But what IS video marketing, and how can you do it well?

In order to develop a successful digital marketing strategy, teams, marketers as well as video professionals should bring video content in the mix. Although the concept of "video marketing" could be easy to understand (essentially the inclusion of videos into your marketing campaigns), it is difficult to figure out how you can go about successfully implementing this strategy.

Why video marketing matters

With the rise of sites like and YouTube, social channels like Facebook and Twitter have now added video to their platforms, as well as dramatic improvement in the streaming quality itself (bye goodbye to the buffering, the dreaded thing) video is now a feature in all phases of the marketing funnel. The traditional funnel looks like this: you intro someone to your business (awareness stage), educate them about the benefits (consideration stage) and then justify the offer (decision stage), and retain customers (delight stage).

So how do you do video marketing right?

Let's bring life to a standard video-marketing funnel by using an actual (but in reality, a fictional) illustration. WebThyme is a (imaginary) software firm which helps users create and manage websites. Jenn is one of the potential customers.

• The right prospect: Jenn is about to create a wellness and health site. WebThyme's target audience is small business owners.
• The best channel to go with: Jenn Googles advice for starting a new business and comes across one of WebThyme's videos on an article on their blog in which they tell the story of an entrepreneur. Excited, she subscribes to WebThyme's newsletters as well as they deliver Jenn a weekly newsletter that contains helpful information.
  
• The right action:Jenn clicks on a email link, which takes her on a web site, with a short video, which delves into the latest WebThyme features available to small business owners. Clicking on the button will lead to a free trial -calling to decision -- and then decides to try it.

This is just one example of a scenario that could be used for video marketing. What happens when you play it out on a more granular or actionable basis? What are the most effective video marketing practices for key channels like social media, email, as well as your web site? Let's dig in...

Social media exploration

Why does social is so beneficial in promoting growth? If your current followers share, like, comment or share your articles in turn, they expose your videos to their own acquaintances and friends, a few of them may begin following your account. One method to get more leads in this ecosystem is by incorporating email capture forms, available within Business software, which allows you to collect the viewers" details directly inside the embedded player. Then, you can easily import the emails to email marketing tools like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, as well as Constant Contact.

Perhaps you'd like for your readers to be directed to a landing page where they can discover more. You can do that too! Business allows you to add clickable CTAs that allow you to send people exactly to the place you want.

You can also grow your reach and get more followers by using sponsored social media. Based on the particular site it is possible to target certain groups, and also promote your video by putting it in pre-roll positions or posts that are promoted.

Let your email campaigns flourish

In the case of emails, videos matter big time. They can boost click-through rate of 200-300% (that's hundreds of percents, users), and reduce the number of un-subscribers. However, most email programs can't handle videos that are that are embedded directly in emails- but it's easy to solve this problem by overlaying a play button on an image that is still from your video, leading to a landing page that has the whole thing.

It's relatively easy to do with those emails marketing tools we talked about in the past, as well as in marketing automation systems such as HubSpot. It's an excellent method to A/B test which video thumbnails get you the highest conversion rates. In general of thumb, you could increase your campaign" performance by customizing your design and copy to the landing pages they drive to.

Your website, packed with amazing videos

 Homepage

A majority of businesses create videos for their homepage, one that describes what you're all about the reason why your business is significant, and what issue you're solving for. This vastly impacts the way you're seen by someone just coming across your brand. Consider Canary as an example.

 Landing pages

Your homepage can serve many purposes for a wide audience Your landing pages are great for educating specific segments of your customers about the wonderful things you offer, and enticing users to take the desired decision. People who market to your landing pages come from online ads and social media sites blogs, as well as websites. Search engines and videos help convert this traffic into leads and customers. As an example, have an look at our business page.

 Blog

This is an important source of traffic inbound to your website, especially when your posts include helpful info, industry news as well as thought leadership about topics people are interested in, since they're likely searching for these topics through Google. Also, it's a fantastic destination for sharing product and company news, events, and the best practices you've learned from your audience. Do you need an example? This article is (hopefully) more interesting thanks to videos sprinkled around.

 Page for FAQs and product pages

All that is needed to put it all together

When your video-marketing strategy is implemented well, you create an incredible ecosystem that grows the business of your organization: your social videos are drawing new fans and enthralling existing ones; your video-filled blog articles are ranked highly in results for search engines and your emails -that feature stunning thumbnails of videos -- lead fans to websites that are your landing pages with relevant videos with clearly-written CTAs and clear CTAs. All of them can be optimized to generate leads and driving conversions. The best part is that everything you do can be tracked, measured, and optimizable as time passes. And speaking about...