Many of our clients are seriously thinking about video. It seems that folks are wondering how to add video as a regular part of their marketing activities. The first thing you should know about incorporating video is that it can be an expensive endeavor. There is a large upfront investment required in terms of time, production, and equipment costs. There’s also a learning curve involved whether you intend to create the video content yourself or outsource it to another company.

To Effectively Add Video, You Must First Watch Videos

This is the same advice I often give for creating any kind of interesting content for your audience. To be a competent producer of content, you must be a consumer of content first.

First, try to look up some of your competitors’ videos. Type their names into YouTube. Check their homepages for embedded video. Check their Facebook or Twitter feeds where videos may have been shared. See what kind of content is being put out in your industry, and see how well it’s performing. How many views and shares do the videos have? If you could recreate their success, would those numbers be high enough to give you a return on your investment?

Watching other people’s video can also help give you an idea of what kinds of things your audience is interested in seeing. When you watch these videos, also take note of things like production value. Does there appear to be professional actors or voice actors, or does it look homebrewed? Has extra lighting been used? Has attention been paid to the backdrop and setting? Or did someone very clearly simply point their iPhone into their own office and hit record? And how does this impact the viewership? This will give you a clue as to what kind of investment you’re going to need to make an impact among your competitors.

Where to Add Video

Don’t think that YouTube is the only place that video lives on the Internet. You can’t simply slap a video up there and be done with it, either. You can’t expect your customers to find your video on their own. you should be sharing your video content through a variety of channels. Be sure that your video uploaded, and therefore indexed, on YouTube to make embedding easier. This is also a format that everyone is familiar with, and it may attract you some organic traffic. Be sure that your video also appears somewhere on your own homepage. It should be embedded in a place that is prominent enough that it will get views. Don’t forget to share and add video across your various social media and email channels as well to make sure that your existing customers have a chance to see it.

What Type of Video Should you Create?

This depends, clearly, on your industry. You can add tutorial or how-to videos to get folks excited about your product. It can also be a great way to share a look into your operations to show potential customers what they can expect when doing business with you. Dollar Shave Club does a phenomenal job of this. You may want to create a simple animated introductory video that can be sent to clients along with your portfolio sharing your core values and mission statement. The possibilities really are endless here.

If you run marketing operations for a digital ad agency, then you need to be able to show that you know what you’re doing, especially if a video is one of your offerings. You’ll be ahead of the game because the infrastructure will already be in place to create that type of content. But even if this is outside of your wheelhouse, video can still be a very dynamic way to share information with your customers quickly. If you own a small service-based business, for example, you can show clips of craftsmen at work or salesman interacting with the client overdubbed with audio to describe your value proposition. This can be done surprisingly quickly and easily with many video editing software.

Regardless of how you choose to add video and incorporate it into your marketing plan, the key is not to skimp on your production values, and to distribute the finished product through as many channels as possible. Especially in the”virtual world” we are living in right now.