At Virtual Stacks, we have streamlined the process and know how to develop successful scripts, professional audio voiceovers, and effective visuals that will capture interest and improve the impact of every video we make and publish online.
Video Marketing Can Strengthen SEO
Including videos in your content marketing plan will help strengthen your SEO by keeping your visitors engaged, and providing them with content that gets shared and viewed. YouTube is the second largest search engine, second only to Google. According to ComScore, adding a video to your website can increase your chance of a front page Google result by 53 times, and give you the ability to monetize videos and earn some YouTube ad revenue!
Improve Optimization
In addition to facilitating SEO, videos allow for increased optimization opportunities. Video has a built-in feedback loop so you can measure click-through rates, drop off points, or the number of times watched on both a micro and macro level. This allows you to better target what is and isn’t working for your audience so you can do more of what works.
Engagement
Video content increases engagement and catches consumer attention. In today’s busy, fast-paced lifestyle, with so many digital distractions, it’s important to catch the consumer’s attention right away.
We’ve all been scrolling through our Facebook feeds and stopped to watch a video because of
They say a picture is worth a thousand words but Dr. James McQuivey said, “A video is worth 1.8 million words.” A video is the most powerful way for your company to evoke emotions and make strong connections with consumers. This strong connection will lead to increased customer conversions.
Virtual Stacks Systems can check this resolution off your list, improve your digital marketing strategy, and help you develop your company’s following. Call us today to get started!
How to Measure Your Success Without Relying on Views
Video marketing only continues to grow over time. With platforms giving preference to video content, everyone wants to get in on the video-first game.
Because of this, tools like Promo and Animoto are gaining a lot of attention, thanks to the ease of access and affordability. But how do you know if the video marketing tips you follow are actually working?
Video metrics are a bit more nuanced than social media or SEO data, and thus, need a closer look to measure any sort of real results.
As this form of content marketing is continuously developing, not everyone measures success the same way. We reached out to business owners, internet marketing company professionals and video experts to see how the pros are measuring their video marketing.
Here are the tips we gathered that will help make your next video marketing campaign a success:
Tip #1- Measuring Views Alone is Not Enough
“Facebook counts a view for anything more than three seconds. You can accidentally watch a video on Facebook while scrolling through your news feed, 100% unintentional. The data we recommend people to look at for Facebook video is “how long do people actually view your video” We see that people, on average, view our client’s videos about 15 seconds” –James Harper of GoEdison
Unlike a click or an impression, a view can be a bit deceiving when it comes to the numbers. How many times have you opened a video by accident, only to stop it as soon as you hear noise? What about when the video wasn’t what you thought it was?
Click. Out. Goodbye!
Yet, if you watched only a few seconds of the video, some platforms consider it a view. Even if no meaningful content was delivered. In order to identify how your video marketing is really working, you need to dig further into the metrics.
Tip #2- Make it Tempting
“Scarcity improves conversions.”- Drew Cerullo, CEO, Better Profit Growth“Without a call-to-action it’s hard to measure ROI.”
Imagine you only have 15 seconds to convince someone to buy something. It takes some strong selling skills to do so. That is unless you are in a “sell me this pen” situation a la The Wolf of Wall Street. People are on the go, busier than ever. If they take the time to click on your video, there better be an incentive. A reward, so to speak, for doing so. Consider offering an exclusive discount, trial, or another incentive via a call-to-action within the video. The idea is to create a sense of urgency and exclusivity for taking the time to press play.
Tip #3- Know The Results You Want
“Many companies fail to strategize and set goals before deploying marketing tactics […] Yes, data is everything, but it doesn’t mean everyone is using it adequately.”Julia Angelen Joy- PR and Social Media Consultant.
If you’re only measuring views and likes, you’re missing out on a whole lot of information. You may be confused as to why wondering such a high response is yielding so few conversions. Before beginning a video marketing campaign, take the time to strategize.
This customer profile from Single Grain highlights an example buyer persona.
Create a path that you want your potential customer to take. Have at least an idea of that customer’s profile. Know what you aim to achieve through your video marketing. Do not bother doing it JUST to keep up with the competition. Like a major film would never shoot without a script, never make a video without a plan.
Tip #4- Focus on the Right Platform
“The biggest shift has been that every social media channel is forcing creators to be native to their platform and each platform is a little different […] We all have to continue to keep up with these channels that are updating at the speed of light and more and more want customers to stay on their own platforms.” – Aaron Norris MBA at The Norris Group
If a platform has video capability, does not mean you NEED to add video to it. Hone in on the platforms on which you have already built an audience. Otherwise, you may find yourself needing to make five or more variations of the same content for each different platform. Instead, choose 2-3 that will have the biggest impact for your particular business.
Tip #5- Use Video Marketing as a Supplement
“Video works well within social media as an engagement tool that reels your target consumer into whatever you are promoting in a more fun and interesting way. A great way to integrate video within a social media platform is by cutting down the content from say a 10-minute informational video on one of your products to a shorter 30-second video that is easily digestible for your consumers.” –Tracy Julien, VP of Marketing at Guided Choice
Give ‘em only but a taste of what you’re offering. As mentioned, people are busy. They may stumble their way into your video and only stick around for a little while. Bait the hook with the best pieces of already great content. Perhaps it takes 5+ minutes to really convey the effectiveness of your custom mobile apps or ecommerce hosting. The problem is, especially on social media, very few to no one will sit there and consume it. Boil this content down to the most important, most exciting points. Make it fun and informative, but most importantly, fast. Be sure to make it easy for a viewer to find more information. If they can’t, well, what’s the point?
Tip #6- Use Video in Advertising
“Each social network actually gives more organic priority to video versus regular image-based content. When you get more organic traction with your video, it’ll perform better from an advertising perspective than just a standard ad.” – Jason Parks, The Media Captain
While a well-designed visual ad campaign has more than enough room to be successful, video tends to stand out from the competition. Think about it, when scrolling through social feeds, you see more ad content than anything else. And unless it’s something particularly striking, or something you’re already looking to buy, chances are, you are going to scroll right past. Luckily, especially on Facebook, you see your feed tend to favor videos over other content. Have you noticed static images uploaded as if they were video? That is an attempt to trick the ranking algorithm. Skip the banner ad and create a 15-second video ad instead.
This Geico ad, designed for digital formats, makes light of the idea that online advertisements need to be short and sweet. The ad performed so well that it was later repurposed on television.
Tip #7- Find Balance Within the Content
“Most viewed and shared videos typically provide both information and entertainment.” David Burrows of theMM. Agency
When you have mere seconds to grab the attention of the viewer, you may have a hard time finding your focus for your content. The good news is that video content is still content marketing. You can apply the same major rule that you apply to blogs, social media, and email campaigns: make it valuable, and with your audience in mind.
No one wants to have sales-y jargon yelled at them for 30 seconds straight. Even short format content should have at least a minimal story arc: present a problem and reveal a solution. Dare to have a little bit of fun with how you execute your video content. You’ll see a better response to an interesting video than a dry, direct one.
It seems the recipe for video marketing success can be boiled down to strategy, data analysis, and great content. Sound familiar? It should. While it is easy to get entangled in new applications and quick recipes for success, the formula remains the same.
Which of these video marketing tips are you going to add to your strategy?
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Ready to launch a new video marketing campaign? Looking for an integrated marketing strategy that includes web design, Orlando SEO services , and video marketing for your company launch? Virtual Stacks Systems can help you build your marketing strategy from the ground up.
Any good marketing professional will tell you that you have got to get your company a website. No business can survive and sustain their growth rate without at least a landing page for consumers to be directed to once they hear about you.
Cloud based website development teams like Virtual Stacks Systems devote a rich bank of resources to not only creating excellent websites, but also to making sure those websites get noticed. With a highly trained Search Engine Optimization (SEO) department scouring the internet and flooding it with engaging information, every website is set apart from competitors in a big way!
You may have your own advertising budget and marketing plan in place but how effective they are can be maximized with the incorporation of online advertising techniques.
AdWords
The use of Google AdWords allows for a website’s pages and advertisements to appear higher on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Not many searchers will enter keywords or queries into a search engine, like Google, and go directly to page 19. The success of a business’ website, and overall online presence, relies heavily on its positioning on results pages.
AdWords is an auction that determines:
Which website ads hold more relevance to a consumer’s inquiry
How important and successful specific queries are to specific markets or topics
The amount advertising specialists will spend every time the ad is clicked on. This amount is called CPC, Cost per Click.
Keyword Planner
This tool is actually part of the AdWords community. It helps choose, examine, and rate the best keywords, key phrases and overall queries best for SERP placement.
The most beneficial asset the Keyword Planner provides is the insight into ideal queries for maximizing Quality Scores for higher ranking ads.
The higher a keyword’s Quality Score, the lower the CPC and the better the ad position or Ad Rank.
Webmaster Tools
This collection of analytics tools helps Content Managers and SEO specialists track and monitor the performance of a website. Detailed data is collected and reported revealing how the search engine’s algorithms comb each page of the website.
Relevance and validity of the website’s content
How many impressions, clicks and overall visits to the website
Number and credibility of links directing to and from the website
Up-to-date and accurate reading of the health and positioning of the website
Google Analytics
A dashboard that helps you monitor your website’s traffic. The tool works with the other website management tools (listed above plus more!) to help determine the state of the actual site. Google Analytics tells you what comes of the visitors that stop by your website. Helpful information is gathered such as:
Possible Leads and Conversions based on why and how long consumers visited any of your website’s pages
The demographics of the visitors to the website
If it is an E-Commerce platform, any and all metrics related to transactions and inquiries
These tools and practices, plus many more, help build a solid foundation for managing a website’s health and continued growth. We at Virtual Stacks Systems use these and any other strategies you want incorporated to help you increase your market positioning and reap the results your business’ website deserves.
Google has a strong fundamental belief in making the internet a better place to virtually surf. The tools and applications Google develops to protect your search experience are designed for security and productive assistance. So when it comes to optimizing your website for search engines, the techniques used by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) professionals become a main go-to for daily activity. Google’s PageRank is an SEO tool that counts the number of links directing searchers to a website and uses those numbers to score the pages. The more links, the more important a web page is.
Where every SEO tool Google, and the many other search engines, creates is programmed to scour the web for distinct information, PageRank pertains to the popularity of a website. A site’s popularity is the result of the numerous reasons people would want to visit your website. It also pertains to the reasoning for people wanting to send others to your site as well.
Consider these two big reasons for popularity increases:
Content Relevance – The more helpful and informative your content is, the more people will be inclined to revisit and suggest your website. Also, make sure the content is up to date and commonly verified or accepted.
Personal Gain – Other website creators will link to a higher ranked webpage as a gateway for internet surfers to visit their relative site. Back-linking and other link techniques can be mutually beneficial or just plain annoying.
The PageRank relies on a scoring system that goes from 0 to 10; ten being the highest rank a web page can receive. The more important Google finds a page once it is created, the higher the score will move up. It’s as simple as that! When starting out, your page will have a zero regardless of how vital your website may actually be to inquiring minds. Once it begins to interact with other pages and is deemed safe, over time it will rise in PR score.
Recently, Google announced that it will be removing the PageRank meter from the Google Toolbar. Its purpose as a tool for public use has run out not that Google is as popular as it has become. Even though we will no longer be able to see it, it will still be used internally when the Google algorithms decipher our web pages. Some find PR’s public end a good thing. Others, not so much. No matter your feelings either way, say goodbye to the outdated scoring system!
As the holiday season winds down, with only a few specially recognized days left, this week we are reminded of the importance of doing good things for one another. Martin Luther King Jr. is honored this week with an American National Holiday for the massive impact he has had on the rights of and good-natured attitudes of everyone around the world. Many consider Martin Luther King Jr. Day a day of community service and outreach. A time to reflect on what we have done for our fellow man and what we can still do as human beings. The same mentality is felt by many businesses and organizations as well; especially online. Make sure your company’s community imprint is deep and, more importantly, felt by as many as possible.
Corporate Community Involvement, or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), is a serious and highly judged component of what makes an organization a successful and long lasting entity. The reasoning behind strengthening one’s community involvement is endless and requires ongoing commitment on the company’s part.
Consider these reasons when developing your own company's initiatives and environmental strategies:
o Corporate owned or partnered non-profits draw more consumer attentiono Increased competitive advantageo Citizens of the world will go out of their way to support the organization funding a good causeo The right kinds of employees will seek you out and want to join a great companyo Your community and consumer environment will fight for you if times get rough
After all is said and done, the real benefit of upholding the portrayal of an 'Organization That Cares' is the feeling of doing what is right with what you’ve created.
CSR Online
Looking through the websites and digital presence of your competitors, and any business entity with a strong website, how well is your Corporate Social Responsibility represented? Globally, all eyes are on the CSR of big businesses. Many small businesses even depend on the digital spread of their cause or reputations to fuel their growth. Take TOMS® for instance; the shoe-wear company that has a committed initiative of giving shoes to underprivileged children around the world with every sale. Their rapid growth comes from their online outreach and the spread of their amazing strategy of affecting change. Their e-commerce dealings allow people all around the world to make purchases and donations. The best part? Their shoes' wear-ability along with the word-of-mouth, especially via social media, form their unique marketing platform.
Virtual Stacks Systems™ provides cheap web hosting and E-Commerce hosting options that facilitate your efforts in getting your message and community involvement recognized on a greater scale. The reality of the state of our world, from poverty to injustice to illness, is that plenty needs to be done on a larger scale than that of the physical reach of a business; no matter its size. Websites, social media pages, and the online marketing campaigns that boast the effectiveness of an organization’s attempts to make the world a better place are statistically more profitable on various levels.
If your First Quarter projections don’t include an effective strategy for improving your digital presence, then you are not fully prepared for the New Year. As 2016 has
