One of the most common mistakes that brands and marketers make with their online video strategy is creating messaging that is too broad. The one-off corporate video is not enough for online audiences in today's landscape. Our viewers have become much smarter and are on the hunt for more narrow and niche content.
Additionally, they’re spending more time watching online videos and are hungry for more content in every part of the conversion process. With that in mind, here are 3 ways to target specific audiences by narrowing your video content.
Identify the Primary Audience: Before starting any video project or campaign, marketers need to establish who the primary audience is for said video. It is very easy to fall into the habit of saying “let’s make a one-size fits all video for everyone”. The truth is that the strategy is not going to get you the results you’re after.
Take the time and identify if your audience is existing customers, potential customers, investors, internal teams, the general public, B2B, B2C, future employees or someone who is completely unfamiliar with your company. Choose one primary audience and keep that in mind for every part of the video process including pre-production, production, post, distribution and marketing.
These items will play a big role in how messaging is received with this target audience. This includes the creative direction, script, talent and overall tone of your video. Always keep in mind the age and demographic of your audience and how they like to receive information.
One beneficial tip in the case of external consumer videos is that brands need to think about the story in their content. Most online audiences are bombarded with advertisements, so try to demonstrate how your product or company can offer a solution to this audience’s problems. Focus on the pain points and create visual stories around them rather than creating a flat-out advertisement that audiences will run from.
The call-to-action is going to be different for each audience and some of this may depend on the ability of your distribution platform as discussed in the next section.
Identify & Master the Platform: One of the most common mistakes we see is brands and companies who create one video and publish that same video to multiple platforms. While this is easy to do, it has proven to be an ineffective strategy.
In most cases, a company website can be a very different experience compared to social video platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn & Instagram.
Publishers should know exactly where their video is going to be distributed early on in the planning process. This can determine how an online video is produced. Each video should be tailored to the platform, so it’s crucial to know what works and more importantly what doesn’t.
Thinking back to your primary audience, where are they and how are they going to see that video? They may not be on your website or using some of the social platforms mentioned earlier. Even if they are using multiple platforms, that doesn’t mean you need to publish your video to every one. Pick one or more that is going to compliment the goal of that video campaign.
Once you have completed your research and identified a destination, publishers need to master those platforms and know the features and limitations. For example, maybe you’d like to use one of the clickable button features on YouTube like cards or end-screens. If so, then knowing this ahead of time can help when you’re scripting and capturing a video.
The same approach can be applied toward other online video platforms and the company website. Are there features that you can build into that video that will lead to the goal of that campaign? Can other assets such as whitepapers, blog posts, and presentations be placed around that video to guide this audience along a content journey?
These items can all lead to more powerful call-to-actions in your videos.
One of the other important takeaways with platforms and reaching your target audience is evaluating the analytics on each video. Almost all platforms can provide marketers with some level of metrics. For this topic, demographic and geographic locations are key in determining if the video is reaching the audience you’ve targeted.
Keep in mind that view count is not that important if you have a small or niche audience. What is important is reaching the target audience that will engage with your brand.
Publishers can also evaluate factors like duration of the niche videos you’re producing. Look at engagement rates with that audience and see how long or short form content is performing. Evaluating all of these metrics and filtering them to your target audience can help you refine your strategy with future online videos campaigns.
Think & Use SEO: One of the most powerful ways to grab a niche audience is by including search engine optimization early on in the video process.
Get together with your SEO experts and look at the questions and words this audience is searching for. Using these search terms from your primary audience can help fuel not only your content creation but also the likelihood that your videos will get discovered.
Marketers can craft the content in these video to target a specific user, customer, etc. This video from Bell is a great example.
Not only did they create a very specific topic for their target viewer of aviation maintainers, but they also used those terms in the title of their video. This made the video easily discoverable by that niche audience who searched for those industry keywords.
For more advanced online video platforms, marketers can use built-in tools or create video site maps that include metadata such as keywords in and around your video players. Take the extra time to populate those tags and fields. These things matter and do make a difference on platforms like YouTube, Instagram and other channels..
Take these tips and apply them toward your company video strategy. This approach will lead to more qualified viewers that can contribute to the goals of your overall video marketing efforts. Reach out us with any video strategy questions and to book your next video production.