Video costs money. There’s no way around that. Making video a part of your marketing strategy will take time and effort and, yes, money. There are ways, however, to make sure you see some of those costs returned to you. Here are some ways you can increase the return on investment (ROI) of your video content. 

How to get better results from your video content online

For your video marketing efforts to be truly successful, you need a plan. Yes, it’s true, you can grow a substantial following on social media by just posting whatever comes to mind each day. That may work well for a personal account but it shouldn’t be the norm when creating video for a business. While there are plenty of resources online for creating video marketing strategies, it really all boils down to one simple question: what do you want your video to achieve?

What do you want to achieve

Ask yourself what your goal is. Maybe you want to raise awareness about your company or product. Perhaps you want to show customers how to use a product. Maybe you want to associate your product with a certain lifestyle. Or it could be that you want to sell more items. Each video should be made to help achieve your goal. It helps to focus on a single business goal per video. 

Who do you want to reach?

Knowing who your audience is will help set the tone and style for the video. By researching the interests of your audience or potential customers, you will have a better idea of what they like beyond your product offerings. This can help create interest in your videos by placing your topic within the context of your audience’s interests. If, for instance, you are making a video for a truck dealership in a cattle ranching area, it doesn’t make much sense to include footage of the vehicle on city streets. 

Where do they spend their time online?

Knowing where customers spend their time will guide you in deciding where the video should be published, the length, and the format. Find out which social media platform your customers use most often and start there. As an example, if you run a senior’s centre, it’s likely that TikTok isn’t where you need to be. If, however, your product caters to Gen Z then you should absolutely be on TIkTok. 

Why would people watch your video?

Whether it’s entertainment or information, people are looking for something when they watch videos. You need to answer the “why should I care” question by making it clear who the video is for and what the viewer will get out of watching it. This could be done through the description or title. 

By asking these questions you will have a clearer picture of who you are making the video for and you want to achieve. By making videos your audience appreciates you will develop trust and build a relationship as well as developing brand loyalty, which in turn leads to repeat purchases. 

Add a call to action

A call to action, or CTA, should be included with each video. This could be asking people to subscribe or follow if you’re looking to build an audience. Or you could send them to an email sign up form. This call to action should align with the goal of the video. FOr instance, if you want to raise awareness about your business you might ask people to share the video. If you’re looking to grow sales, it might be a buy now button. 

Every video should have a call to action either in the video itself or as part of the accompanying description. Experiment with wording and placement until you find a combination that provides results. 

Monitor metrics

Monitoring metrics and analytics after a video is published can provide valuable insight. What you learn by digging through the data can inform and improve future videos. Everybody wants to be like and large audiences feel good but these aren’t the important metrics. In fact, they’re often referred to as vanity metrics. 

Video watch time is a useful metric to monitor. After a few days of being posted, have a look to see when people stop watching your video. If it’s three to five seconds into a one minute video, you haven’t captured their interest. You’ll want to work on that. If you notice that people consistently only watch the beginning of a video, consider moving your call to action and most important points to the very beginning of the video where they are more likely to be seen. This will increase your ROI by improving your clickthrough rate on the call to action.

Clickthrough rate is another useful metric, especially when tied to your call to action. Use this number to see how many people watched your video versus how many clicked through to your CTA destination. Use clickthrough rates to see if the adjustments to your CTA are effective from one video to another. 

Make a content marketing strategy 

A content marketing strategy is essential when incorporating video into marketing plans. It is also an important part of being able to chart your ROI progress. A content strategy begins with asking what business goals you want to achieve. These goals will be used to chart the success of your ROI and to determine the direction of your video creation. It will also help you make better performing videos. 

Going through the steps to create a marketing strategy will force you to ask questions about your business, your customers, and your goals. This will help create a clear picture of not only what message you want to deliver, but also who you want that message to be heard by. 

This can help with ROI in several ways. First, you will have a clear goal to achieve and will be able to see how video has helped achieve that goal. This can help keep you focused when you find yourself with too many potential video ideas. 

Second, having a firm grasp of your audience will help when deciding what the video should look and sound like, as well as where it will be posted. By making a video that appeals to your target audience, you are increasing the chances of them wanting to respond to your call to action. 

Repurpose previously-created videos to increase ROI

Making fresh, new video content is important. Repeatedly posting the same thing will bore your audience and you’ll find they will either drift away or stop engaging with your content. That said, it’s possible to reuse content without losing your audience. Let’s use the example of a 10 minute how-to video on YouTube. 

This video has proven popular, with a respectable number of views, but hasn’t gotten the reach you think it’s capable of. To increase those views, and your potential ROI, pull a short and visually interesting clip from the video. Something around 10-15 seconds should be good. Then take that clip and upload it to another social media service. Write a description about the video and be sure to include a link to the longer video. If you’re active on several social media platforms then try different clips on each one to see which works best. 

If your audience appreciates a light hearted approach, you could post short outtakes of bloopers and mistakes from previously published videos. WHile this won’t improve your ROI directly, it will show a more human side to the company and will make your brand seem more relatable, both of which are good for developing brand loyalty. And loyal customers are return customers, so in a roundabout way it really is good for your ROI. 

For videos that haven’t been published yet, you can pull excerpts to post as previews. This can help build excitement for upcoming videos and generate buzz around your project. 

If your video was last posted more than a year ago, and is still relevant, you could repost it to your social media channel to give it another bump. This is an especially good tactic if you’re working on a follow-up project or a related topic. Framing it as a “remember this?” post is a good way to generate engagement on your video. 

Create evergreen content

Evergreen content, like the tree, refers to content that is always fresh and useful. How-to videos are a great example of evergreen content, as is a product demonstration. This always-popular content is a great way to increase ROI by extending the useful life of your video. Event coverage or special occasions would not be considered evergreen content, as these things typically get outdated soon after they happen. 

On most social networks new content has a viable lifespan of a few days. After that, the post is buried under a flow of new content, as people tend to watch what surfaces on their feed instead of searching for content. In these cases, creating evergreen content is not as important. It’s a different story on Youtube. 

The video giant that is YouTube has a robust and well used search function, meaning that people are easily able to find your video long after it is posted. It is here that you will find the most success with evergreen content. A video made several years ago, if done well, could still be racking up views today. This can be great for generating leads through a call to action, and will help increase ROI by reaching people far longer than, say, a Facebook post would. 

When looking to create evergreen content, consider first what people are looking to know. If, for instance, your company sells lawn mowers and tillers, it would make sense to create videos about lawn and garden care or landscaping. Although seasonal (it’s hard to mow snow) these videos are still considered evergreen, since the information is useful year after year.  Once posted on YouTube, you can share the video to other social networks each year as you build a catalog of helpful videos. 

When looking for evergreen video topics, think of what questions your customers are asking. Then seek to answer those questions in a video. 

Lower costs

When your initial investment isn’t very high, it’s easier to recover that investment. There are many ways to lower your video production costs, and some of them can have the added benefit of being able to increase ROI at the same time. One example of this is the use of crowd sourced video from your audience. 

Here’s an easy one: ask your viewers to share videos of them using your product. This one works on two levels. First, and most obvious, is that people will need to buy your product. If used with a hashtag and framed as a challenge, this could lead to others going out and buying the product to participate in the challenge. 

Secondly, followers of the people posting videos of your product will be encouraged to post their own video, extending the reach of your product beyond what your own account could organically achieve. This works because of something known as social proof. 

Use the hashtag to track the videos and repost or share these videos to your own account. For a small amount of time and no production costs you’ve just increased your video content capabilities. 

While there is a time and a place for a well produced video, with professional video cameras and lighting setups, not all videos require this degree of production quality. By choosing when you need pro level results and when you don’t you can keep production costs under control. In many cases, a mobile phone is a good enough camera. 

Which brings me to the next point. Consider using in-house talent, and their phones, to make your videos. It doesn’t have to be professional, especially for mobile first platforms like Instagram Stories or TikTok. In fact, a rougher, less produced look is usually better for this type of video. It doesn’t have to be the marketing department, either. It’s quite possible that someone in the finance or warehouse department is great at making videos. 

There are times, though, when you need professional video creators. If you really need a video to succeed, or don’t have the skills among your staff, or simply don’t have the time, then hiring an agency or production house could be the best way to see an increase in your ROI. 

The team at Dream It Reel is ready to help with all your video needs, including efforts to increase ROI. Reach out to us today.