It is a simple fact that videos are the most powerful form of communication today. A properly produced video can accomplish basically any marketing goal you have—from educating your customers, to generating leads, or even promoting the perfect sales pitch.

With this in mind, videos should unquestionably be used in many different parts of an effective marketing campaign. Today, these videos can take the form of TV commercials, online videos, and DVD/Blu-Ray productions. To ensure that you are getting the most value and effectiveness from your marketing videos, be sure to follow these 5 rules:

Rule #1 – Anticipate How Your Video Will Be Used

This rule seems somewhat obvious, but with the proliferation of inexpensive video equipment and video production companies, this rule is violated more often than it is not. In short, before you create your video, you must consider how, where, and why the video will be used.

Before you produce your video, you must think about your overall sales cycle. In other words, what is the process that your typical customer or prospect goes through before they actually make a purchase from you (or a competitor)? Think about this sales process as a line from 1 to 100 where the number 1 represents the moment they begin to think about buying what you sell. The number 100 represents the point at which a purchase is made. We call this the “Sales Cycle.” Usually there is a lot that goes on during the sales cycle in terms of consideration, timing, research, referrals, etc. before a decision is made to actually make a purchase.

So here’s the point. Take a look at that line from 1 to 100 and ask yourself (while considering your product/service and industry), at what point along that line from 1 to 100 would it be best to insert a video in the marketing/sales process? Once you’ve thought about it, consider how the content of the video might best be used in the overall sales process. Here are some examples:

1. Video can be used to generate interest in a product.
2. Video can be used to educate clients about a product or service.
3. Video can be used as a marketing tool to support the efforts of your sales team.
4. Video can be used to “close the deal” or shorten the duration of the sales cycle.

The manner and timing in which the video will be used in the overall sales cycle will drive the development of the content.

Rule #2 – Consider Which Hot Button to Use

While developing the script for your video, you must choose which hot buttons to use to powerfully affect your target market. These 3 Hot Button categories are:

1. Benefits – this explains what benefits a prospect or customer will get when buying what you sell. For example, a Lasik Eye Surgeon would say things like, “You can see without glasses,” or “Never deal with the hassle of contacts again!” etc.
2. Objections – these hot buttons deal with reasons that prospects have to not buy what you sell. Sticking with the Lasik Eye Surgeon example, this would be things like fear and cost. In this case, the video should anticipate these objections and the script should overcome those objections directly.
3. Competition – this is where a business gives specific and quantifiable reasons why someone should do business with them instead of someone else.

Once you’ve determined how your video will be used and which hot buttons to script your videos with, you will be able to determine what you’ll need to have in your video in terms of people (or actors), scenes, evidence, etc.

Rule #3 – More is More with Online Videos

If your intended output for your videos is the internet, then note that it’s best to make multiple short videos instead of one long video. One thing that YouTube has taught us is that people will easily watch 10 sixty- second videos, but they usually won’t watch 1 ten- minute video.
So, the point here is to take what you know that you need to say in your script and then create multiple short video scripts that can be placed on your website instead of one long video.

Rule #4 – You Shouldn’t Always Use HD

If your videos will be output specifically for web use, then you really should not use HD. Your best bet is to output the video in 640×360 format so that it matches the HD aspect ratio, but is not actually HD video.

The reason for this is simple—there are still a lot of people out there with slow computers and slow internet connections. And, HD video doesn’t always play back well on older computers or computers with slow internet connections. Even if you have a perfect script and a perfectly produced video, it won’t make much of a difference for somebody on an old computer with a slow internet.

Here are a few simple rules on how to output your video for various formats:

• Videos on your website: 640×360
• Videos on YouTube: 1280×720 HD (YouTube will create multiple versions for you)
• Videos on TV: 1920×1080 HD (so you can have maximum resolution for viewers with 1080p TV sets)

Rule #5 – Dominate Google Search Results Using Online Video

Dominating video searches on Google is actually pretty simple, but admittedly, it’s a lot of work. Here’s how you do it in a nutshell:

1. Create a lot of videos (5 to 10).
2. Create titles, tags, and descriptions for your videos using your most profitable keyword phrases.
3. Create accounts with at least 10 of the free video hosting providers online (there’s more than that available).
4. Submit all of your videos to all of the video hosting providers and stagger their submissions throughout a month (or longer if you have more than 10 videos). If you have 10 videos and 10 hosting providers, then you’ll have 100 videos on the internet with your keywords attached to them. That alone is usually enough to help you dominate.
5. Take your most valuable video on YouTube and create backlinks to it scattered all throughout the internet.
6. Many of our customers are not only dominating Google for video searches, but actually have both their videos and their website showing up on page one of a regular Google Search (meaning that they show up twice or more on page one). We do this for ourselves, and we do it for all of our customers.

If you keep these 5 essential rules in mind when creating and sharing your marketing videos, you’ll be well on your way to producing videos that will show your customers that your business is the best and help your company dominate your industry.

If you want more tips on how to maximize the effectiveness of your videos, discover the 3 Things You Should NEVER Say in Your Advertising (That I Can Guarantee You’ve Already Said).

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Written by Erik Wilhelmsson
Marketing, Advertising & Lead Generation to Grow Your Business
http://digitalmarketdesigns.com/