10 Steps to Creating a Successful Video Content Strategy for Marketing

01. Establish the goals of your video marketing plan

 As with any marketing strategy, goals come first. 

Why do you want to start video marketing? What are you hoping it will achieve? What are your video marketing goals?

"Well, my competitors are doing it, so I want to too", isn't a good answer.

However, "I want to increase brand awareness by 20% in Q2," is an efficient goal.

So are goals like:

• I want to increase user time-on-page by 1 minute by the end of the year. 
• I want to grow our number of YouTube subscribers to 150 by Q2. 
• I want to expand social media engagement (boosting a certain number of comments and views) on Facebook in Q3.
• I want to increase SQL opportunity to close-won conversions by 3% by incorporating videos geared to sales enablement.

As always, SMART goals are where you start. What exactly are you hoping to get out of your video marketing plan? 

Remember that a few of these goals might apply to your video marketing strategy. It's okay to have multiple goals so long as you:

1. Know how to measure your progress toward them, and 
2. Have the capacity to develop videos that help you move towards each goal.

02. Identify your audience

Now that you know why you're doing video marketing, now you need to know who your videos are for.

If your goals are sales-related, then your audience is your SQL buyer personas.

If your goals are branding or inbound marketing related, your MQL buyer personas are your audience.

If you don't have buyer personas identifying who your potential customers are, check out our Step-By-Step Guide to Defining Your Buyer Persona. 

It doesn't matter where you're starting from, so long as you end up with a clear picture of who your videos are for, why they need them, and where they're most likely to use them. All of that is key information you'll need to complete the next steps. 

03. Settle on a video marketing budget

This is the last big question to answer before we start getting into the nitty-gritty of building out your video marketing strategy.

How much can you spend?

Your video marketing budget will determine a lot of things, from how many videos you can produce to who will be developing and editing those videos. 

It's important to know that you don't need a huge budget to start video marketing. 

Today's consumer is totally cool with — and sometimes even prefers — videos made on your phone.

Of course, if you have the budget for it, hiring an actual video production team will deliver some high-quality content, but it's really not essential if your company is just starting or truly doesn't have money to allocate to full-scale video production.

04. Decide how you'll make your videos

As I was saying — your budget will dictate how you make those videos. Whether you're filming on your phone or coordinating with a video production company, it's important to make a decision.

This decision helps determine your process.

For example:

If you go with a video production company

• You'll need to coordinate with them to determine a schedule.
• You're probably best off batch-producing a few videos at a time when you have the professional crew you need on-site. 
• You'll need to establish a timeline for production, editing, and promotion.
• You'll need to determine a location.
• And you'll have to work with the production company to work through your topics, storyboarding, and more. 

If you go with in-house video production

• You'll have less upfront planning to do, but you'll still have to decide who will be in your videos, or if you're planning to do animated videos that feature a voiceover or music background rather than live-action. 
• You can take a more relaxed approach to schedule and batch production, but you will still have to identify which videos you want to film, and who will be responsible for them. 
• You'll need to determine who on your team can handle the editing.

Either way you go is great! Some teams even pick both, choosing a video production company for high-value videos like case studies and client testimonials, and then having the internal team handle more natural, short-form videos made for social media.

05.  Develop a video content strategy calendar

At this point, you've done all of the setting up. Now it's time to get down to the strategy part of your video marketing strategy.

Why a content calendar?

Because one of the easiest, most common traps for any company to fall into is the one-and-done trap.

You decide you're going to prioritize video marketing, you get your team together, make one video, and then it never sees the light of day. Or, you get that one video out, but never have anything to follow it up with.

A video marketing strategy content calendar helps you get all of the hard work out of the way first, and it puts your team on a clear, defined schedule for both production and promotion. 

If you're new to video marketing, check out this example of a video marketing strategy content calendar.

This is what the Evenbound team uses to build out our strategy and keep ourselves accountable to a timeline.

We focus on identifying:

• The keyword the video will be focused on
• Key details associated with each video
• An outline that details the general points we want to include
• Who will be in or responsible for the video
• Which persona the video will be targeted towards
• And maybe most importantly, when we plan to get that video done

Of course, no content calendar is 100% set in stone. We change ours often. But, having the content calendar means we have a bank of video strategy topics that are already vetted, prioritized, and ready to go.

Having a content calendar is a really helpful tool that keeps your company out of the "paralysis by analysis" state where nothing actually gets done.

We recommend you build your video marketing strategy content calendar out for at least a quarter. You can build it out further, but remember that the longer your content calendar gets, the less relevant some of your later topics could be by the time you get to them. 

06.  Determine your promotion platform(s)

Now that you know what you're going to create, you can identify where to promote it.

Creating a video is one thing. Putting it out into the world is the step that's actually going to get you the results you're looking for.

It's important to identify the right platforms for each video you create. Some of the most popular video platforms include:

• Your website (it's the only platform you actually own, after all!)
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Email
• Threads

The platforms you choose will depend on your ideal audience and the type of video you've developed. For example:

• If you're developing a short video on a fun company outing, Instagram Reels or TikTok is probably the best bet. 
• If you're developing an informational video specifically for B2B buyers, LinkedIn is likely your best bet. 

If you're really not sure where to start, pick one platform and start growing a following there. You can always repurpose existing videos for other channels once you get a better handle on the process. 

07.  Identify key metrics to measure the success of your video marketing strategy

Okay, at this point, we know why you're investing in video marketing, we know what kind of videos you're making, who you're making them for, and where you want to put them.

Now, given your goals and everything else, how will you know if they were successful?

For example, if you wanted to increase YouTube subscribers, measuring the traffic a video is driving to your website isn't the most relevant metric to track. Instead, you'd want to keep an eye on that subscriber number.

If you're interested in increasing engagement, then you should be measuring likes, shares, and comments, rather than views and reach.

When it comes to measuring your marketing efforts, there are hundreds of KPIs or key performance indicators, to track. It's overwhelming. So, pick the few that are most relevant to your goals for this video marketing campaign, and keep an eye on them. 

There's no point in starting a video marketing strategy if you can't track the results it's delivering. 

08.  Develop a video launch checklist

Just like business blogging, your content is only as good as your promotion. If a video is published in the YouTube forest, how do you make people see it? 

Promotion. 

Video promotion includes everything from the minute you hit the publish button to sharing it on your social platforms and beyond. I include key steps like optimizing your video title and description, creating a custom thumbnail, writing a transcript, and even developing an ad campaign around that new video in the promotion step. 

All of that is a lot to keep track of.

That's why the Evenbound team uses a video launch checklist.

This handy little checklist helps us keep track of every key action we need to take once a video is launched. It helps us get the right eyes on our videos as soon as possible, and it also helps ensure we're maximizing the potential of every single video we produce.

Your video launch checklist doesn't have to look like ours, but you should develop one that helps your team keep track of the essential actions to take once you publish a video. 

09.  Make your first video!

Ya made it.

You've put in the hard work and you've done the keyword research and the planning. Now it's time to actually bring that first video to life.

Follow your process, both for creation and promotion, and see how you do!

Remember, any video marketing strategy is a work in progress. With every new video you produce and promote, you'll learn something new. That brings me to the 10th and final step…

10.  Analyze your results and optimize your video marketing strategy

No marketing tactic is complete without analysis and optimization.

With every video you produce, make sure you're keeping an eye on those key metrics you identified, so you can analyze what's working, and what needs a different approach.

Any new video marketing strategy is going to take tweaking. By keeping a close eye on your results, analyzing them, and then implementing relevant changes, you can ensure your team is always working to optimize the performance of your new and upcoming videos.

Ready to get your video marketing strategy off the ground?

When it comes to video marketing, you want to squeeze every possible dollar out of every video you produce and promote. Done right, video can deliver some serious results and significant ROI, but it all starts with strategy. Without a solid strategy, you're going to see some videos miss their metrics.

If you're not sure where to start when it comes to strategy, or if you're looking for help maximizing your investment in video marketing, get in touch with the Evenbound team. We're here to help.