How to Build a Video Marketing Strategy | Criteo

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How to Build a Video Marketing Strategy

People today spend a third of their time watching online video content. 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, up from 63% in 2017, and 81% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.

Updated on June 20, 2024

If you ask the average marketer about her video marketing strategy right now, you’re probably going to get a shrug. While most marketers know on a fundamental level that video is important, there’s not always a deeper objective behind it.

But there’s no doubt that video is important. After all, it’s how people today are spending a third of their time: watching online video content. And where the views go, ad dollars follow: according to Wyzowl’s Video Marketing Statistics 2023 Survey, 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, up from 85% in 2022, and 82% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.

So how do you launch an online video advertising strategy that helps get more engagement and more results?

1. Understand your audience and set campaign goals

All successful marketing campaigns must start with research – who are you targeting? What type of content tends to resonate with them, and what channels are they most likely to be on? There’s little point in making great video content and paying to have it play on websites your audience doesn’t visit.
And most importantly, what goals are you trying to reach with a particular video marketing campaign? Are you trying to drive awareness, sales, traffic, or all of the above?
(Read more: 3 Awesome Video Marketing Campaigns from Nike, REI, and Glossier)

2. Stay on brand, and nail down your message across videos

Video can seem like a departure from other types of marketing, or a way to test out a branding refresh, but it’s important that viewers watching your videos know who and what is speaking to them.
According to a study by McKinsey and Company, companies with consistent branding are 20% more successful than those without.
If the video users see in your email communications is different from one they see on Facebook, it’s not a consistent reflection of your brand and could hurt rather than help.

3. Make sure your video budget makes sense

Many marketers make the mistake of thinking that putting a ton of money into a video project will automatically make it a huge success.
Instead, consider producing short videos for social channels like Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram, or repurpose user-generated content.

4. Optimize your videos and target for each channel

Depending on the channels you choose to launch your campaigns, you’ll need to make sure your videos are optimized to get as much engagement as possible.
For Facebook, this means keeping it short, uploading videos directly to the channel, and adding captions.

5. Test and Test again

Just like for display ad campaigns, A/B testing should help you figure out what elements of a campaign are working out, and what isn’t.
Here are five ways to measure campaign success: