Video Promotion Tactics

At ImageLink Film & Media, we can assist with promoting your video online to ensure it reaches its target audience.  In this section we discuss some of the best options available for ‘Promoting’ your video online.  By Promoting the video, we are referring to various methods of making your video accessible from numerous locations online in order to reach the widest possible target audience for your video content.

This is to be differentiated from ‘Uploading’ your video file to websites or hosting platforms. We do not generally recommend that you ‘upload’ your video file to numerous video hosting platforms, or social media channels (or websites).  We instead recommend that you upload the video to just one major Video Hosting Platform (YouTube being the most popular) and then embed the video link in the appropriate webpage of your website.  Once this process is completed then it is appropriate to move to promoting the video on other websites and social media platforms.

To make the video accessible at other locations online (besides the chosen video hosting platform or your website) we recommend that you simply post a link to the video on your website. This will increase traffic to your company website. If you instead wish to just promote the video on your YouTube channel, you can then simply post a link to that online location for your video.  Whichever option you choose, each time someone clicks on the link and watches the video, (either on your website or YouTube directly) this will have a positive effect on the SEO for the video (and the website if that is where you point the link to), which will result in it raising in the search results rankings for any searches related to the content of the video.

For more information on SEO Tactics to increase the search engine ranking of your video click here … For more details of the SEO Benefits of promotional video for your company website click here ...

Promotional Options for your video include …

• Promote your video on Social Media
• Link to your video from Industry Discussion Forums
• Run the Commercial Video as an ‘Advert’ on YouTube
• Run the video as a Facebook Promoted Post
• Run the video as a Linked-In Promoted Post
• Create a Google Ads Campaign for longer videos
• Embed the video in your company Blog
• Embed the video on relevant industry Blogs
• Show your video at Trade shows, Conferences & Industry Events
• Create and email marketing campaign attaching the video (link)

As mentioned earlier an important way of promoting your video(s) is to share the video content on Social Media Networks such as Facebook, Linked-In and Twitter. It is totally free and any responses you get in terms of likes, shares or comments will help increase the number of views of the video. Replying to relevant comments can be a useful way of increasing engagement with the viewers.

Also, joining relevant ‘groups’ on Facebook and Linked-In can be beneficial in terms of keeping up to date on interesting developments in your industry.  Many of these groups will also allow you to post a link to your video, once it is clearly related to the stated interests of the group in question.  Also posting links to your own Linked-in (and if appropriate, your own Facebook account) can further broaden the reach of your video content.  As well as posting links to your video for free, most social media networks (such as Facebook and Linked-In) now also have ‘paid’ options that can be utilised for promoting your promotional video content.

Facebook now offers the option of ‘promoted posts’. Before posting your ‘promoted post’ video, you can pick a relevant target market demographic and (depending on the available budget) you can ‘promote’ your video on Facebook in a very targeted way - based on a number of precise demographics – including geographical location and the interests of the viewers. You can set your total and daily budget spend in advance in order to control the amount you spend and to test the market before allocating further resources to this option.

YouTube gives you the option to specify the preferred target market for your YouTube advert viewership, through a process that is known as Video Remarketing (aka  Re-Targeting ). Using ‘Remarketing Lists’ you can show specially created video adverts on YouTube (and their video partner sites) based on the past interaction preferences of the YouTube viewers. Your advert will be shown (just before) YouTube videos that have content related to the content of the ad you have created. These viewers have been chosen as a potential audience for your advert content by the YouTube Algorithm because their previous viewing choices have indicated an interest in the type of content you are promoting. These ‘warm’ leads represent  completely new prospects that you may be able to convert into customers.

If you want to generate the lowest cost per acquisition, create a video re-marketing campaign. Within your custom audiences, you can serve the specific YouTube video just to individuals that have visited your website.  A pixel will need to be placed onto your website so you can serve the video advertisement to users that have dropped off your site.
Imagine if you are a retailer and target a video for a specific product to people who dropped off that respective page on your website! With video re-marketing, you’ll have the capability to do this.

Make the most of your video remarketing lists by exploring these features:

• Targeting: Remarket to your potential customers by using specific categories, such as topics, interests, keywords, geotargeting, etc.
• Creative formats: Build and target your remarketing campaign with the TrueView family of video ads and other creative formats (text, image, and rich media ads on the Google Display Network).
• Detailed reports: Optimize your remarketing campaign based on performance metrics. For example, raise bids on specific topics or channels that generate the greatest ad response.
• Ease of use: Use AdWords for video to easily create, manage, and target your remarketing lists.
• Custom audiences: Customize your targeting by combining your remarketing lists. For example, you can target users who viewed your movie trailer but haven’t yet viewed your ad promoting the DVD release.

If you are a mid to large sized business and generate more than 1,000 daily visitors to your website, the video re-marketing will get served to a large enough audience. If you have less than 1,000 daily visitors per day, your company will want to expand its advertising and choose precise targeting using Google Adwords to obtain more views and exposure.

It is very important to be very Keyword aware when creating the text content for the advert. This will maximise the chances of it matching up with relevant ‘search terms’ inputted by a user performing a search. To help find out what are the most popular keywords for your industry (or specific product/ service) you can use any of a number of ‘Keyword Research’ tools. If you are running a Google Ad-words campaign / paid PPC (Pay per Click) ads on Google the Ad-words interface allows you search the strength and popularity of given keywords and provides suggestions.

Note: For longer videos Adsense can be a way of making money from your video by allowing adverts to run before your video.

It has been shown that ‘open rates’ for marketing email campaigns are double if you embed video content in the email.  In order to be most effective such videos should ideally include a specific call to action such as ‘request a demo’ or ‘more information’. You can put a link to your video on an email that you send out to your existing customers. Alternatively you can obtain a list of potentially relevant prospects ( eg. a relevant industry body such as the Institute of Directors, or the local Chambers of Commerce etc ) and you can incorporate the video content as a way of enhancing an mail campaign that is aimed at promoting your company to this targeted list of recipients.

One advantage of email marketing is that you have control over when the video will be seen in a way that you do not have using other promotional methods. (It is generally not advisable to send a marketing email late on Fridays, at the weekend or early on Monday mornings – as the recipient is not likely to see the email – due to not being there or because of the backlog of other emails they are likely to have to go through). Also, you have control over who exactly it is that is being invited to view the video content and you can make sure that these individuals all fit the profile of your target audience for the video.

Analysing how your video is doing is very important in terms of assessing how effective the video content is, in terms of achieving its stated objectives. Most Video Hosting platforms now offer powerful analytical interfaces where detailed video viewing statistics are gathered.  Using this analytics software you can ascertain vital video viewing statistics relating to the level of engagement with the content in terms of the number of Views, Likes, Shares and Comments for your video(s). You can also monitor changes or trends in key metrics over time

Viewer Statistics:  You can gather much information on the viewers and their level of engagement  (such as who likes or shares your videos). You can also see statistics relating to the general demographics of the viewers and where they are located geographically. Once you know the demographic that is most engaged with your content you will be better able to tap into this in the future.

You can also see the Traffic sources (which shows how viewers discover your content) as well as what devices were used most to watch the content.  It also enables you to see viewing trends and variations over time. For example, you can find out the days of the week,  or month with the highest number of views (and the lowest).

Video Content Statistics:  You also need to be able to monitor which parts of the video do people find most compelling, which parts lead to more ‘shares’ and when do viewers loose interest  (ie. how long do they watch before moving on).  This can be very helpful in showing if the video manages to hook the viewer early on and then keep them engaged enough so that the watch it right through to the end. If you are finding that there is a lot of drop-off early on in the video then this is where you need to analyse how you can learn from this and increase engagement on your next video production.