In today’s TikTok-obsessed world, it’s no surprise that marketers are finding that video content delivers some of the highest returns on investment (ROI) compared to other forms of content. In fact, Wyzowl’s 2023 State of Video Marketing report reveals that video content gives as much as 92% of marketers a good return on their investment.
However, it’s important to keep this success in perspective. While video content can help many companies increase brand awareness, generate leads, or increase sales, plenty of businesses are struggling to achieve these results.
Learn how to methodically identify, troubleshoot, and strategically resolve the potential problems that are keeping your videos from achieving higher ROI levels.
Step 1: Identify and Define Clear Objectives
Before you start reviewing the video content you already created or begin making new videos, it’s important to think about what you hope to achieve with your video content. Take the time to identify specific objectives and goals for your campaign. Criteria such as “a good ROI” isn’t clear enough—you need to define measurable benchmarks that you can use to evaluate how effective your video content is.
Review and evaluate exactly how you’ll measure your goals, such as:
- Increasing your website traffic
- Growing your company’s brand awareness
- Improving user/consumer understanding of your product or service
- Generating leads
- Improving your conversion rates
- Increasing the average time spent on a page
After you identify your objectives and how to measure them, you can review your existing video content and assess their effectiveness in your marketing campaigns. Moreover, you’ll now better understand what your new video content needs to accomplish.
Step 2: Know and Understand Your Target Audience
As you review your video content, try to view it through the eyes of your target audience and ask yourself the following questions:
- Is your video content relevant to your audience?
- Does it (or, for new content, will it) resonate with the audience you’re trying to reach?
- Have your marketing videos been tailored to align with the scope of your target audience appropriately?
To answer yes to the questions above, you need to have a solid understanding of your video content’s target audience. Therefore, if your video marketing content isn’t reaching the desired audience, make an effort to do some root cause analysis. In other words, you need to backtrack and look into who your audience truly is.
Research your target audience thoroughly to accurately identify their priorities, preferences, and pain points. Then, establish various personas to gain insights into your audience’s demographics, behaviors, and interests.
If your current video content doesn’t align with your target audience, this step will help you recognize how to adjust your approach. Furthermore, when you combine this step with the first, you’ll have a better idea of the overall direction your video content needs to take to yield a higher ROI.
Step 3: Prioritize Intentional Content
Before diving into the nitty gritty aspects of Step 3, it’s essential to recognize that this entire step builds on the previous two. This means that your work and findings from the first two steps need to be integrated into your existing video content and also need to be applied to any new marketing videos you create.
As Step 1 shows, you should create your video content with an objective purpose. Meaning, your videos need to provide viewers with some sort of value. The sub-steps below cover various strategical approaches you can take with your video content.
Content That Tells a Story
If your video content is providing a low ROI, look over your existing video content, and for each video, ask yourself:
- Does this piece of content tell a clear, straightforward story?
- What story is the video telling?
- Is the story relevant and of interest to your target audience?
If you’re unsure, don’t panic! You just need to change up your strategy for crafting video content. Focus on creating videos that connect with your target audience on an emotional level. In other words, focus on telling stories that resonate with your audience.
Refer back to your findings from the first two steps—what sorts of conversations is your audience engaging in? By incorporating their interests into compelling video narratives, you can increase your chances of leaving a lasting impact on your viewers.
Similarly, think about your company’s values, initiatives, and brand messaging. People like supporting businesses that share similar ideals and priorities, so showcasing yours in your videos is important. However, to increase your ROI, you need to ensure that your video doesn’t come across as mere self-promotion—it needs to relate back to your audience.
Content That Answers Questions
Put yourself in the shoes of the target audience and potential customers and ask yourself questions such as the following:
- What questions might your audience have about your products or services?
- Do any of your existing videos answer those questions?
- What video would you want to see if you were a potential buyer?
- Do you have any tutorial videos for your product?
- What are the common concerns you hear about from potential customers?
- Does any of your existing video content address these concerns?
Remember that every business is different, so the relevant questions you need to ask yourself will vary. Again, refer back to your video campaign’s objectives, goals, and target audience to guide your efforts.
Utilize User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) refers to content that users create to engage with your business. This includes content like reviews, content that highlights your product, and so on. People love to see social proof during their buyer journey, and creating video content that makes it easy to find can be an extremely effective and beneficial tactic for promoting higher levels of ROI for your video content.
Leverage Calls-to-Action
All of your video content should contain distinct calls-to-action, or CTAs, that encourage your viewers to take a specific action. It essentially directs your viewer in the direction of the next step of their buyer’s journey and your company’s sales funnel.
So as you review your video content, ask yourself:
- Does this video have a CTA?
- Can you clearly define the CTA?
- Is the CTA at the end of your video?
Whether your CTA is to check out your website, make a purchase, sign-up for an email subscription, or leave a review, a clear CTA can significantly impact your ROI.
Step 4: Make Optimizations
Sometimes increasing your video content’s ROI is as simple as making some optimizations. Consider the following sub-steps to determine if your video content needs optimization, and modify your content accordingly.
Optimize Video Length
Remember, this is the age of TikTok and Instagram Reels, which means it’s the golden age of video content. However, it also indicates that this is the era of the short attention span. So even though some platforms support posting more lengthy videos, long videos tend to promote viewer drop-off. Consequently, that’s likely not the best approach for the bulk of your video content. Instead, shorter videos are more likely to gain traction among the average viewer and provide a positive ROI.
Optimize Video Format
As you review your videos, consider how their format aligns with the video’s purpose and length. While shorter videos are generally your best bet, there are still viable reasons to include them in your content. For instance, tutorial videos often run longer since they contain more detailed information. Thus, as you review your video content, ask yourself:
- Does this video clearly convey its message and purpose?
- If the video is longer, does it contain relevant, detailed information?
- Does the video take too long to get its point across?
Optimize for SEO and Searchability
In order for your video content to deliver a positive ROI, it needs to be findable! Hence, it’s important to appropriately apply SEO practices to video content in addition to written content. Take a look at your videos and ask yourself questions like:
- Are the keywords relevant?
- Is the meta description accurate?
- Are you including tags to improve the video’s discoverability?
- Is your video accessible?
- Is your video mobile-friendly?
Improving Your Video Content’s ROI
Remember, if your video content is yielding a low ROI, it doesn’t necessarily mean your content is a failure! It just means you need to take the time and troubleshoot your content with the steps in this guide.
But we understand that you’re busy! That’s why J&L Marketing is here to help you drastically improve and elevate your video content’s ROI! We specialize in crafting high-quality video content for various social media platforms that deliver results. Visit our website to learn more about the work J&L Marketing does and the impact we have. Get in touch with our team today to talk about how we can elevate the success of your video content and increase its ROI!
