7 Video Types That Will Boost Any Content Marketing Strategy (Guest Post)

So, you heard about the fantastic advantages of content marketing, and you are planning to give video content a shot at it. Who wouldn’t?

Customers have a massive appetite for video, which directly reflects in both engagement and conversion rates! That translates into higher ROIs for any video content marketing strategy, and can directly impact a company’s bottom line.

Sounds like a marketer’s dream, right?

However, before you run up to your nearest video production team and start working on your next piece, know that not just any video will necessarily do the trick! Although videos work for any point in the marketing funnel, video marketing success hinges on your campaign’s specific objectives. A dissonant piece will often fall short of your expectations.

Best way to go about it, then? Review the video content types content; then go for the type of video that best fits your campaign goals, which is precisely what we’ll be talking about today!

1. Educational video

This video content format is ideal if you wish to gain your customers’ respect and increase brand awareness.

Educational video aims to teach your audience about a relevant topic, address their doubts, and provide value through reliable information. The “relevant topic” in question has to be related to your business or products and directly tied to your potential customers’ pain-points.

If you don’t know how these videos work in a marketing setup, you might think they sound a bit uninteresting. The truth is, though, that a well-crafted educational piece has to be genuinely entertaining and fun!

Their explanations and descriptions have to unfold clearly and compellingly, making the video understandable and appealing for its intended audience. An audience will be thankful to you for sharing valuable data.

More importantly, as long as you deliver value with your content, the same audience will be impressed and start regarding your company as a reliable expert in the field. You are sparking genuine trust in your brand. 

Educational content should be a mainstay of any inbound marketing strategy, as it helps attract potential early-stage leads without being invasive. They help people get to know your brand on their own time and terms and come back when they are ready to interact further.

2. Commercial Videos

Surely you are familiar with this video style already. Who isn’t? Commercial videos are closest to the typical advertisements we grew up watching on TV, directly promoting a brand or product. 

In a sense, that’s the opposite approach of educational videos, even though they both promote brand awareness in their own way.

Commercials are an excellent way to attract the attention of leads that are closer to making a purchase. Driving visitors to your online presence and, consequently, improve your lead generation numbers. Not bad for pieces that last, on average, about 30 seconds.

And on that note: the key to a video ad is brevity. Your focus should be to make an impression and motivate viewers into action. That means creating pieces that ignite emotions in the viewer and make them identify with your content.

3. Explainer Videos

When it comes to reinforcing your brand’s or product’s value proposition or conveying a message clearly, you can’t do better than explainer videos.

Explainers revolve around addressing the customer’s pain point and how it can be solved with your product or service. The idea is to break down complicated concepts into a clear and engaging description, using storytelling to keep audiences entertained with the content.

The key to a good explainer lies in pairing meaningful visuals with a clear and engaging script that keeps the audience in their seats long enough to deliver your message – giving them all the tools to move into a different stage of their journey.

Do it right, and you’ll have a video in your hands capable of attracting customers in the awareness and consideration stages alike.

4. Product Videos

This is the perfect type of video for anyone involved in any eCommerce venture – from an online store platform to Social Media sales.

In a nutshell, product videos showcase an item or a service in action. Anyone who researches before buying – which is the vast majority -finds them incredibly useful. These videos play a large part in the decision-making stage of any buyer. 

They are also powerfully convincing: people are highly more likely to purchase an item after watching a video about it. It generates trust.

Ironically, though, the best product videos aren’t focused on items or services. They center on users. They don’t merely list features of an object; they address the benefits it brings its buyers. 

The key to fantastic product videos is to showcase the product in a context in tune with the target audience’s lifestyle. You help the viewer see themselves in that setting, using the same device.

5. Customer Testimonials

A great customer testimonial video is just what most buyers need during the decision stage of the buyer’s journey to commit to a purchase.

The mechanics with these videos are simple: It consists of a former client detailing their positive experience with your brand and product. It’s as easy as that.

The happy customer points out the problem they used to have and how your company helped them solve it. In the end, they express how their lives have improved because of it, and whether they’d recommend it.

Testimonials increase sales by boosting the viewers’ trust in your brand. Potential customers watching the piece realize the person on screen could be them, and that your company could solve their pain-point.

Now, the critical components of a customer testimonial that work are honesty and naturality.

Avoid using actors and scripts. The interviewee has to be a real client, talking about an authentic experience. Fake content is always easy to spot, and your video will end up backfiring.

6. Culture Videos

A culture video –a.k.a.: company story – is a ticket to your ‘customer’s loyalty‘ island. They give you a chance to present your clients and potential employees an insight into your company’s human side. 

It showcases what your brand stands for: its values, mission, vision, and the environment those guiding principles generate. 

There are no fast and hard rules regarding the topic of culture videos. Each brand is different and therefore goes for the angle that best portrays its unique philosophy. That said, it’s not uncommon to see culture videos that focus around a company event, a day in the office, an employee’s POV on a particular topic… That sort of thing.

Culture videos humanize a brand, something with which big companies often struggle. This type of content solidifies the relationship with the customer since they tend to resonate with the same values.

An outstanding company story has to excel in its narrative, sparking emotions in the viewer. That way, the customer identifies the most with the video and its content.

7. Social Videos

If you are struggling to get people to know your brand, consider putting together a social video approach. 

It’s a category for any video content that, whatever the type, is meant to be distributed through a social media platform like Facebook. However, even if the style varies, a common aspect of most social videos is that they tend to remain between the 15 and 30-second mark.

Their primary goal of social media video is to foster online buzz and engagement: generate comments, likes, shares, and followers. Doing so, they directly boost brand awareness and attract new leads.

The key to creating killer social videos is to account for the platform you’ll use to host and distribute it. The content a viewer expects from YouTube is remarkably different from the material on Instagram or Twitter.

Social media is a very competitive environment for branding. Audiences’ feeds are flooded with similar content they haven’t asked to see in the first place. So, it’s paramount that yours grab their attention from the get-go and make them stop scrolling.

Summing Up

As you can see, there are plenty of video types from which to choose. However, before picking one, it’s critical to sort out the main objectives of your campaign!

Only then will you be equipped to choose effectively the type of video that will serve you best.

If you haven’t come across a style that resonates with your campaign’ approach, don’t fret. I mentioned the best kinds of video marketing out there, but they aren’t the only ones! 

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This guest post is written by Victor Blasco, an audiovisual designer, video marketing expert, founder and CEO of the explainer video company Yum Yum Videos.