How Startups Can Benefit From Video Marketing & How To Do It

by with No Comment Content

Videos easier to grasp and create a long-lasting impression on the viewer. Memories of television ads back from the 90s are still fresh in our minds. No wonder, many startups are opting for video marketing strategies for their brands. If you haven’t opted for any form of video marketing, go through this article, and you’ll get a fair idea why it would be a good option.

Video marketing simply means using videos to market your product. These may not necessarily be video ads, but also take other forms, like product videos, tutorials, product unboxing videos, customer review videos etc. There are many advantages which a video marketing campaign has over other forms of content marketing :

Draws more attention: A 3-4 minute video, containing the same information as a 300-400 word blog post, will definitely create a better impact on the audience. Watching a video is a passive activity, requiring much less effort and concentration than say reading. Internet users today have a very short attention span and will go for a video more readily than opening up a long post.

More Effective: A video allows you to be more creative, and target your audience in a better way. Chances are that you have seen the Samsung India 4 minute Ad film, which revolves around visually challenged persons. This emotional, unconventional and has over 150 million views on Youtube. Video advertisements can be made emotional, educational or entertaining, and directly appeal to the viewer.

Improving SEO rankings: As per statistics, adding a video to your website can increase the chance of a front-page Google result by 53 times. It helps you rank significantly higher than what textual or image content can.

Now, what are the marketing platforms and how to start with video marketing?

Step 1: Creating the Video

You do not need to spend a bomb on creating your video content. Today, you can get many freelancers from Fiverr or similar sites,  who will curate your video content. You can also look for content creators on YouTube and VIne, who will take care of the entire process of scripting, casting and storytelling. If feasible, you can make your videos from your own place and use your own tools.

Step 2: Platforms

There are numerous video sharing and distribution sites, where you can publish your content. These also offer paid promotions to boost your content. You can also directly go for a video ad on these platforms. YouTube is undoubtedly leading the lot. It has over a billion users, which is almost one-third of total internet users.
Other than that, you can opt for micro-video sharing websites like Vine, Snapchat, Instagram and Dubsmash as well. If your target population is the youth, you can definitely go to these sites. However, they might have different formats and it might be challenging to limit your video within these time limits. Other than that, you can always opt for Facebook, for sharing your video content or posting it as an ad.

Step 3: Marketing

Uploading your video, and hoping for it to become viral will never work. Being a Startup, you may not be able to partner with big brand partnerships, but you could always approach bloggers, friends and other young entrepreneurs like you, who would be willing to promote your content.

These are the basics of Video marketing. Of course, there needs to be a lot of thought to be put into what actually goes into your video. Your content needs to be creative, entertaining and the right length. It need not always be promotional content but can be something related to your brand.

Having said that, launching a video marketing strategy for the first time is not an easy task, but provided you have packed in a bunch of entertainment or information, you will surely attract viewers, and direct traffic to your site.

Top 6 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch for in 2018

by with No Comment Digital Marketing

Looking back at 2017, it is an undeniable fact that Digital Marketing has grown to new heights. Numerous new technologies and emerging social media platforms have contributed to the development of this sector.

With the advent of new and better automation driven technology, availability of more and more data for better analysis, and a further rise in social media platforms we would be looking towards a more customer-centric approach of marketing, in the near future. Here are some of the top trends to look out for in 2018, in the field of Digital Marketing.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning:

AI and ML  have made their presence felt across several domains, in the past year. Tech-savvy marketers can use AI to for predicting customer behaviour based on data collected from various social media sites, blogs and other platforms. Making better predictions regarding customer choice will allow you to target the consumer in a more personalized manner, and make your ads more effective.
It is essential for a digital marketer to learn about and master the various automation tools that are used in advertising. Automation is the future, and incorporating it into your marketing strategies will only yield positive results.

Credits: http://www.futuretravelexperience.com

Chatbots

Chatbots are artificial intelligence-based virtual assistants which have become largely popular in today’s digital era. They provide the customer with real-time answers to their queries regarding the product. Chatbots are evolving continuously, courtesy the various machine language and natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, which they are based on.  These are a fun way to boost consumer interaction. A chatbot engages, entertains as well as retains customers as well as improve social media presence.

Credits: www.slideshare.net

Micro-moments :

We rely heavily on our smartphones for instant information today. We tend to look up what to eat, what to buy, where to go, reflexively on our phones. These are called ‘micro-moments, in which decisions are made at the spur of the moment. It is definitely a field which digital marketers are looking forward to in 2018. Marketers are striving to provide location-specific, relevant user experiences by analysing these micro-moments in depth.

Dark Social

Many times, we share posts or articles privately, i.e not on social media. We copy a URL and send it via messenger apps, or email to others. This is known as Dark Social. These can’t be tracked easily, and are often clubbed together with ‘direct’ traffic by your web analytics team. It is a difficult area to identify and explore, but it holds immense potential. Around 84% of outbound sharing, is done through Dark Social. This is something which should definitely be on the radar of digital marketers in 2018.

Credits: www.medium.com

Video Marketing

Video content is known to provide the best ROI. Apart from video ads, live streaming has also gained momentum. With video formats becoming popular not only across sites like Facebook and YouTube but also across micro-video sharing websites like Instagram and Dubsmash, it has become a very effective means of targeting young audiences.
It is estimated that video content marketing will continue to grow throughout 2018. Social media marketers should lay special focus on live streaming as well.

Personalization

Today simple means of content marketing is not enough and customers want a more personalized approach. E-commerce sites like Amazon, Flipkart etc already use personalized recommendations for their customers. These are much more effective than generic emails sent out to all subscribers. With the increase in automation and predictive analysis, personalized content marketing will be on the rise in the coming year.