Google Expands Video Marketing To Reach Wider Audiences

How to Maximize Your Video Marketing Efforts to Reach a Wider Audience

Updated 12.11.2023

Every business is pressed to provide its viewers with the best video viewing environment on their website, in AdWords display marketing, and mobile video advertising.

Video is one of the most versatile and profitable digital marketing tools in existence. That is why Google is expanding its video marketing options mid-year of 2018. High-value video content is useful to drive traffic, for brand building, to promote tutorial and informational content, to sell your products, to increase customer engagement, to entertain, and to boost ROI.

We’ll start by answering some common questions asked about video marketing.

What is Video Marketing?

Video marketing is a visual marketing strategy that integrates compelling video formats into your marketing campaigns. It is ideal for mobile audiences. It can be used for everything from it boosts customer rapport, to promote your brand, services, and/or products.

This not only relates to Google Search; Bing Search is now testing playable video thumbnails in its search result snippets. Your clips and video thumbnails can show up right in search engine result pages (SERPs) for people’s top question answer queries.

What are the Main Benefits of Video Marketing?

The benefits of video marketing are manifold. In the mix of now video posting and advertising opportunities, video is clearly an innovative way to tell your business story, build trust in your business with reviews, gain brand exposure, and a key driver of value in media investments. Already in June 2018, companies have new ways to get more people interested in their business brand with video ads created specifically to reach people on their phones and tablets.

You may win new snippets for movies result in Google Search. Here are some expandable features on the SERP:

• Where to watch
• Trailor.
• Why to watch.

How to use Video schema markup to gain SERP thumbnail displays?

Video marketing and video schema markup both work best if on a web page that is all about the video. The video needs to be the page’s main content, which is typically not on your home page. Having your video content simply visible in the user’s viewport doesn’t make it the main content of the page.

As of December 4, 2023, Google stated, “We’re rolling out an update to our results in Video mode to only show pages where the video is the main content of the page, to better connect users with the video content they’re looking for.” This means it is important to do the following. Know the advantages of valid schema markup and expert video inclusion on your website.

• Have a skilled marketer who understands the qualification for “main content.”
• Have updated, fully valid video markup for each video clip.
• Understand the placement criteria for video placement on a website.
• The required video thumbnail image size for inclusion in Google SERP displays.

December 1, 2023, Google also updated its learning video schema markup instructions. Learning video structured data may also enable SERP information chips about the learning video. This may include additional information about the educational level the video is appropriate for and what type of video it is (an overview, how-to, or a solution video).

Learning video schema markup includes: LearningResource, VideoObject, and Clip details.

Google Search is a top entry point for students, researchers, and teachers to find and watch educational videos. When you explicitly provide learning-specific information with structured data, Google can better understand the content in your video and provide an enhanced experience to help searchers reach your relevant video content. Remember, your video schema will need regular structured data audits and code updates to avoid drift and maximize opportunity.

Can Businesses’ Mobile Video Marketing Reach Viewers Via Newsfeeds?

Overall, video immediately commands visual attention in newsfeeds, and it’s more likely you’ll catch your audience’s attention with a compelling splash screen on a mobile device versus text. Once they have landed on your web page, text-based assets that take time to read and process are important. They should feel like an everyday conversation between you and the viewer and be easy to share.

Facebook’s Newsfeed loves video. And so do most platforms. A video on our web page, accompanied with exceptional written content, breaks up walls of text and intrigues site visitors. While images can much of the same, they don’t capture curiosity the same as a video. Popular media channels now prioritize shorter segments ideal for mobile users.

The potential for mobile digital lead-generation has been evident since and growing annually. The AI Google Generative Search Experience, includes more visual content, like video thumbnails. Millennial prospects regard a smart, pithy video in their social feed as a chance to opt-in for future messaging with the ease of a couple of clicks.

Always start by aligning the objectives for your video project with your business goals. What user action are you hoping to encourage? What are you trying to achieve? From there you can tie specific videotaped metrics to your goals and begin measuring success.

It almost goes without saying that the more initial planning you do for your filmed content, the better reporting metrics you will have. Setting your cinematic goals should be your first step — not only will your content itself benefit from greater direction, but you’ll have more time to ensure access to all the data insights you want.

Additionally, by using an online video editor to create and edit the videos, you can ensure that your video is optimized for the specific data insights you want to gather, such as engagement rates, click-through rates, or views. This can ultimately help you to improve your reporting metrics and achieve your overall video marketing objectives.

Google Smart Video Ads & TrueView Video Campaigns

Google’s new Smart Video Ads: To improve your video content rankings, consider Google’s new Smart Video Ads. These new ad campaigns provide businesses with real-time results. Such as calls coming in, actions on your website, and more store visits. Smart campaigns leverage newer machine learning technologies to continuously improve your video ad campaigns and give you better results.

Targeting ad optimization relies on Google’s machine learning algorithms and automatically aims to show ads to the right audiences using behavioral, location, device and other signals.

Google TrueView Video Campaigns: “Each ad group can contain only one video ad format, either in-stream, video discovery, bumper, or outstream. To create bumper or outstream video ads, you’ll need to create a separate campaign”, the platform instructs. You can either let your video’s go live by default and these ad formats will show on all eligible devices Or you can indicate which particular operating systems, device models, and carrier you prefer.

Reportedly, Smart Campaigns are 3x more successful at reaching a business’s target audiences than AdWords Express campaigns. Just like Universal App Campaigns, Smart Campaign ads can also be distributed across Google’s properties, and viewers aren’t given the access to turn off channels on their own.

Inform Search Engines of your Video Content with Schema

Google published another update on April 7, 2021, to its help documents for video schema markup. This means that the thumbnailUrl now additionally supports WebP and SVG image formats, in addition to the already documented BMP, GIF, JPEG, and PNG image formats.

Formerly, the documentation didn’t specify WebP and SVG formats here. Your pages that host video content can now use this within their Video structured data (VideoObject). This is helpful as more people prefer consuming content in video format.

Using Google Video Datasets for Video Intelligence

Google offers the AutoML Video Classification UI to empower the creation of new video datasets. The Datasets page shows the status of formerly made datasets for the current project. The Google Cloud Platform strongly supports video intelligence.

Another brand newly announced is the Google Marketing Platform, which combines DoubleClick Digital Marketing and Google Analytics 360, the enterprise’s analytics tools for digital marketers. Under that bucket, Google introduced a new product called Display & Video 360*, which marries features from the DoubleClick Bid Manager, Campaign Manager, Studio and Audience Center.

When posting video content on social media, also read those platform reports to understand how people are interacting with your content.

Story-Telling with 6-second Videos in Succession

Short-form video ads can provide powerful touches to boost your longer story.

This quick nibble video format allows companies to up their quest to reach a younger demographic. If your e-commerce product is ideally purchased by millennials and Gen Z consumers with shorter attention spans or preferences, adjust and reach them with content that they are more likely to embrace. They may watch a Featured Video in Google SERPs and take action later.

When your video material is broken down into 6-second specific, consumable segments, each part will be easier to view more efficiently and work harder in a more productive manner for you. Smaller video segments are also easier to add metadata to for more granular identification by both people and search engines.

When video content is more searchable people can both (1) find your website and (2) consume more content once on your web pages. It also makes it easier for all of your sales staff. Since video consumption is up and climbing, a quick-paced call coming from an on-the-go consumer typically indicates high purchase intent. This makes it easier for your business to answer the call spot-on by aligning faster with what aspect of your site generated the introduction.

Our research indicates that expanding your client base by reaching someone for the first time via video, the shorter the better. For Google Ads retargeting campaigns, we find that a 15 or a 30-second segment does best. That may be attributed to the logic that if someone has already heard of you, they are more likely to give you more of their time.

Short-form video is proving that it has a role. Six seconds is actually an ideal bite-sized moment to play with and forcing you to be more focused on your meaty and most effective messages. The best means of getting your videos consumed by a wider audience is simply to publish more than one and make them short enough to complete fast while getting one message. If you create a plan for a running series of videos (for example, a how-to series or the latest trends in the industry) that are easy to execute, then you could build up your internet presence with ease. Plan first to have Google crawl and index your media assets properly.

“You can really get to a level of poignancy and a level of human connection that you cannot get to even in a 15-second spot. It’s because you sort of have to understand your subject matter, your medium, your production tools so much more intimately in order to make use of six seconds in an effective way. I think it’s one of the most important ad formats—if not the most important ad format—that we are going to see more of.” – YouTube expert, Maud Deitch*

Current SEO strategies should included video optimization. Add video structured data markup and check to see if your schema is accurate in the Google Search Console. If you need some reasons to jump into video advertising, here are top reasons why.

Benefits of searchable video for businesses of all sizes:

• It’s an ideal format for instructional content and tutorials.
• It encourages your clients and staff to increase their knowledge
• It makes it easier to grasp more complex concepts

The Need for Video Creative

Video is the fastest growing medium that people are electing to consume online. Video clips that match search intent at stages along the consumer journey are a powerful means of providing answers and how-to details. Use natural language in your titles and Metadata.

Most younger audiences like “skippable ads” and smart marketers are tailoring their videos for this demographics’ unique business model. This is where 6-second ads are producing incredible results. For anyone trying to fit a video of value into 6 seconds, you know that it is much harder than compiling a 2-3 minute video.

We get asked a lot about where should one host their video content, so let’s answer that.

Is it better to upload my video content on YouTube, my site, or both?

When you create two video landing pages, one on YouTube and another landing page on your site to host in, the two may be competing for eyeballs. You will need to build E-A-T to that page on your site to increase your chances to have your own landing page come up. Often search engines determined which one they give priority to by where there are strong signals and the ability to quickly match content to search intent.

If you have more information on your web page that hosts it and has Video schema markup to help search engines understand it, you face less of a competing scenario. For people who are searching for video content on YouTube, you’ll want to be there. Sometimes, it may benefit you to have the same video on two landing pages and changes to reach different audiences.

YouTube Unveils 3 new Types of Video Experiments

New ways Google and Bing let Digital Marketers Target Audiences with Video

In June 2018, Google and Bing rolled out In-Market Audiences for Search for all US advertisers.

1. Advertise your video using “in-market audience ads”. This allows the use of features like age, location, and income.

2. First-click, maybe gained cookie tracking privileges (IP), and email address, to those who really indicate intent to buy. New “custom intent ads” for those further down the funnel; those connections are even better than your “in-market” audience.

3. Take an identified audience (in Ignite), understand them, and hitting them within their journey.

On September 9, 2022, Stacy Jo Dixon posted Global social networks ranked by number of users 2023 on statista.com. She talked about how consumer media preferences are quickly moving to higher levels of visual media consumption and that “YouTube has 2 billion users worldwide”. Website content that includes compelling images gains nearly twice as many views as text, and four times more customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it.

With the launch of Video experiments, we can now convert non-working media spend typically used for focus groups in simulated ad environments into working media that is better invested in real ad environments. It is ideal for gaining product visibility in Google SERPs. On YouTube, consumers tend to only watch what they want, making it an ideal petri dish with exponential growth and actionable results you can trust. Google measures user engagement and search history and attributes a lot of weight to the content that they prefer to engage.

These reports will help video content creators understand how effective their videos are at capturing the attention of different audience segments. Google indicates that it wants to let users annotate key moments within a video, which will allow reports to show what percent of viewers saw those moments. The upcoming YouTube Director Mix will let users create multiple versions of the same video, each with customizable elements that can be shown to different audience segments. Serving up personalized content produces better video watch times.

Video Advertising Statistics

• Intent-based campaigns have 20% higher ad-recall lift and 50% higher brand-awareness lift compared to demographics-based campaigns alone. (YouTube data, May 18, 2018 )
• Worldwide viewers visually consume 3 trillion minutes of Internet video per month by 2021, that’s 5 million years of video per month. Video will continue to dominate most online traffic – representing 80% of all Internet traffic by 2021, up from 67% in 2016. (Cisco****, May 9, 2018
• 46% of users act after viewing an ad. An initial email with a video receives an increase click-through rate by 96%. Wordstream, May 1, 2018)
• Because of its visual nature, 80% of users can recall a video ad they’ve seen. Forbes, February 3, 2017)
• T-Mobile says its 6-Second World Series Ads were the most effective (Adage, Nov 20, 2017)
• 57% of consumers have said that watching videos gave them more confidence to purchase online. (Moovly, Feb 9, 2016)
• The length of LinkedIn video ads must be three seconds to 30 minutes. However, successful video ads are less than 15 seconds long. (Socially Sorted, May 4, 2018)
• 51% of viewers think less of brands that rely on auto-playing video ad. (HubSpot, 2016)
• In 2016 brands dropped a whopping $10 billion on digital video ads in the U.S., and experts estimate that figure will reach $18 billion by 2020. (Think With Google, April 24, 2018)
• You are 53x more likely to appear on Google page one if you have a video on your website. (Dreamgrow, May 21, 2018 )

Running a Video Marketing Campaign

Google’s YouTube Revenue and levels of viewer engagement for video watching have placed YouTube as the world’s 2nd biggest search engine for more than 1,8 billion people registered on the site. These devoted video watchers often check it daily to watch approximately 5 billion videos. Managing a video marketing campaign from start to finish seems complicated at first. It is easier than you may think if you start by knowing your audience and thorough pre-planning.

When we look at all major free video content platforms that US citizens are watching videos and movie content on, we see Google sites (the bulk of which is obviously YouTube) being number one with 149 million (3x that of FB) viewers a month. It’s important to know how profit-driven marketing works. Oath (former Yahoo) holds the next position with 74 million, Facebook is number three with 68 million and all the rest hold holding much more modest positions with less than 50 million monthly viewers.

Every business niche has its own cast of video followers. Once you know their demographics and preferences, we recommended starting your video marketing campaign where most of your clients and prospective buyers already hang out.

Google offers 3 tips for creating effective direct-response video ads on its platform:

• Understand your customer’s intent
• Entice people to take action
• Keep tweaking — it can make all the difference

Post your video content in a strategic way so that it is easier to have accurate metadata information surface that achieves a connection point between its content and someone interested in viewing it. This goes a long way in making your SEO more effective.

Build Trust First and then Build Your Subscriber Base

More people than ever before are deleting their Facebook accounts.

It is a lot more work to bring viewers to where your video content resides than it is to simply post a video where your people already watch video formats most often.

It’s important to build your subscriber base. Subscribers are your business’s most loyal fans. Once subscribed to your YouTube video channel, they will be automatically notified of new videos and playlists to watch. It is also key to design a solid plan to promote your content and that ensures it’s viewed by your target audience. Unless you already have millions of YouTube subscribers, you’ll need to seed or market your new content once it launched. The audience segment that your business needs to reach is out there — however, today you need a lot of strategic SEO planning put into it to get potential viewers to find your newest videos.

“A common mistake is reusing the same video across platforms without respect to how users consume video differently on different channels, how they channels themselves can handle them, and the different length requirements of each space.” – Hill Web Marketing

Test and read your data. What worked yesterday may not be the best type of video marketing spend for today or tomorrow. For example, many businesses who reached new viewers through video marketing on Facebook no longer find that it garners the same return on investment. With higher-than-ever volumes of people deleting their Facebook accounts, they are not on Facebook any longer to even see your video. They simply aren’t there if they don’t trust the platform. That is not a reflection on your business.

Trust is the foundation of client conversions and product sales. Building relational credibility and trust is first. Content marketing success is achieved by opening the door for people to come to you by providing them interesting and useful information. Video can foster those long-term relationships, not just traffic, but by content that connects versus just sells.

Your efforts will go a lot further if you understand the specifics of YouTube, and each platform that you choose to add a video to. Learn how to best make the most of each format. When preparing your business’s marketing plan, always think of your mobile audience first.

Video advertising encompasses online display advertisements that have video within them, but it is generally accepted that it refers to advertising that occurs before, during and/or after a video stream on the internet. According to Wikipedia, “The advertising units used in this instance are pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll and all of these ad units are like the traditional spot advertising you see on television, although often they are “cut-down” to be a shorter version than their TV counterparts if they are run online”.

Best Video Length for Popular Social Media Platforms

How Long Should Your Videos Be?

If you are using video, you might as well make the most of the format to reach a higher number of people.

Research proves that users who consume video prefer quick and succinct clips. the message from people behind most Internet video consumption is clear: keep it short.

Research shows that “the human brain can process visuals 60,000 times faster than text”, says Clifford Chi on Hubspot. His Apr 18, 2018 article titled How Long Should Your Videos Be? Ideal Lengths for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube also includes a handy infographic.

Optimal video length for popular social media platforms according to Hubspot:

• Twitter: 45 seconds or less.
• Instagram: 30 seconds.
• LinkedIn: 15 seconds.
• Facebook: 1 minute.
• YouTube: 2 minutes.
• Pinterest: maximum allowed is 30 minutes; Best length for Pinterest promoted videos: 15-30 seconds.
• Google Posts: under 30 seconds.

Video Ideas for Google Business Listing or Google Ads:

Many people get hung-up upon which type of videos to create or perfection—when really, that’s the easiest part!

• Show your staff in action completing work that surpassed client expectations.
• Highlight and show off an employee of the month (season/project)
• Create and record a video tour of your office
• Ask a client if you can video a project planning meeting so others can see how decisions are typically made
• Having a company picnic or annual event? Bring the camera along and share the fun. Capture and demonstrate your business culture
• Feature a case study
• Interview employees about what they like best about working for your company
• Invite your customers to upload videos to your Google Business Listing

Consider partnering with a content creator who is currently reaching digital viewers and incorporate it with your paid search marketing. By pooling ideas and connections with the right content partner you increase your chances of reaching the right audience faster. It’s a way to be high on the charts for user engagement at a lower cost.

Your Google My Business listing has new video features – and Google favors them in search! Guidelines:

• Google My Business Video Max Duration: 30 seconds
• Google My Business Video Max File size: 100 MB
• Google My Business Video Min Resolution: 720p

“On YouTube, our audience engages the most with videos right under two minutes. So we try to keep them around 120 seconds. That might not seem like enough time to dig into a substantial topic, but think about how long YouTube videos should be to cover a concept that would take a blog post 1,000 words to explain.” – Hubspot

“It comes down to creating the right video for the right platform for the right audience. We don’t make one thing and expect it to work everywhere.” – Nadine Ajaka, Washington Post’s Senior Producer of Video Platforms

Empowering Video Key Moments Directly in Google SERPs

Google uses AI to identify key video moments and displays links directly to them in Search results.

Google announced on July 19, 2021, a new way to enable key moments for your website’s videos. It does not require the effort of manually labeling each segment: All you have to do is inform Google of the URL pattern for skipping to a specific timestamp within your video.

“If you prefer to manually label key moments in your videos, you can continue to use Clip markup. You can also opt-out of the key moments feature by using the nosnippet meta tag,” Google tells us. The SeekToAction is schema markup that is specific for any site with videos. The following tips when implementing this markup are provided:

• Your URLs must have the ability to deep link into some point other than the start point in the video. For example, http://www.example.com/example?t=15 starts 15 seconds into a video.
• Use SeekToAction markup on every video page where you’d like Google to automatically identify key moments, and follow our additional guidelines..
• To automatically identify key moments in your video, Google must be able to fetch your video content files.

Video Titles and Descriptions

Some new Question Answer SERP types are displaying video content. What a great opportunity!

Now that you have the right video length for each use case, add video titles and descriptions that are engaging and front-load the keywords that people connect with. Use tags having variations with both common and specific words; skip the head term buckets of one-word tags. These not only help to make the video findable, but something that people will want to respond to. Make it clear in a succinct way what each video segment is uniquely about. Ask questions, get video responses. If your video elicits a user action, it (and your brand) will have better recall. At the end of the day, your ultimate goal for video marketing is engaging your customer.

YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps Listings, and your Google Business Listing aren’t just a place to host a few random business videos. It takes time and commitment to build and maintain a video marketing plan. If you’re ready to make that commitment, you have to understand how each channel works before you can gain any traction. And then, you’ll need the knowledge of how to optimize your videos in order to see results.

No one wants to be surprised by irrelevant content. Let them know before they click on the title of why this video is different from others. If every video title starts with your business name, you will frustrate users. Make it about the answers they are seeking and less “brand pushy”. Viewers want a productive experience, so make sure you’re targeting appropriate keywords and choosing relevant titles for your videos.

How do I optimize YouTube video titles?

• Titles perform best when kept at 55-60 characters in length.
• YouTube marketers have about 65-70 characters if you include spaces. Say what’s most important and use your most valuable real estate to capitalize on. YouTube allows 100 characters with spaces, but know that your titles will be truncated depending on where they are showing up.
• Make sure that your video actually uses the keyword you opt to target. If it’s not used in the video, then YouTube, for example, will assume you’re engaging in spammy behavior.
• Think outside the box but avoid catchy phrases that have no search value and could be misinterpreted.
• Show value. Clever wording and proverbial slogans offer less than a solid Value Proclamation.
• Craft titles that offer a constant and continuing claim of distinction.

When you keep YouTube’s goals in mind and optimize accordingly, they’ll reward you by moving your video up in search!

Elements of Great Video Creative:

• A clear goal and message
• Fantastic introductions
• Consistent branding
• A voice that creates a sense of community
• Easily digestible content
• Seamless Format across all major devices
• Multi-Platform plan and execution
• Compelling Call-to-Action (CTAs)
• Meets the requirements of the platform it is hosted on

Yhen you keep YouTube’s goals in mind and optimize accordingly, they’ll reward you by moving your video up in search!

Google Ads Using Video to Reach Every Stage in the Buyer Journey

• Awareness
• Research
• Consideration
• Current customer
• Cross advertising

How to Use Video on Social Media to Get Traffic

Your big chance is during in the first 24 hours of publishing a video online, especially if it was published on YouTube, your website, and in Google Ads.

You can’t rely on YouTube to do all the work and promote your video for you. It’s important to learn how to include video clips in social media to your advantage. This will help you build a following on other platforms around your channel niche and interest. Watch your Google Analytics and glean key insights so that you know what is working and can apply that to future decisions. As Google expands video marketing, stay fluid in your approach to be using better options for thumbnail images in visual search and more.

One of the key reasons this is important is because the YouTube Algorithm favors outside traffic. This is something people familiar with ranking websites in Google have always known, you must gain external traffic. Be present and vocal to win those views and watch time up in the first 24 hours!

You can edit your own videos. Video editing tools are constantly improving their capabilities, becoming more affordable, and are easier to use. Start with your smartphone; it can make pretty decent videos already. Check on your mobile device for which image editing apps are available and most compatible for your setup. Today’s consumers care less about perfection and more about finding a solution, and fast.

Measuring Video Watch Time, Audience Retention, and Audience Interaction

If one glance at these statistics is getting you focused on how to get your client’s latest videos discovered, then you are aligning with what viewers want. Given the huge volume of videos already live on the web and the plethora of fresh video content being added every minute, your business cannot realistically assume that your content will be immediately found and viewed by a throng of people. It requires well-prepared video content, some dollars, audience research, and marketing skills.

Video pieces that go viral have much more behind that success than just “write optimized titles, tags, and descriptions for your video.” To keep viewers watching, commenting on, organizing, and sharing your content, note the data for watch time, audience retention, and audience interaction to determine where your successes are.

Adding video content to your Google Business Listing can increase your web traffic and audience interaction. In YouTube Analytics, sort by Live, On-demand, or Live and on-demand, to see granular audience activity. We can key insights for our clients by comparing data for each video. View one content piece from the other by selecting from the list of your channels, videos, playlists, and groups; then compare data. Taking time for the detailed information lets you know more about which content types and time frames are most effective.

Use watch time in tandem with additional video performance metrics. This allows you to gain a better assessment of what attracts and engages viewers of your video content.

Impressions and click-through rate let you know where viewers are being shown your thumbnails and click through to watch. The viewers reached report provided the details on how many viewers are watching a video from a different device. It is not just about clicks, it is about viewers who take action. Look at video average view duration and average percentage viewed metrics for a real understanding of how long viewers remain after clicking on an impression. Traffic sources take you from surmising to knowing where watch time occurs. It also gives you impression data to know where you can reach more people with better video optimization.

We love the Audience retention report for gaining the overall data-backed measurements of how well your video keeps or loses its audience.

Optimizing for YouTube View Rate

A definition of view rate is that it’s a primary metric for knowing how effective your video creative (video ad) is performing. A higher view rate typically means that your video Ad is retaining the attention of prospective buyers. Making smart tweaks to your video Ad is one way to improve your view rate, but you’ll also want to study the audiences that your ads are reaching.

Build video content that is specific to each location and add both video and Local Business structured data.

Lowed CPC Cost and Increased Subscriptions with Video Ad Campaigns

A remarkable story of leveraging Marin Social, The Economist reports an increase of 66% in new subscriptions by investing in video ad campaigns. Which they say lowered CPC costs by 72%. Maria Breaux reports in a July 11, 2017 The Economist: Facebook Video Ads for More Subscriptions article that the find:

• 66% rise in new subscriptions through video ad campaigns
• 12% lower cost per subscription than through the static image format
• 72% lower CPC for video ad format than static image

If one of your business goals is to improve user engagement rates, video ads performance may prove to be a positive effect and help you gain the desired results. So what should you try out?

Google Video Experiments That Can Build Your Brand

Google announced a new set of tools that aid content creators when testing and measuring the effectiveness of YouTube videos.

The new set of creative YouTube features, which Google is calling YouTube’s “creative suite,” draws on the muscle of AdWords’ reporting capabilities to garner data that helps uncover creative insights.

B2C and B2B content creators can strategize how to conduct video experiments with a head-to-head testing tool in AdWords.

The tool works with brand lift measurement and allows users to measure the impact of creative on key metrics like awareness, consideration, purchase intent, and more. The results from your video experiments can be obtained in three days or less after they start running.

When your business brand makes a statement about its distinction it separates you from your competitors. It should do so in a memorable and positive way that resonates with your target audience. The one thing your video marketing can clearly accomplish making a serious proclamation of your brand’s value to customers.

Searchers using mobile devices can see videos on Google Maps listings. This means that the thumbnail image size and selection for your video matters. Google Local Guides have the ability to upload a video with an Android device. Videos on Google Maps can be viewed by users on iOS, Android, or desktop – so your business can get its video content in front of more consumers who are checking out who you are or seeking a service like yours.

If you have yet to utilize video on your website and for your social media marketing, our team can help. We can help you respond to the user’s on-demand quest for easy-to-consume content. With 78% of people streaming online video content every week, your business can benefit from full HD videography.

Google Expands Video Marketing Ads by Offering Marketers More Choices & Tools

Smartphone video viewers want choices. Digital marketers can gain a deeper personal connection on mobile – but do so by giving consumers a choice.

Google research discovers that in addition to being more likely to stay longer on a page and share ads and content from brands, “smartphone video viewers were nearly 2X as likely as TV viewers to feel a sense of personal connection to brands that show video content or ads on their devices and 1.3X as likely as desktop viewers”.

Taking the perspective of the users watching video on their smartphone; most regard it as a more comfortable and personal experience than watching on desktop or TV. It seems natural that mobile video goes where ever they are, which makes it ideal as being the way for brands to best build personal connections. Read your Google Analytics to know which performance metrics are boosting user engagement.

Businesses are being forced to be sensitive to the personal experience people have on the Internet through the GDPR, which has user sentiments behind it. An immediate way to respect mobile users is to give them choices. Not only in the ads they consume, but in how they are tracked while engaging them. Giving a clear majority, three out of four smartphone viewers surveyed in Google’s research stated that having the choice to skip an ad is important to them.

Use Live Streamed Video for Brand Awareness and Chats

A successful live streaming video can yield fantastic dividends for your business’s conversion rates and brand awareness. It merits a role in your video marketing strategy. Always include your brand. That may be in an understated but easy to recognize way; make your talk about solutions they are seeking less about who you are.

Video live streaming is one way to take viewer questions and engage them at the moment. However, to take the whole recorded event and post it everywhere as a new video doesn’t fit the length time that engages after the event viewers.

Live streaming video is different. On YouTube, it is possible to view Peak concurrents and chat messages. The platform provides a report at the video level. Metrics are currently only available in YouTube Analytics for 48-72 hours once a live stream ends. If you promptly download the data as a CSV file once it ends, you can save your own record. Remember that Data in YouTube Analytics is based on Video ID. The data is processed and despammed and measures different details from those provided in the Live Control Room.

The most difficult part of including things like product placements or brand mentions in your live video is making it sound authentic without being overly “sales-y.” Nothing turns a customer off faster than obvious self-promotion – in fact, an Ad Age survey claims you could lose up to 60% of your audience by doing this.” – Marketing Insider Group***

 

“Video campaign optimization includes everything you can do – analysis, in-account changes, and creative updates and so on – to improve the performance of your video marketing.” – YouTube Channel

 

Turn Your Website into a Niche Library of Knowledge and Answers

Videos go a long way to achieve this end. They’re the easiest way to explain complex details and show off your top-performing products and what you are good at. You may want to add video content under your “resources” or “library” tab.

Ture, this form of content is harder to measure. It’s difficult to put a cost value on things you’re your business reputation, authority, and the customer loyalty you can gain from live-streaming followers or those who repeatedly come back to your video library as their preferred resource. But it is very worth it if implemented correctly; you then add fresh content regularly and schedule ongoing testing for opportunities and ways to improve optimization.

Video marketing can become an additional income source, immediately benefiting your bottom line. Videos can be monetized in multiple ways: The right video use drives money from ads, opens up sponsorship opportunities, and use videos to market paid content upgrades, like video how-to courses and premium on-demand video channels.

Diversify Your Video Marketing

While planning is core and there’s never such a thing as too much video content organization and optimization, diversifying is essential to reach a broader audience. Your cross-channel video marketing success depends on it.

You cannot expect that one single video format will work effectively for every audience on every platform. However, your YouTube marketing and display Ads should be effective across all devices. Some folks respond more favorably to long educational content while others will only consume quick bite-sized videos explaining your point or product.

Similarly, some types of videos or one platform over the other, will work better for explaining and selling your product, while other video formats will do better at generating social media engagement and building your brand presence.

”How-to” Video Content

People are turning to the web every second searching to find how-to content. For example, if you are a small to medium-sized business with services, like waste management, home building services, dental surgeries, etc., you can demonstrate your services best by video content and should include them. You can win new online audiences by offering how-to videos that answer frequently asked questions.

This is logical since we know that content that garners stronger user engagement answers a specific need. Answers or how-to video tutorials can show someone how to do something right in their moment of need. A quality how-to format is easy to accomplish, especially when people already recognize your brand.

3 Tip for creating the best “how-to” video content:

• Determine and explain your differentiating factor
• Set aside perfectionist tendencies
• Plan for audience participation
• Add video content to your mobile landing pages with video structured data markup.

Google Local Guides can Upload videos from Their iPhones

While anyone can upload an image of you or your business, A Google Local Guide specialist can help review your place of business in motion and make your marketing come to actionable life. They will also know how to engage video for local search marketing.

How to upload video from a smartphone:

• Take a video of where you are. Then upload the first 30 seconds of video about a place.
• Search and select that business or location on Google Maps
• Scroll down and select the” Add photos or videos” button
• Tap and add the video clip from your iPhone’s camera roll
• Hit “ POST” and the video is live!
• Going forward, enrich your Google Posts with video formats

Read here to learn what video lengths are best for posting on social media platforms.

“It’s important to invest in the overall quality of your videos for two reasons. First, videos that are designed with as many viewing devices as possible in mind attract more viewers simply because more people have access to them. Second, viewers tend to lose interest faster when watching low-quality videos. – instasize.com*****

 

A modern website cannot afford to be just a visual calling card. At the end of the day, it is about providing a great web experience, which goes beyond a visually engaging experience. An effective website must have a proven strategy; in our experience that only comes from knowing what you are doing. Call-to-action buttons like “Contact Us Now” and “More Insights” invite user action and can be tracked so you can learn from real user engagement metrics. Read and benefit from more common search marketing FAQs.

Here is another tip for YouTube marketers:

“Most ranking on YouTube is based on competitive performance compared to other videos, and personalization based on your own watch history and behavior. I’d make sure the title and thumb are relevant to the search query (promise and deliver a satisfying answer) but wouldn’t spend much time on tags.” – YouTubeLiaison ******

SUMMARY

Download our each to use YouTube Video Marketing Checklist by Hill Web Marketing.

We are proud of our partnering team of search marketing professionals and together can cover all your Google Ads Video marketing, onsite rich media video content, as well as video for social media ads and posts. Your business can enjoy the benefits of effective video marketing!

Call 651-206-2410 and request a Website Audit for Strategic Video Mapping

 

 

* https://artsandculture.google.com/project/360-videos

** https://www.adweek.com/digital/why-brands-and-agencies-are-preparing-for-the-era-of-6-second-ads/

*** https://marketinginsidergroup.com/content-marketing/5-audience-engagement-hacks-for-live-video-marketing/

**** https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/index.html

***** https://instasize.com/blog/6-attention-grabbing-tricks-for-video-marketing

****** https://twitter.com/youtubeliaison/status/1684941158902878208