I suppose you wouldn’t talk to your boss in the same way you speak with your best friend, right? You probably wouldn’t touch on the same topics nor use the same words, and why would you?! They are distinct audiences, and therefore require different treatments.
The same applies to your video marketing strategy: if you truly wish your educational, commercial, or explainer videos to appeal to your costumers, then you’ll need to tailor them according to their needs and interests.
But, how to know what those needs and interests are?
Well, you can take the easy way out and make sweeping generalizations about your viewers based on their demographic aspects, but that wouldn’t be a thought-out strategy and may lead you down the wrong path.
Luckily, it doesn’t have to be that way! There are effective methods that can help you find out precisely what your audience would like from your video content. Today, we are going to explore some of them!
Let’s get to it, shall we?
Checking Google Analytics & YouTube Analytics
Hard data: Not precisely the funniest topic in the world, but definitely useful.
Graphs and stats can help you realize what type of video content your audience is responding to positively, and what isn’t working at all. They can also enrich the image you have of your audience by giving you a fuller picture of who they are and where they come from. In that regard, few tools can come handier than Google Analytics.
This platform provides details about who is visiting your webpage and how they are reacting to it. Which country are they from? Which devices are they using? Are they abandoning your site in a matter of minutes? In some cases, Google Analytics can even track what your visitors’ interests are.
Now, since we are talking about video marketing and metrics, it’s only natural that we also mention YouTube Analytics.
In a similar fashion to its Google counterpart, YouTube Analytics provides information about who’s visiting your channel and videos and displays how they interact and engage with your content. It shows your pieces’ amount of views, likes, dislikes, comments, and shares so that you have a clear idea of your video content’s strengths and weaknesses.
It goes without saying that these tools, Google and YouTube Analytics, aren’t opposed to each other. In fact, you can handle both of them as complements and see how your website’s audience and performance differ from your YouTube channel’s.
Once you have analyzed the metrics, you can use the information to transform – or maintain – your video marketing strategy and make more informed decisions in the future.
Leveraging Social Media Listening Tools
As you may already know, it’s always helpful to listen to your clients’ opinions on your brand: it allows you to become aware of shortcomings and strengths you may not realize on your own. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not criticizing your mental ability; I’m just stating that certain things are hard to see from where you are standing, and another point of view can prove useful.
The problem is, not every client will come and give their opinion to your face. As a matter of fact, most of them won’t. So, how to know their perception of your brand?
Nobody has yet invented a tool for mind-reading – at least not one that we know of. You can, however, go with the next best thing: social media listening tools.
These handy instruments keep track of every occasion somebody mentions certain keywords on social media. That way, you can monitor what people are tweeting, commenting, and posting about your brand or your products or services and respond accordingly.
What do I mean by “respond“? Well, for starters, replying to your audience’s concerns or observations if appropriate; and secondly, rethinking your video content (or even your products or services) with their opinion in mind.
But before you can “listen” to what your customers are saying about your brand, you have to set the specific keywords and topics you want to track. Obviously, every business has distinct needs and goals, so the keywords that a vegan restaurant monitors will differ from an animated video company. However, we can affirm there are certain subjects every business, including yours, may benefit from. Let’s have a look:
- Your brand’s name and username.
- Your products or services.
- Topics and hashtags related to your field.
- Your company’s CEO or other important people connected with your brand.
- Your competitors’ brand, products or services, and CEO.
One final caveat before we move on: remember to also track these keywords with common spelling mistakes or abbreviations. Don’t let anything slip through your fingers!
Carrying Out Surveys
This strategy needs no introduction: businesses have made use of this technique for ages, and there are good reasons for that! Some companies have even made drastic changes thanks to a survey’s results. That’s how valuable this tool is.
I know it may sound as a strategy limited to big businesses, but it’s not! All you need is a good contacts database – including anyone who has ever subscribed to your newsletter or follows your brand on social media – and an attractive incentive, such as a discount code.
Oh! There’s one more thing you need: great questions. Don’t waste your or the participants’ time with trivial topics or information you can get through any other tool and ask straight away about the matters that play a part in your video marketing strategy. These questions will depend on many factors, such as your target audience, your brand’s style, and, among others, the kind of survey that we are talking about.
Yes, there are different sorts of questionnaires, and many do’s and don’ts that come with them. Let’s go through the two main types thoroughly:
General Questionnaires
This kind of survey is not meant for a specific audience, but for people in general – even for those who have not heard about your brand before!
The participants may not be affected by the survey’s results unless they become your clients, so you can’t expect them to be very involved in the task. With this in mind, it’s strongly recommended to make this type of questionnaire concise and straight to the point. In order to do so, go with short and clear close-ended questions – you know, those that have pre-made, specific, or yes-or-no answers.
The biggest plus of this kind of questionnaire is, by far, their answer’s ability to be translated into statistics and hard data. It allows you to have a clear idea of what the general public expects from your brand’s video content.
Close-ended questionnaires have, however, a downside: they can prompt some participants into giving pseudo-opinions instead of an honest point of view. Put simply, if people don’t know what to answer or are ashamed of the real response, they’ll mark anything at all. This doesn’t make these surveys ineffective since the vast majority of answers are probably sincere, but it’s still important to keep this in mind when analyzing the results.
Client’s questionnaires
This is a highly targeted kind of survey, as it’s directed exclusively to your former and current customers – that’s to say, people who are already familiar with your brand.
Unlike the general public, these participants are more likely to answer honestly and even in detail since, as clients, they will be affected by the survey’s results. In that sense, this type of questionnaire is excellent for presenting open-ended questions, which encourage thought-out and in-depth answers.
Don’t get carried away with these kinds of questions, though! Even if they are your customers, people tend to resent time-consuming tasks. So, keep your questionnaire short by bringing some close-ended questions into the mix, even better if you put those first, acting as a “warm-up” to participants before they get to the toughest part – a.k.a.: the open-ended questions.
Another way to make your questionnaire brief and dynamic is by asking concise questions without beating around the bush. No matter how interested customers may be, they are likely to roll their eyes or even abandon the survey if they suddenly stumble across a five-line question.
Organizing Sweepstakes
This strategy not only provides you the benefit of gathering your audience’s contact information, but it also helps you increase your brand’s visibility, number of followers on social media, and your website traffic. And the best part? Sweepstakes are low-cost and easy-to-run.
This doesn’t mean, however, that they don’t require much thought or planning. In fact, it’s advised to schedule your future sweepstakes beforehand and give your followers or newsletter subscribers something to look forward to.
It’s also worth noting the importance of the prize in this sort of strategy. It can be a product or a service, but in any case, it has to be closely related to your business’ industry.
At the same time, it should be something that your target audience is genuinely interested in. Not necessarily an expensive prize, but definitely something worthy of their attention. Nobody would go through the burden of tagging friends, sharing your post, and the like, if all that’s at stake is something they can get for a few pennies at a nearby store. Besides, offering a cheap-looking prize wouldn’t make your brand look good.
So yes, having an impressive incentive is vital in a sweepstake’s success, but it’s just the start! There are some other tips that can help you make the most out of this strategy.
One of them is getting the best of two worlds by pairing this technique with a survey, making it compulsory to answer a short questionnaire before entering the sweepstake.
Another tried-and-true strategy is to associate with an influencer. Of course, this person should be someone whose content is related to your field. After all, the idea is that their followers match with your target audience.
A Few Last Words
Once that you are aware of what exactly your target audience expects and enjoys, it’s time for you to set out to create video content built precisely for them.
I can’t stress enough how important that is! No matter which video style your customers like the most or if they prefer animation to live-action, there’s one thing for sure: you need to go with a video company that works with customized pieces. That way, you’ll have a video that can match with everything you’ve learned about your target audience.
In that sense, animation allows more customization than live-action, as it’s more flexible and versatile. But don’t listen to me! Listen to your audience! Put into practice all the strategies you’ve learned today and find out for sure what they‘d love to watch!
