17 Video Tactics To Improve Your SEM Campaign Today

Co-authored by Devan Brown

CMD presents its top video marketing takeaways from SEMpdx:

With 2015 shaping up to be the “Year of Video,” video marketing is more important than ever. So, what factors go into making a video marketing strategy successful in today’s world? Last week, dozens of marketers gathered at SEMpdx to hear expert insight from Wistia’s marketing wiz, Casey Henry (@Caseyhen). His action-packed 109-slide deck [bit.ly/video-markting] was filled with recommendations that were both practical and insightful.

Here are the top 17 takeaways we pulled from Casey’s presentation:

SEO & Video:

1. Look beyond snippets. No longer are they the end-all-be-all of SEO for video. Wistia recently tested this theory and found that there was no return on video snippets in web searches.
2. Place conversion videos on your home site and community building brand videos on YouTube.

PPC & Video:

3. Landing pages that incorporate video garner a higher quality score and a higher conversion rate and people are more likely to continue on to the next page after viewing a video.
4. Accompany your landing page video with context and keywords, for those who prefer to read.
5. Put a clear CTA at the end of your video.
6. Only use pre-roll for brand awareness – as conversions are next to nothing.
7. Spend retargeting dollars on people who have completed a landing page video, as they display a significantly higher conversion rate.
8. Users generally don’t watch more than two videos in a single website visit, so plan accordingly within your funnel.

Content & Video:

9. Video can drive links. If it makes sense, always add video to blog posts.
10. When adding video, place it above the fold, within the first 500px of a web page. Videos above the fold showed a 56% play rate, and play rates decrease significantly as you move down the page.
11. Create custom thumbnails and custom play buttons, as they increase the play rate of your video. YouTube play buttons are always red, and studies have shown that making your play button a custom color, such as blue, green, or purple can increase play rate.
12. If you have multiple videos on a page, convey different messages – 50% of people stop watching videos with similar messages within the first ten seconds of play.
13. 501px by 750px is the best size for videos on your page.

Social & Video:

14. Social is all about driving engagements and awareness, not conversions.
15. Use video on social to make a connection with your audience, then drive them to your website for conversions.
16. Organic video within Facebook newsfeeds auto-plays without sound, so optimize your video to make sense without it.
17. Is your goal to increase engagement and your following on Twitter? Casey recommends using clearbit.com to identify custom audiences and relevant influencers. Targeting videos using promoted posts showed a 250% increase in engagement and follows.

So there you have it: 17 tips you can start incorporating into digital marketing strategies immediately. Video for SEM campaigns is still underutilized, but, as Casey puts it, we are on the verge of something big. What tips would you add?

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