to creating new sources of repeatable growth online by embracing a rapid-experimentation, funnel-based approach. We also utilize creativity and technology, such as geotargeting, customer experience management, and moments of influence testing to develop solutions to specific digital marketing issues.

Video strategy for business has become an integral part of marketing strategy. And it’s no wonder: We live in a world where YouTube (owned by Google) has become the second largest search engine online (Mushroom Networks). In fact, video content accounts for 80% of all consumer internet traffic (Cisco), and the volume of mobile video consumption increases by 100% every year (Incivia). It’s no wonder that most companies, regardless of size, are not only utilizing video as a part of their marketing strategy, but have actually grown it year-over-year from 2019:

Yet, in order to have a robust and effective video marketing strategy for a business, you need to do so properly, so your videos don’t get lost in the ether that is the 157 billion hours of YouTube video that are created each year (FortuneLords).

1.) Have an SEO strategy in mind for your videos.

As with written content, your SEO strategy for video should begin with a clear idea of your goals for your business. Many companies come to us at AEK Solutions with one of three goals:

1. Brand awareness. Measured in terms of video views, engagement (length of time a video is typically watched by a viewer before exiting), frequency of mentions and links to the video or video channel, quality of mentions and links to the video or video channel, and brand recall and recognition, this strategy is best for a company who depends on name recognition to build and maintain trust and brand equity in a crowded market. Think McDonald’s, State Farm, or Nike. This also works for smaller brands who want to establish a face of an expert, like Gary Vaynerchuk, Neil Patel, or Dr. Axe.
2. Engage with existing customers on a deeper level. Whether due to challenge (i.e., customer service issues, product or service disaster, etc.) or opportunity (i.e., new product or service offerings, sale or discount, etc.), many companies benefit from engaging their audience about these topics through video. Customers are researching, asking for recommendations, watching product demonstrations, and engaging with videos regularly.
3. Sales. Probably the most common reason why companies come to us at AEK Solutions, sales online via video are measured by lead count, and opt-in/conversion rates at each step of the funnel. At times, the pipeline generation via creation of a newsletter list or social media follower count can be just as valuable (if not more so) in the long-term than the actual up-front sales count. At any rate, with a robust video strategy, all key metrics should be increasing over time, including clickthrough rates, opt-in rates, and lead generation and sales creation rates. 

Once you’ve determined your goal, it’s important to create the buyer’s persona. Not surprisingly, with few exceptions, the buyer’s persona developed when a company is developing its product or service offerings, is typically the same as the buyer’s persona developed for video. (The only exception is if your target demographic is 65 and older — these customers tend not to be watching videos at the same rate as their younger counterparts, at least at the time of this writing). Your buyer’s persona should include:

1. Who your product or service is for
2. What the goal of your videos are
3. Where the target audience is going online

Overall, these goals and target personas should tie together into a video mission statement. Your video marketing mission statement should look something like this:

“At (company name), we make (type) video content for (specific buyer personas), so that they (exactly what you want them to do).”

That’s it. It’s that simple.

2. Create amazing video content.

The best video content provides value to your audience. Period. You have to ensure that the video content is in line with your video mission statement. And yes, you have to make sure that the video content is optimized according to best practices (more on that later).

But, overall, the best video content for business is simply high-quality, informative, engaging, and something that your audience will want to bookmark and return to later, and/or share with their friends or colleagues. In other words, valuable.

There are two major types of video content. First, there’s evergreen, “business as usual” (BAU) content, with a long shelf life. This can include:

• Product (or service) marketing videos. The most common type of video, these focus on the key attributes or benefits of a product or service. These can include breaking down a product or service into specific features and explaining them, Q&A or AMA sessions, and straight selling videos. 
• Corporate interview videos. Experts, thought leaders, and other fascinating people in your area of focus are interviewed by a member of your team. These videos are most effective in B2B marketing, where there are typically long sales cycles and relationship-building is key.
• Explainer videos. Often done via animation or a whiteboard, these videos are valuable for explaining complex or virtual products that are otherwise difficult to understand.
• How-to content for support. 
• Customer testimonial videos.
• Customer success story/case study videos.
• Product demonstrations.

Second, there are campaign videos, which usually run for a shorter period of time. Campaign videos tend to have a shorter shelf life. Campaign videos are often retired after they’ve served their specific purpose. They can include:

• Live video. Popular on Facebook and Instagram, this is best for making announcements, typically about a product or service development, sale or discount offer, or company news (such as winning a distinguished award or being present at a conference or trade show).
• Launch videos.
• User-generated video content. 
• Un-boxing videos.

3. Optimize video content according to best practices.

Once you’ve determined your video mission statement and nailed down ideas for content creation, it’s time to optimize your video content.

With trillions (yes, with a T) of YouTube videos out there, it’s important to make sure you’re utilizing best practices so it’s not something trivial that is holding you back.

First, you want to be sure that your video is optimized for video viewing, as most videos are watched on mobile, and that proportion is only growing. The video should also be short.

• There’s a lot of advice to suggest that short and simple videos perform better than long ones.

Secondly, the title is very important. The best titles are informative, short (60 characters or less), and based around your keyword SEO strategy.  You can use the SE Ranking keyword suggestion tool or the YouTube keyword tool to find relevant keywords.

Third, you want to create a brief synopsis of what the video is about. Keywords should definitely be included in your video description. These also need to be informative, letting your audience know exactly what the video is about, and short (70 characters or less). In fact, John Bottom says on his blog that people skim the titles at first before watching the video, so it’s vital to make sure that people know what they’re getting into in advance.

Third, add tags to your videos. These should not be the same keywords for every video day after day. Instead, think about all of the relevant things customers could be searching for in order to land on your video. These are the ideal tags.

Fourth, create the best, most eye-catching thumbnails you can.

Fifth, transcribe your video. This allows for the audience to skim the content before deciding to watch, and is also key for SEO strategy.

Sixth, make sure there is a clear call to action on your videos. Often, the mistake made by companies is that there are too many requests: Subscribe, like, share, follow, etc. It’s best practice to have these buttons, but not to emphasize every one. Instead, it’s important to make sure that you have one clear call to action on your videos and site(s) where the video is featured, as seen below:

Seventh, make sure that you’re uploading your video at the best time. Videos tend to get the most views in the first 48 hours. And the more views you get, the more YouTube will recognize the significance of your video content and recommend it to other viewers. The best way is to analyze the times video tends to be most popular amongst people in your target demographic. Most video types are popular from 2-4 PM EST (Edgy), but for business types, the best times to capture your demographic may be 5-9 PM EST (Influencer Marketing Hub ), as these professionals are coming home from work and looking to unwind.  

Eighth, have a robust link-building strategy. Although the distribution of the video content on your own channels is certainly very valuable, it also helps to remind your audience to subscribe to your channel and share with their audience.

Ninth, make sure the video is placed on your website, video channels (YouTube, Vimeo), social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram), and embedded in emails. Depending on the content, you may want to share with your sales and marketing reps as well, and encourage them to utilize these videos in their work. Be sure that you check back often and/or have alerts and notifications set up so that you don’t miss a comment. 

Finally, pay to promote your video. Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn are increasingly more “pay to play,” but with large, robust audiences of professionals, you don’t need a huge budget to grow your audience and achieve your goals. We recommend working with an agency like AEK Solutions to help you optimize your ad spend, engagement, and clickthrough rates.

4.) Analyze video performance.

Finally, the only way to determine if your videos are achieving your goals is to measure their performance. Using YouTube Analytics, Google Analytics, as well as the SE Ranking position tracking tool is vital to determining how well your video is performing in terms of gaining traction and views.

For all goals, knowing the number of views and unique viewers, as well as the attention span and drop-off rates, of your video is vital. A good rule-of-thumb is that 60% of your viewers should be making it to the end of the videos, on average.

For brand awareness, the number of shares, number of mentions, and subscriber count from the video are also important.

For sales and lead generation, the click-through rate is also vital. Which calls-to-action or offers are generating the most leads? Which are not? Typically, a good video campaign will have a 1-2% opt-in rate, with less effective campaigns falling well below this mark. It’s important to gauge how well your campaigns are performing on a regular basis (we recommend weekly, if not daily).

Bottom Line

The best video strategy for business includes having an SEO strategy in place, creating top-notch content that provides value, utilizing all best practices, and regularly analyzing the video’s performance.

If you want top-notch digital marketing strategy, or have questions about your own digital marketing strategy, reach out to us at AEK Solutions for a free, no-obligation Q&A session. AEK Solutions is dedicated to creating new sources of repeatable growth online by embracing a rapid-experimentation, funnel-based approach. We also utilize creativity and technology, such as geotargeting, customer experience management, and moments of influence testing to develop solutions to specific digital marketing issues.