The value in aligning video content with your marketing plan

The value in aligning video content with your marketing plan

Let me just start by saying – video marketing is not a magic bullet. You might be surprised by this statement, but let me explain. Video will work, and work extremely well, just not in isolation. It does need to be part of an overall marketing strategy.

Successful marketing is like fire. For something to burn it needs three different elements to work together – it needs fuel, oxygen and a spark. As successful as video is, it cannot be attributed as the sole medium in a successful fund raising or awareness campaign. Whilst video can be a main component, it needs to be integrated within a marketing campaign and strategy.

Having said that, video is the oxygen that can really make a small fire, which might just be smouldering away, into a huge roaring bonfire. Because video is such a powerful medium it provides the opportunity to leverage all other aspects of your marketing strategy.

For a video to be successful, it is critical that your video and marketing strategies are perfectly aligned so that you can effectively communicate a consistent message. If you do this, you can generate greater funding and campaign awareness for your organisation.

How can you integrate video into a marketing strategy?

Strategy 1: Storytelling

Storytelling is so incredibly powerful because it’s built into our DNA. If you go back hundreds of thousands of years to early mankind, we used to communicate knowledge through storytelling.

This is how knowledge was passed from one generation to another. As our storytelling techniques developed, we added images. Over time we progressed to the written word and more recently to film and television. Of course, in today’s world we share our stories mainly through social media, YouTube, podcasts and websites.

Because storytelling is built into our very nature, we are naturally drawn towards people and organisations that share their stories. Not for Profit organisations often have many powerful stories to tell, both big and small.

These original stories are an incredible opportunity because they can resonate with a far larger audience than you would normally have exposure to. One person will share a story with another person simply by clicking a button, then that person will share and so on. In extreme cases, stories go viral. Kony 2012 and ALS Ice Bucket Challenge are excellent examples where a story has been shared and grown globally.

So whilst story telling with video on its own is very powerful, you can amplify your message by building an ecosystem of supporting marketing channels such as social media, print media, PR, email marketing, events and advertising.

Strategy 2: Creating popular sharable Social Media videos

It is clear that social media has grown rapidly over the last decade. During this time we have also seen a huge growth in social media video. Of course YouTube is the leading social media video platform but there has been a growth in others such as Vimeo, Vine, Instagram and Facebook.

“700 YouTube video links are shared on Twitter every minute” [source – YouTube.com] This statistic points to one of the most exciting aspects of video in the world of social media and that is that video is highly sharable.

500 years of YouTube videos are watched on Facebook every day”. [Source – YouTube.com] This statistic clearly demonstrates that video is extremely sharable content. Facebook took notice of this as well and in early 2014 added instant preview plays for Facebook video within newsfeeds. How often have you been browsing your newsfeed and watched a video that started to play? Facebook video advertising is now seen as a new opportunity to leverage video and many organisations are yet to take advantage of this.

Keep in mind that supporter generated video content can be equally valuable. For example, “between June 1 – September 1 2015, more than 17 million videos related to the ice bucket challenge were shared to Facebook. These videos were viewed more than 10 billion times by more than 440 million people.” [source – facebook.com]

Action Steps

Can you think of ways that you can engage supporters in a cause by creating a campaign that encourages them to create sharable video content on social media? For extra impact, can you weave a story into the campaign? These are huge, largely untapped, opportunities to significantly raise campaign awareness and funding opportunities.

And remember, for the greatest impact, ensure that you integrate these strategies within your overall marketing plan: turn that small smouldering fire into a huge roaring bonfire!

Article original published in the Third Sector magazine in 2015