In this week’s blog, discover the 3 easiest ways to upgrade your video marketing strategy to drive engagement and achieve a wider reach for your video content.
If you’re yet to include video content in your marketing strategy, you could be seriously missing out.
Although the majority of companies regularly produce video content, there seems to be a real lack of understanding surrounding the creation of a dedicated video marketing strategy.
But just as your website, social media and email campaigns take careful planning, you need to dedicate the same care to your video content.
Why video? And why now?
Why video, we hear you ask? Well, video is fast becoming the most indispensable digital tool in a marketer’s arsenal – in fact, 83% of marketers believe that video is growing in importance.
Furthermore, 40% of marketers now rank video content as number one for ROI, with a further 23% putting video in second place – and the reasons for this surge in popularity are clearer than ever.
According to a HubSpot survey, people are more likely to pay attention to video content than text-based news stories or multimedia articles.
Their findings indicated that although people tend to skim most written and audio content, video is a great way to get people to stop scrolling and focus on what your company has to say.
Upgrading your video marketing strategy: 3 easy ways
Whilst video is a relatively easy medium to create and share, the issue seems to be that companies don’t know how to build a successful video marketing strategy that delivers concrete results.
We all know that understanding your audience and defining your long-term goal are important, along with consistent branding and a clear message.
But how can you optimise your video content to drive engagement and achieve a wider reach?
Allow us take you through 3 easy ways to upgrade your video marketing strategy.
1. Sub-zero to hero: Adding Open Captions
Did you know that 85% of Facebook videos are watched on mute?
This is hardly surprising when you consider that more than 3 million people use public transport every day in London alone!
Watching videos aloud on public transport is widely acknowledged to be bad etiquette in the UK, meaning that all of those commuters casually scrolling through their timelines aboard the tube or bus are likely to miss out on your video content if you haven’t included Open Captions (i.e. subtitles that are permanently in view and cannot be turned off).
Open Captions can also visually reinforce your company’s message and encourage a viewer to pay greater attention to your content.
2. A marketer’s best friend: Adding Closed Captions
The second subtitling option is Closed Captions (i.e. subtitles that can be turned on and off).
Closed Captions are a marketer’s best friend. On Facebook alone, captioned video ads increase video view time by an average of 12%, whereas a trial carried out by PLY media found that captions “on average not only increased the duration of time that users spent watching the video by almost 40% but also significantly impacted viewership of videos in ‘mute.‘”
On top of this, captions can seriously boost Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Currently, search engines cannot watch a video or listen to its audio. However, search engines can index the text in Closed Captions files and take it into account in search rankings. As long as you ensure that your captions are keyword-rich, you should see your visibility in search rankings get a boost.
What’s not to love?
3. ‘Translate’ your content into international sales
We live in an increasingly globalised world, but it can often feel as though content creation budgets are tighter than ever.
This presents a challenge for marketers: How can you tailor your video content to your target market without re-shooting your entire campaign or having to create original, localised content (which simply isn’t practical)?
A smart and effective solution is to invest in video translation, whether that be subtitle translation services or voice over.
Subtitle translation: The good and the bad
Subtitle translation is an affordable and efficient way to instantly win over an international audience – when done professionally.
But when you leave subtitle translation up to free tools, it can lead to mixed (and often hilarious) results.
Take YouTube, for example, which has recently introduced an ‘auto translate’ function. If a YouTube video has auto-generated closed-captioning available (not all do), it will use speech-recognition technology to automatically generate captions in that video’s original language.
You can then go one step further and choose a different language in which to receive captions. Given that the ‘auto-translate’ captions seem to be generated by plugging the (far from perfect) original language captions into Google Translate and hoping for the best, you can only imagine how far off the mark the translations end up. Can you really afford leave your brand’s message down to chance and misinterpretation?
Voice over victories
A second translation option is investing in voice over, which can be a brilliant choice for those looking to further localise their video content.
By choosing an experienced, professional voice over artist with a specific regional accent, for example, you can nail your brand authenticity. Just ensure that you partner with an agency that boasts a broad database of voice over artists, as well as offering plenty of advice and guidance.
Are you ready to upgrade your video marketing strategy?
VoiceBox Agency is a multimedia agency with a difference. Alongside providing subtitle, transcription and voice over services to companies all over the world, we are a collaborative, client-focused team that is eager to help.
Get in touch with us today – We can’t wait to help you make your multimedia dreams come true.