These days, you only have to scroll through social media for a few minutes to know video is dominating the content sphere for brands. But if you are new to the video marketing game, getting started can feel daunting.
Lucky for you, there’s no need to start from scratch. Whether you plan on starting a YouTube channel or have your sights set on increasing the organic reach of your brand’s social feeds, the best way to begin is by repurposing your existing content.
Creating videos from your existing content is easier than you might think. And it’s a highly effective way to increase your marketing reach.
Why video is a must-have for all marketers
Before we jump into repurposing different types of content, let’s spend a minute talking about the treasure trove that is video marketing. Why is video so important for brands?
Video increases engagement
When it comes to likes, comments, and shares, video content consistently outperforms images. We see this a lot with ads, but it holds true across the board. Even organic video posts outperform image posts in the likes department by up to 45.95%.
Video increases engagement
Breaking into video-only platforms like YouTube gives you access to audiences that may not be on other social sites. Most social media platforms see a sharp decline in users in the 40-plus age bracket, but not YouTube. In America, 70% of people between the ages of 46 to 55 and 67% of people over age 55 use YouTube.
Video is persuasive and memorable
72% of customers say they prefer learning about a product or service by way of video. And it’s no wonder why. On average, people retain 10% of a message when reading it in text, compared to 95% when they watch it in a video.
The bottom line: video marketing is powerful. And it’s high time you get it working for you. You’re already sitting on a gold mine of tried and tested content. Extend the shelf life of your content and break into the video marketing game with these five easy ideas.
1. Turn glowing reviews into testimonial videos
You probably already have a good amount of customer testimonials in written form. This is perfect fodder for video content. Testimonial videos can populate a YouTube channel and then be used across different platforms like websites, emails, and ad campaigns.
And they are incredibly easy to make .
When most people hear the term “testimonial video”, they imagine a labor-intensive process of filming customers in person and cutting together a video montage. But in reality, you can create effective testimonial videos in a matter of minutes.
First, pick your top five testimonials and winnow each down to one or two lines. Next, combine stock background video footage with these written testimonials to create compelling visuals. Include slick transitions and a soundtrack and you are in business.
2. Create effective how-to videos
How-to or explainer videos are some of the most popular video types made today. When learning a new skill, video is unmatched at conveying instructions. In fact, people process visual information 60,000 times faster than text.
No matter what industry you’re in, imparting instructions to your customers is probably already a part of the service you provide. How-to videos can be about physical tasks like “How to use our milk frother with nut milk”. They can be technical, teaching viewers a skill like “How to add a cover image to your profile”. Or they can be educational, showing your industry expertise such as ‘How to make eCommerce YouTube ads that really work”.
If you ever find yourself explaining how to do something in your business, jot it down and turn it into a how-to video. You’ll even save yourself time in the long run by linking to your own video instead of explaining things over and over.
How-to videos are easy to create. Just map out the steps, clearly number the order of everything, and at the end, finish with a CTA that encourages viewers to reach out if they have any more questions.
As a final tip: If you post these on your YouTube channel, always include the search term “How to” in the video title. This improves your SEO by mimicking the way users type queries into YouTube.
3. Use blog content for awareness videos
An awareness video is anything you make simply to familiarize people with your brand. Your blog is the ideal hunting ground for this type of video, because blog pieces already have a well-developed narrative.
The aim of the game with awareness videos is to keep the audience watching and have your brand make an impression. That’s it. It’s not even about engagement metrics. These videos perform the essential task of building subconscious trust through repeated exposure.
This is why blog content is perfect for awareness videos. Just like with your testimonial videos, you can use text along with stock footage to create simple content without shooting an ounce of footage. Condense the blog’s written content down to about one line of video text per paragraph of blog text.
Try to follow the same narrative flow as the original blog, but lean heavily on music and transitions to recreate the emotional resonance of the story. Use upbeat music and short, snappy cuts for fun blog stories and slower music with gentle cuts for more meaningful stories.
4. Design an FAQ series
FAQs are a great format for video because your audience know exactly what to expect and, even better, they set the agenda by asking the questions in the first place.
FAQ videos are also ideal for serializing. That is, make a new video for each individual FAQ. Create a standard template and follow it for each video in the series. Post the entire series on your website’s FAQ page, unveil one each week on your social media feed, or create a YouTube playlist for easy reference.
Whatever you do, don’t try to cram more than one FAQ into a single video, as you get the best results from viewers if you keep videos under two minutes long.
As you would for written FAQs, pay close attention to your wording. If it’s a technical question or a question that covers legalities, people will follow along closely and fixate on individual words. Be precise with your language. If your video involves a “talking head”, include on-screen text to underscore the most important information.
If it’s a technical question, also include screen grabs or recordings that walk the user through how to solve their problem.
Once you’ve accumulated a few FAQ videos, pop them into a playlist and link to it on your website or in your customer service comms — it’s a great resource to concierge customers without lifting a finger.
5. Repurpose written or audio interviews
For a long time, marketers primarily carried out interviews in written format. It was much too expensive to produce video content when an interview could be turned into a blog on the cheap. But that’s all changing with the advent of inexpensive, easy-to-use video making software.
Video interviews are back on the menu. But does that mean you have to crack out the camera and set up a slew of new interviews? No! If you’ve already interviewed people for your blog, social media, or emails, you can easily turn that content into a video.
If you have a quality audio file, cut that up into short snippets. The goal isn’t to recreate the entire interview as it happened. Instead, break it down into interesting sound bites that revolve around a theme. With a voice-over in place, all you need is some b-roll footage either provided by your interviewee or taken from stock footage databases.
If the interview took place over email or you don’t have the audio file anymore, you can still pull interesting quotes and include them as text in your video. If it feels right, you can even batch these quotes into a listicle style video (like “Five things Clark Kent said to us that we can’t stop thinking about”).
No matter which of these video ideas you tackle first, remember this: video marketing is effective. And it’s easy. All you have to do is review your existing content and get started.