Online Video Marketing course

** FRESHLY UPDATED FOR 2023 **

Online Video is now New Zealand’s most popular broadcast medium, with YouTube alone reaching more than half the country on a daily basis (according to research by NZ On Air).

Facebook (video) and Netflix tie for third place, each reaching 36% of Kiwis over 15 on a daily basis.

So are you using online video marketing to promote your products? It’s a powerful way to communicate your brand story, explain your value proposition, and build relationships with your customers and prospects.

And the statistics show that online video really delivers:

• 97% of marketers claim that videos help customers understand products. (Hubspot)
• 93% of companies claim they got a new customer because of their video content on social media (smallbiztrends)
• 90% of consumers claim a video will help them make a purchasing decision. (Social Media Today)
• 81% of businesses are now using video for marketing. (Hubspot)
• Landing pages are great places to place videos, too, reportedly boosting conversion rates by up to 80% (Insivia)
• 74% of people who get an opportunity to see a product in action via an explainer video will buy it. (Wyzowl)
• 72% of customers prefer learning about a product or service by watching videos (startupnation)
• 63% of businesses say that video gets the best return on investment (ROI) on social media.(smallbiztrends)
• Video in an email leads to a 200-300% increase in click-through rate
• Real estate listings that include a video receive 403% more enquiries than those without
• Enjoyable video ads increase purchase intent by 97% and brand association by 139%

B2B marketers aren’t immune to the online video trend

• 50% of executives look for more information after seeing a product/service in a video
• 65% of executives visit the marketer’s webside and 39% call a vendor after viewing a video
• And 96% of US B2B organisations use video in some capacity in their marketing campaigns (ReelSEO survey)

Remember the old cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words? According to an estimate by Dr James McQuivey of Forrester Research, one minute of video is equal to 1.8 million words.

So let’s cut to the chase.

It’s well past time for you to upskill yourself in online video marketing.

That’s why we’ve just refreshed and relaunched our course on the topic.

Here’s what the course covers:

Lesson One: Video Marketing Strategies

In this first lesson, we give you a sneak peek at some of the tools and techniques you can use to create memorable, highly-shareable videos for a fraction of the cost of traditional production methods (and we give you full details of these next-generation tools later in the course).

We also talk in detail about WHY you should use online video to market your products and services.

Yes, as we’ve already seen, New Zealand audiences have flocked to watch videos online — and that’s your first solid reason for choosing online video: that’s where you’ll find your audience.

But there’s way more to the advantages of online video than that. Here are a few benefits, suggested by bmighty2 and Sitepoint:

• Video adds the “wow” factor to your online marketing
• Video sets you apart from the crowd
• Video puts a face to your brand
• Video helps convey complex information more clearly
• Video is more likely to go viral
• You can demonstrate your expertise.
• You can show your creativity.
• You can have fun.
• You can experience increased visibility in search engines.
• You can give your audience a way to benefit from your knowledge passively (it’s a lot easier to watch a video than read a screen of text!).

In this lesson, we will explore those and a lot more advantages. We will also discuss the fact that human attention spans are now shorter than those of goldfish.

Thankfully, as ImpactBND tells us, “video marketing helps deliver messages more effectively, in a shorter amount of time, while also striking an emotional chord through visual and auditory storytelling elements not present in text”.

Then, after we’ve deluged you with a ton of supporting statistics similar to those quoted above, we will introduce you to a range of effective online video marketing strategies that will help you to:

• understand your audience and set campaign goals
• choose the most appropriate channels for each video
• have a simple video SEO strategy to ensure that your videos get seen
• stay on brand, and nail down your message across videos
• use social proof to reinforce your brand credibility
• choose and feature relevant Calls to Action in each video
• develop an ongoing programming strategy
• set, and then stay within, your video budget
• optimize your videos and target for each channel
• test and test again
• track and analyze your video performance

All of that and, of course, you need to make brilliant brand videos — which leads us on to our next lesson.

Lesson Two: Compelling Video Content

According to Facebook, 47% of the value in a video is delivered in the first three seconds.

Or, to put it another way, if you don’t grab your viewer’s attention in the first three seconds, she’s moved on.

So that’s what we will be talking about in this second lesson: grabbing attention in the first three seconds — and then holding that attention for the full length of your video.

We’ll talk about the creative and strategic importance of customising your videos for each platform.

We will discuss the reality that most of your videos will first be viewed with the sound off (and how you can turn that from a problem into an opportunity).

We’ll steal an idea from Michael Jackson — who used to listen to his newly recorded songs on a portable music player (because that’s how most of his followers would hear his songs), to determine if the audio quality was good enough. We’ll show you why you should view your videos on a mobile phone with the brightness turned down (again, because that’s how many consumers set up their phones, to preserve battery life).

We will show you the different types of videos that are most popular online, including:

• Video Blogs (vlogs)
• Interview/Q&A
• Meetings (thanks, coronavirus)
• Virtual Events
• Presentations
• Product Reviews
• Animation
• Live Streaming
• Video Emails
• 360 degree videos
• User-Generated Content
• Contests/Giveaways
• Personalized Video
• Behind the Scenes videos
• Exclusive Access videos
• Lead Generation videos
• Webinars and longform sales pitches
• How-tos or step-by-step tutorials
• Brand videos
• Testimonials
• Product videos or FAQ videos
• Demo videos
• Explainer videos (which educate customers about your product and illustrate different use cases)

We’ll discuss the importance of videos that tell interesting, relevant and awesome stories (and share examples of videos that do precisely that).

And we’ll share with you some of the secrets of viral videos — they’re simpler than you might expect, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy.

Lesson Three: New Video Creation Tools in 2022

How can you create video content in 2022?

Yes, there’s the traditional method: point a camera at what you want to capture, whether it’s a presenter, a product or an event.

But that’s no longer your only option. These days, you can create videos using a wide variety of tools, including:

• Custom or pre-formatted PowerPoint slides and transitions
• Low-cost AI software that does most of the heavy lifting for you (including sourcing stock images and footage)
• Highly realistic humanoid avatars that can present on your behalf (you can even create avatars of yourself!)
• Text-to-speech software that turns your words into lifelike voices that you’d be hard pressed to distinguish from real people speaking (and, again, you can upload your own voice samples with some software)
• 2D and 3D animation tools that let you create content from your desktop

We take you through the options and show you where and how you can create your own videos using highly-accessible tools.

Lesson Four: YouTube

There’s a bit more to YouTube than cat videos. It’s still the patriarch of online video (even though Facebook is pushing hard for prominence in that space).

In Lesson Four, we review:

• YouTube by the numbers (which are staggering. For example, more than 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute).
• Viral Videos: the good, the bad and the very very ugly
• The new rules of video marketing
• NZ YouTube Channels – which brands are using YouTube, and how are they doing?

Lesson Five: Facebook

In its first year of hosting videos, Facebook hosted approximately one billion video views per day. These days, that figure has grown to over eight billion. While there’s still some debate about what qualifies as a video view (3 sec vs. 10 sec. vs. 30 secs?), the overall trajectory of Facebook video consumption is undeniable.

Video is central to Facebook’s vision for the future of the platform.

In this lesson, we feature:

• five key statistics which show the vital importance of video on Facebook
• why ‘native’ Facebook video ads are so more effective than embedded ads (and how to go native successfully)
• how to get more engagement and drive more traffic with your Facebook videos
• why silent autoplay can see your videos either soar or flop
• what you absolutely must do if you want your Facebook video ads to be watched
• Best practices for Facebook video creative
• Inspiring online video ad creative
• 20 ways that brands can make the most out of Facebook video
• 10 quick wins for getting started fast with Facebook Video
• the opportunities inherent in Facebook Watch

Lesson Six: Live Video

Live video has come from nowhere to represent a major development in online marketing. In Lesson Six we examine the key providers of live video services and show you how you can determine whether live video will meet your promotional needs.

We also cover:

• Facebook’s new Live Video API (so that more and more devices can send live feeds to Facebook)
• The surprising benefits of using live video within Facebook groups
• what you should and shouldn’t do with live video
• how marketers have already been using live video (examples and inspirations)
• Should you choose landscape or portrait mode for your videos?
• What you need to know about video in Facebook Stories
• How you can stream live (or apparently live) across multiple video platforms

Lesson Seven: Video on Instagram

Instagram is seeing more and more videos appear on the platform. In this lesson, we talk about what you need to know about video on Instagram, including:

• featuring video in regular posts
• using vertical video in Instagram Stories
• everything you need to know about Instagram’s long-form offering, IGTV
• what Instagram Reels are and what you can use them for

Lesson Eight: TikTok

Younger audiences, aware that their parents (and potential employers) can see what they’ve been up to on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, have been turning more and more to the relatively new phenomenon TikTok, a haven for short form videos that first found favour with Generation Z (but quickly spread beyond younger audiences thanks to the coronavirus lockdown). Learn exactly how marketers have been using this new platform and how you might do likewise.

Lesson Nine: Video Advertising

So far, we’ve been talking about online video marketing (i.e. unpaid content). But now we want to talk about paid advertising. That’s where you take those lovingly-crafted video messages and pay to have them placed in key strategic positions.

In this lesson, we discuss what you need to know so that you can place your advertising effectively.

To do that, you will need to take account of the same key elements as you would with any advertising placement, namely:

Which medium should you use? Is this a job for YouTube, for Facebook, for Instagram, for TikTok, for LinkedIn, for Pinterest, for the New Zealand Herald online, for Stuff, for ThreeNow or for TVNZ OnDemand? (The answer depends on, amongst other things, which audience you wish to target).

Should you be aiming for reach (i.e. the maximum number of people will see your ads) or frequency (i.e. exposing your advertising to a lesser number of people a predetermined number of times)?

What are the options for each of the various platforms? For example, YouTube offers both skippable and non-skippable video units, along with a host of other possibilities. We will explore those in detail.

Meanwhile, Facebook enables you to target customers using its extensive database of information about those customers, including their demographics, their interests and their behaviours. Facebook also enables you to create content tailored to specific customer needs (e.g. those who have already watched at least 50% of your introductory video could be served a more conversion-driven video).

We will also look at many of the other options available online to inventive advertisers — and suggest where a word or two in the right ear might create opportunities that are not publicly available.

Oh, and as DMAK Productions remind us, don’t forget about the data:

• How many people viewed your video rather than bouncing away from it? If they only view a few seconds of the video, they didn’t get the information that they expected.
• How many people followed the links from your video? Make sure all of your links are tracked separately, so you can identify engagement that comes from different platforms.
• How many people committed after following the links? Your website needs to be able to track the actual number of people who have made a purchase after connecting.
• How many people shared the video? Shares are incredibly important, because someone sharing a video to their friends has more social clout than a business sharing a video to everyone.
• How many people commented on the video? Engagement and one-on-one communications with your audience are extremely important for building conversions.

Lesson Ten: Video Tips, Techniques & Tools

We close out the course by considering some of the tools and techniques you should use for your online video marketing (beyond those we already covered in Lesson Three).

Along the way, we explore:

• 11 steps to creating an effective video content strategy
• Essential tips and techniques from the YouTube Creator Playbook
• Video marketing tips from the experts
• 30 practical tips to help you create the best live-streamed videos
• The surprising legal ramifications of live content streaming (what you don’t know could cost you bigtime)

TIMING

This course begins on Monday 30 December, 2024.

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If you would prefer to pay by bank deposit, or require an invoice, please send an email to bookings [at[ socialmedia.org.nz with your requirements.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

You’ll receive our emailed confirmation of your booking. Then on the first day of the course we’ll follow up with details of your Login and Password, along with an Enrolment Key for your online training course.

If you have any questions, or would like more information, please email us at the address above.