These days, you only have to scroll through social media for a few minutes to know video is dominating the content sphere for brands. But if you are new to the video marketing game, getting started can feel daunting. 

Lucky for you, there’s no need to start from scratch. Whether you plan on starting a YouTube channel or have your sights set on increasing the organic reach of your brand’s social feeds, the best way to begin is by repurposing your existing content. 

Creating videos from your existing content is easier than you might think. And it’s a highly effective way to increase your marketing reach.

Why video is a must-have for all marketers 

Before we jump into repurposing different types of content, let’s spend a minute talking about the treasure trove that is video marketing. Why is video so important for brands? 

Video increases engagement

When it comes to likes, comments, and shares, video content consistently outperforms images. We see this a lot with ads, but it holds true across the board. Even organic video posts outperform image posts in the likes department by up to 45.95%.

Video increases engagement

Breaking into video-only platforms like YouTube gives you access to audiences that may not be on other social sites. Most social media platforms see a sharp decline in users in the 40-plus age bracket, but not YouTube. In America, 70% of people between the ages of 46 to 55 and 67% of people over age 55 use YouTube. 

Video is persuasive and memorable 

72% of customers say they prefer learning about a product or service by way of video. And it’s no wonder why. On average, people retain 10% of a message when reading it in text, compared to 95% when they watch it in a video. 

The bottom line: video marketing is powerful. And it’s high time you get it working for you. You’re already sitting on a gold mine of tried and tested content. Extend the shelf life of your content and break into the video marketing game with these five easy ideas.

1. Turn glowing reviews into testimonial videos

You probably already have a good amount of customer testimonials in written form. This is perfect fodder for video content. Testimonial videos can populate a YouTube channel and then be used across different platforms like websites, emails, and ad campaigns. 

And they are incredibly easy to make .

When most people hear the term “testimonial video”, they imagine a labor-intensive process of filming customers in person and cutting together a video montage. But in reality, you can create effective testimonial videos in a matter of minutes. 

First, pick your top five testimonials and winnow each down to one or two lines. Next, combine stock background video footage with these written testimonials to create compelling visuals. Include slick transitions and a soundtrack and you are in business. 

2. Create effective how-to videos

How-to or explainer videos are some of the most popular video types made today. When learning a new skill, video is unmatched at conveying instructions. In fact, people process visual information 60,000 times faster than text. 

No matter what industry you’re in, imparting instructions to your customers is probably already a part of the service you provide. How-to videos can be about physical tasks like “How to use our milk frother with nut milk”. They can be technical, teaching viewers a skill like “How to add a cover image to your profile”. Or they can be educational, showing your industry expertise such as ‘How to make eCommerce YouTube ads that really work”. 

If you ever find yourself explaining how to do something in your business, jot it down and turn it into a how-to video. You’ll even save yourself time in the long run by linking to your own video instead of explaining things over and over. 

How-to videos are easy to create. Just map out the steps, clearly number the order of everything, and at the end, finish with a CTA that encourages viewers to reach out if they have any more questions. 

As a final tip: If you post these on your YouTube channel, always include the search term “How to” in the video title. This improves your SEO by mimicking the way users type queries into YouTube.

3. Use blog content for awareness videos

An awareness video is anything you make simply to familiarize people with your brand. Your blog is the ideal hunting ground for this type of video, because blog pieces already have a well-developed narrative.  

The aim of the game with awareness videos is to keep the audience watching and have your brand make an impression. That’s it. It’s not even about engagement metrics. These videos perform the essential task of building subconscious trust through repeated exposure. 

This is why blog content is perfect for awareness videos. Just like with your testimonial videos, you can use text along with stock footage to create simple content without shooting an ounce of footage. Condense the blog’s written content down to about one line of video text per paragraph of blog text. 

Try to follow the same narrative flow as the original blog, but lean heavily on music and transitions to recreate the emotional resonance of the story. Use upbeat music and short, snappy cuts for fun blog stories and slower music with gentle cuts for more meaningful stories.

4. Design an FAQ series

FAQs are a great format for video because your audience know exactly what to expect and, even better, they set the agenda by asking the questions in the first place. 

FAQ videos are also ideal for serializing. That is, make a new video for each individual FAQ. Create a standard template and follow it for each video in the series. Post the entire series on your website’s FAQ page, unveil one each week on your social media feed, or create a YouTube playlist for easy reference.   

Whatever you do, don’t try to cram more than one FAQ into a single video, as you get the best results from viewers if you keep videos under two minutes long. 

As you would for written FAQs, pay close attention to your wording. If it’s a technical question or a question that covers legalities, people will follow along closely and fixate on individual words. Be precise with your language. If your video involves a “talking head”, include on-screen text to underscore the most important information.

If it’s a technical question, also include screen grabs or recordings that walk the user through how to solve their problem. 

Once you’ve accumulated a few FAQ videos, pop them into a playlist and link to it on your website or in your customer service comms — it’s a great resource to concierge customers without lifting a finger. 

5. Repurpose written or audio interviews

For a long time, marketers primarily carried out interviews in written format. It was much too expensive to produce video content when an interview could be turned into a blog on the cheap. But that’s all changing with the advent of inexpensive, easy-to-use video making software. 

Video interviews are back on the menu. But does that mean you have to crack out the camera and set up a slew of new interviews? No! If you’ve already interviewed people for your blog, social media, or emails, you can easily turn that content into a video. 

If you have a quality audio file, cut that up into short snippets. The goal isn’t to recreate the entire interview as it happened. Instead, break it down into interesting sound bites that revolve around a theme. With a voice-over in place, all you need is some b-roll footage either provided by your interviewee or taken from stock footage databases. 

If the interview took place over email or you don’t have the audio file anymore, you can still pull interesting quotes and include them as text in your video. If it feels right, you can even batch these quotes into a listicle style video (like “Five things Clark Kent said to us that we can’t stop thinking about”). 

No matter which of these video ideas you tackle first, remember this: video marketing is effective. And it’s easy. All you have to do is review your existing content and get started.

Doing so can be difficult because of everything involved in getting prospects to the finish line. For businesses dealing with disconnected systems and inefficient processes, it can be hard to gauge where things went wrong, how to reel leads back in, and also ensure a seamless handoff when prospects are ready to talk to Sales or make a purchase. Many times, these organizations find themselves constantly putting out fires instead of focusing on driving growth. 

Thankfully, with the right strategy, businesses can attract the right leads, provide them with personalized experiences that improve engagement, and ensure they have everything they need to make an informed decision when they near the end of the sales funnel. 

So, if driving conversions and improving ROI are two of your business goals for 2020, you’ve come to the right place.

The following tips will help you engage your leads, keep them moving through the sale funnel, and win them over when the time to make a purchase comes around. 

Use Segmentation to Personalize Your Marketing Efforts

Thanks to Google and social media, today’s customers are accustomed to accessing the information they need in just a few clicks. This puts the pressure on you and your team to deliver targeted information and experiences. 

To meet this demand, companies are replacing their one-size-fits-all marketing with more tailored and targeted messaging and experiences.

Unfortunately, this has proven to be a very difficult, expensive, and time-consuming feat for many organizations. Not only are they trying to expand the number of campaigns they produce, but they’re also determining the most effective method to distribute their efforts to the right audience at the best time. Delivering the right message to the right person at the right time is simple and effective when you leverage audience segmentation.

Segmenting your audience allows you to target based on characteristics like:

• Stage in the Sales Funnel: Leads need different information based on where they are in the sales funnel. Segmenting them in this way will help you provide personalized marketing that will encourage them to take the next step in the buyer journey. 

• Industry: Depending on their industry, your lead might have a specific use case for your product or service. Segmenting based on industry can help you speak their language and provide them with relevant examples of how you can help them achieve their goals. 
• Product or Service Interest: Knowing which particular product or service appeals most to your customers allows you to cut straight to the chase and focus on the features and benefits that make you stand out from the competition.  
• Job Title: Knowing who your decision-makers, influencers, and users are can help you tailor your marketing to their particular concerns and interests. 

Unfortunately, for many organizations, audience segmentation can be tedious and prone to error.

Investing in the right marketing automation platform can help you automatically group customers based on characteristics such as industry, title, product interests, and more. This convenient feature frees up your team’s time and resources, allowing you to focus on more important and impactful tasks. 

Nurture Your Leads to Guide Them Through the Sales Funnel Effectively

When used properly, email continues to be one of the most reliable and effective methods to engage your audience. To reap all the rewards this marketing channel has to offer, you need to focus your efforts on developing targeted nurture campaigns instead of one-off emails. 

Unlike generic batch-and-blast campaigns and one-off emails, lead nurturing campaigns are designed to deliver targeted content and information to specific audience segments over a period of time. This model allows you to provide your audience with the resources they need to make progress through the customer journey instead of scaring them away with a hard sell right off the bat.

Developing targeted nurture campaigns requires a bit of a lift at the outset (mostly due to content creation), especially when you have multiple audience segments. But there are resources to help you manage them once they’re up and running.

For example, Act-On allows you to automatically enter contacts into automated nurture programs whenever they meet specific criteria or complete an action. This feature ensures your prospects and customers always receive the messaging and content they need to take the next step in the buyer journey and eventually make educated purchasing decisions. 

Leverage Lead Scoring to Identify Qualified Opportunities

One of the things that companies find most challenging when it comes to optimizing their sales funnel is determining when a lead is ready to talk to Sales or needs a little more love to keep moving along.

In these instances, lead scoring can be a marketer’s best friend because it allows them to determine where leads are in the sales funnel and which marketing tactics are piquing their interest. 

Lead scoring can sound a bit intimidating, but the process is actually quite simple. You assign scores to specific actions (such as downloading an eBook, filling out a form, or visiting a specific webpage). Your leads and/or accounts accrue or lose points as they complete these actions, which indicate where they are in the sales funnel – as well as their level of interest. 

This information allows you to tailor your strategy to keep leads engaged and helps your sales team determine the best time to reach out to schedule a call.

Integrate Your CRM to Activate Your Sales Team

Sales and Marketing alignment continues to be a neverending struggle for many organizations. Despite their best efforts, most companies haven’t figured out how to improve collaboration and communication between the two teams. 

Integrating your CRM with your marketing automation platform can help you streamline processes between Sales and Marketing and provide both parties with full visibility into the customer journey.

For example, Act-On allows you to set up automatic notifications to alert your salespeople as soon as a lead becomes qualified and is ready to talk to Sales. Your sales team can also look at your contact’s entire behavior and engagement history, allowing them to have more targeted and effective conversations. 

Invest in a Tool That Helps You Take Control of the Customer Journey

This probably isn’t the first time you’ve heard of a lot of what we’ve covered here, but you might be feeling limited due to lack of time and resources. 

The right MarTech stack can help you easily optimize your sales funnel, enhance your marketing efforts, and drive ROI. And with Act-On, you have everything you need to improve Sales and Marketing alignment, deliver personalized marketing efforts, and gain valuable customer insights. 

Don’t just take our word for it, however. If you’d like to learn more about what we’re all about, please schedule a demo with one of our marketing automation experts. They can walk you through our platform and show you how you can use it to overcome marketing challenges and achieve your business goals.