Social media’s popularity is growing like wildfire. Almost 4.7 billion active social media users spend 147 minutes daily browsing their preferred platforms. This throws open a vast uncharted playfield where businesses like yours can easily materialize their marketing objectives. The element that makes this possible for you is social video.
Social video is that appealing visual content that crosses your sight when you land on social pages of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. These videos sit on the reels section, users’ social pages, and other sections. Spanning from a few seconds to a few minutes, the videos are user-generated or live-streamed and can engage your audiences optimally. With the potential to attract a vast audience, social videos can also significantly boost your Instagram followers.
From a marketer’s perspective, social videos serve as the perfect vehicle to deliver your message impactfully to target audiences in a fun, gripping, informative, and attention-arresting way. Believe it or not, social videos are highly effective in converting leads to customers quickly. If you post videos using schedule tweets on social media then you can create a fantastic buzz & get higher reach.This is why more than 50% of global marketers plan to increase their outlay on social video ads on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook within a year.
If you are planning to join the league of marketers who are harvesting rich returns through social videos but still wondering how success will come your way, read the section below to get actionable insights.
5 Proven Ways to Leverage Social Video for Accomplishing Your Marketing Objectives
Social videos have exploded in popularity, evidenced by the increasing conviction of new marketers who want to invest in creating videos to woo social users. 29% of new marketers will leverage short-form social videos, whereas 22% will harness the potential of live-streaming videos in 2022.
The impressive stats regarding social videos’ pivotal role in driving the strategic objectives of global marketers speak volumes about videos’ efficacy in offering your business unparalleled exposure. Provide valuable information to audiences through humor-filled social videos that showcase the humane aspect of your brand and see the magic unfold.
Social audiences want to experience the personality of brands they would engage with. With videos, you can connect with leads at a personal level while establishing your authority as a reliable source of actionable knowledge. Get ready to exploit the potential of social videos for catering to prospective customers’ needs across the marketing funnel in the ways discussed below.
1. Generate Awareness about Your Brand with Short Videos
If you focus on the top of the marketing funnel, your aim should be to make prospects familiar with your brand and its uniqueness. In this context, short videos that can captivate social viewers and motivate them to explore more about your brand are a perfect fit.
In this fast-paced digital landscape, the quality of your social videos matters significantly. Partnering with a reputable video production company can be a strategic move to ensure your content stands out.Create and publish quirky, funny introductory videos on your social channel or through reels. The videos must veil the seriousness of context with light-hearted material that showcases the following aspects of your brand:
- History
- Major activities
- Impressive clientele
- Impeccable record of delivering outstanding results
- Founding members and their mission/ vision
- Unique selling proposition
- Espoused values
- Consciousness for society, environment, and other causes
- Robust customer support
- Edge over competitors
- Offerings and how they excel in resolving customers’ problems
- Differentiating aspects
- Stature as a thought leader and industry authority
- Company culture and core values
You don’t need stars and influencers to spread the word about your brand. You need high-quality content that doesn’t overwhelm the viewers but gradually builds their interest in your brand. Consider creating a series of social videos around a topic and posting them at regular intervals to build and sustain interest. This is similar to topical authority in SEO - but more on that in this resource.
Your intent here is to introduce yourself to prospects. Hence, steer clear of rambling content and discreetly get straight to the point without being blunt. Conclude each video with a link to your website or social page so that viewers can learn more about you in self-exploratory mode.
2. Showcase Your Brand’s Expertise with How-to or Tutorial Videos
Once you have succeeded in commanding a formidable fan following on social media, you need videos to guide prospects to the consideration stage. By now, prospects have enough information about you, and you want to push them ahead to associate with your brand.
Social videos, created with any good online video editor or video cutter generate demand for your brand offerings. You are not making a direct sales pitch yet prospects are getting subliminally persuaded to prefer your brand over others; this is the beauty of deceptively attractive social content.
To turn prospects into loyal customers, you can focus on creating the following types of videos:
- How-To videos that exhibit the correct way to unbox, assemble, configure and use your products
- Tutorial videos that articulate the correct way to optimize the various aspects of your product
- Real-life videos which demonstrate how effectively influencers and real customers are leveraging your products to reap benefits
- Case study-type videos that focus on single cases and how your expertise or product’s innovative features helped sort out problems for customers
- Demo videos that comprehensively highlight every aspect or element of your product
- Explainer videos that use rich multimedia and animations to shed light on complex elements
Such social videos inspire trust in prospects about your brand and make your image more associable, credible, and recognizable. These kinds of social videos
- Empower audiences to visualize how they can use your offerings themselves.
- With a video translator, you can extend the reach of your videos to a global audience, ensuring your message resonates across different languages and cultures.
- Boost your brand’s discoverability by securing higher likes, shares, and comments
- Convince prospects that your products will certainly benefit them since real customers are already using them
Social videos are great for putting prospective customers' problems in perspective and introducing your products/ services as a feasible solution. You may also underline your brand’s willingness to serve customers to create emotional bonding with audiences. If you're looking to enhance the emotional impact of your brand's social videos, consider a voice actor for hire who can lend their talents to create a compelling narrative that resonates with your target audience.
3. Open the Floodgates of Consistent Sales with Real Customer Stories and Testimonials
Social videos are the perfect catalyst for the marketing funnel's decision stage. They can positively sway prospects in your brand’s favor by showcasing the true potential of your offerings and the payoff they stand to get by trusting you.
You can create social video series to do the following:
- Interface prospects with your brand’s satisfied customers who can narrate their success stories and positive experiences
- Share the strong reasons why customers prefer your brand and stick with it
- Offer insights into the everyday lives of real people using your products to help viewers relate to your brand
- Show how your products will complement prospects’ needs with short, explanatory reviews from customers
Compelling and clear customer stories or testimonials will decisively leave an indelible impact on the malleable psyches of social audiences. The authentic feeling of ‘this could be me’ generated in viewers drives away confusion.
You are not making shallow promises or foisting your products on prospects. You are graciously showing how your brand is making a difference in the lives of others.
4. Enhance the Engagement Quotient of Customers with Livestream and Personalized Videos
Customer satisfaction is essential to keep people in your fold and buy their loyalty. For this, you need to prove that customers are getting good returns on investments (ROI).
Livestream social videos, webinars, and other such videos allowing personalized interactions through social and HCP engagement platforms serve to increase your customer engagement quotient.t. Through them, you can educate customers on how to extract optimum value from your offerings.
Personalized exchanges also help build your brand's reputation as a customer-friendly entity. You can schedule live streams or webinars on social platforms at regular intervals wherein your brand’s authorized representatives can do the following:
- Offer realistic solutions to the common problems faced by customers
- Provide insights into ways to innovate with your product’s features to get the most out of them
- Discuss the latest trends, contemporary industry advancements, and new technological interventions
- Educate customers about tips and tricks to enhance your product’s functionality
- Flatten the learning curve of customers w.r.t to complex offerings like a new software
- Keep complexities and challenges in perspective to provide realistic hacks or optimizations
- Engage with people in real-time and offer them answers to get tangible results
- Talk in detail about featured elements of your product and specific issues it addresses
Such social videos make your customers confident about the superiority of your brand’s offerings and thus make for great marketing tools. This way, your customers will feel valued, empowered, and heard, which shall transform them into your brand advocates.
5. Focus On Improving Word of Mouth Promotion of Your Brand through Satisfied Customers
All social videos should not come from your kitty; let customers post their content on your social pages. This user-generated content needs your patronage, enthusiastic comments, and sharing. The gesture will be clear for social users. And it will gradually turn users into brand champions who shall then share brand-centric content with friends and followers.
Encouraging user-generated content not only boosts engagement but also fosters organic growth. When users see their content celebrated, it strengthens their connection to your brand, making them more likely to offer friend suggestion and share your brand with their networks.
Your social videos, too, can get the same warm response from users if they exhibit genuine empathy for customer problems. Once your content starts getting viral, high-qualified organic traffic will pour in on your website effortlessly. Another aspect to consider is the financial benefit. For those wondering how much Facebook pays for video content, understanding the monetization opportunities on the platform can help you optimize your efforts and potentially create a revenue stream through your social videos.
Conclusion
The efficacy of social videos in materializing your brand marketing ambitions becomes visible from the assertion of 54% of marketers who categorically say that social videos are most precious in accomplishing their marketing objectives. You can have your marketing adrenaline rushing from the fact that almost 85% of social users want to see more brand-related videos before making informed and conscious purchasing decisions. Start capitalizing on social videos now and experience exponential growth in sales and profits sooner.
