Take it to the next level: stop selling and become a brand builder

We all know how powerful video marketing can be when it comes to building a brand. Video traffic is expected to account for 82% of all internet traffic by 2022. This increase coincides with the rise of video production and distribution across all industries.

With that in mind, it's important to remember that the value of video marketing to brands is as old as video itself. The difference is that there are more and more opportunities to publish them and reach consumers via social media.

Here's the challenge: in today's over-saturated world, with more social media users than ever before, salespeople only have two seconds to grab the attention of potential customers. This should make your life easier, but it's the opposite!

That's why it's so important to create compelling content in video marketing. That's the ultimate goal: to move from a product or service seller to a brand builder. All companies that want long-term success should determine how to make this transition.

If you can't engage a consumer, you can't sell them anything. That's why it's essential to inform, educate and entertain the consumer through video. The goal of a great video is to create an emotional connection between the consumer and the brand. Then leverage that video to create emotional connections with the brand through multiple channels to facilitate hyper growth.

Video marketing starts by making that emotional connection, but success doesn't come easily. It's essential to test your creative to determine what will work best and what will hold visitors' attention.

Don't take the creation of your video lightly. The success of your video marketing will rely on your ad's ability to make the user stop scrolling and keep watching. How will you achieve this result?

Here's a proven 10-step formula for creating video ads that engage, entertain and convert users into consumers.

Your logo should always be part of the videos you publish. Inserting it in your background or as a watermark, for example, will make it visible without distracting the viewer from the video itself. The user will associate your logo with the feelings evoked by the video.

Make sure the viewer is aware of the focus of your video. To do this, you should have a close-up every 10 seconds. Product placement is an important factor in driving sales for your e-commerce business. The user's attention span is short, keep your video dynamic and engaging.

Calls to action are critical to your success. When users see your video, you want them to feel an urgency to learn more once it's over. That's the key.

Creating five alternative introductions for each of your videos adds variety and allows you to test which one will work best with your audience. Once a video goes viral, it will start to gain traction and it will reach more of your target marketing personas.

While music can complement your video content, it should not be the main element, as it is distracting to the viewer. Also, make sure you own the licensing rights to the music before including it in your video content. Lawsuits are rarely fun!

Ideally, your video should not be one long message, but rather several clips edited together. This is ideal on several fronts. First, it allows you to place different aspects of your marketing campaign into one piece of content. Second, it allows you to use snippets of your videos as standalone 15-, 30-, and 60-second assets.

This will help you energize your content, but these cuts will also be useful when segmenting your different clips, as mentioned in point 6. Both are important to keep your audience's attention.

If you've ever watched a video and noticed that it was stylized in a subtle way, it was probably sped up. Many recommend speeding up your video by 1 to 12%. This is subtle enough to get your audience interested in watching the entire video without feeling that something is wrong. This is an industry trick that many have used in the past.

Throughout your video, you want to compare and demonstrate. Users are more likely to become emotionally attached to something they can compare to something else. Plus, a demonstration allows your audience to picture the same scenario, which inspires recall and brand building.

Trust is a major factor for consumers and video marketing should be no exception. To build trust through video, you must include "social proof." Whether it's through news articles or testimonials, it must be credible and inspire trust in your audience. Be careful, obscure testimonials could have the opposite effect!

Following the 10 best practices of video marketing will definitely help you create videos that are superior to your competitors. The awesome part about modern video marketing is that it doesn't have to be expensive. In fact, by using your own team and resources, you can do it for little to no budget.

So once you've created an optimized video, where do you publish it and how do you know if it's working?

One of the main pillars of video marketing is to focus on multi-channel marketing. In fact, if you only focus on one platform, you're not doing it right. Make sure you're publishing videos on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Display, etc.

In fact, 80% of 18-29 year olds use YouTube and 70% of them use YouTube to make purchasing decisions, but only about 9% of businesses use YouTube advertising. This is a huge opportunity for marketers to enter a space that is not yet overly saturated.

It's critical to be aware of the multitude of targeting options available on various platforms. For example, when it comes to YouTube and graphical ads, custom intent targeting offers powerful benefits. The beauty here is that you can create a custom audience based on something someone has searched for in the past 30 days. This type of commercial targeting is available in some form on most advertising platforms.

Video advertising should build your brand through website sales and in-store sales. Focus on your brand, not just your online store. Tracking engagement metrics such as comments, likes and shares will indicate if people really like the video. Remember, think emotional connection. From there, translating the success of that video into actual product sales makes it easier to grow your brand.

Growing brands view their return on ad spend differently. They measure total revenue and lift against total ad spend. They're not overly focused on what they can track and calculate, because they know that getting the video right will leave a mark on people's minds and that brand awareness, while not calculable, is critical.

Consumers prefer brands to products. Think about it: no one goes looking for a low-end brand when shopping online. Instead, they look for brands that mean something to them as a consumer.

If you can establish yourself as one of these brands, you've laid the foundation for future e-commerce success. Once you begin to see the various platforms as partners rather than enablers, you'll begin to demand the kind of respect for your brand that triggers long-term growth and ROI.

One thing to keep in mind as a brand builder is that branding is not a substitute for product quality. Consider a consumer who purchases an emerging brand. Upon delivery, the customer is very disappointed in the quality and leaves a poor review. Others do the same. You have damaged your brand and stunted your online growth.

Now think of this scenario with a greater emphasis on quality. Your product is great, and the reviews reflect it. You've now taken your brand to new heights.

The point of all this is not to create a single video that generates sales. Effective video marketing is about building your brand beyond a one-time sale. Be consistent in your video content creation.

While you may have a preferred platform, such as YouTube, and it may be an effective and powerful e-commerce tool, the only way to achieve long-term success is to establish your brand as a valuable, trusted and high-quality brand through multiple channels.

It is crucial to leverage multiple social media platforms to achieve the goals you have set for your brand. Video marketing is arguably the most effective marketing method to build your brand, if done correctly. All it takes is a little creativity, proper targeting and multi-channel marketing to go from a product seller to a brand builder.