8 Types of Marketing Videos To Boost Your Brand

This article has been contributed by Victor Blasco.

If you ask any marketer worth their salt why you should include video content on your strategy, most of them would likely fire back a different question: Why not?

Video has grown to take up a big part of digital marketing due to its power to communicate any message efficiently. It helps brands connect with their audiences while being more engaging and personal than any other type of media.

And it is precisely because of that versatility that most professional video companies have tweaked different types of marketing videos to fit different stages of the customer’s journey – making them better suited to move leads down your funnel.

Not convinced? That’s ok! In this article, we’ll go over the ins and outs of a handful of styles that can go a long way in terms of branding and content marketing and give you insights on how to get the most out of them.

Let’s get started!

Video Content Statistics

Video content is here to stay, not only because it’s pretty but because of the big numbers that back it up.

• For starters, videos can help you build brand reliability. In fact, 57% of consumers say that videos gave them the trust they needed to purchase online.
• Adding videos on a landing page can increase conversions up to 80%, and it’s actually the type of marketing content with the highest ROI, making it an excellent investment to improve branding, boost sales, and improve conversion rates.
• They’re big on mobile. YouTube reports that mobile video consumption rises by 100% every year, and mobile will soon be the primary method of media consumption online.
• Because video content makes people spend more time on websites and landing pages, it’s also capable of boosting websites’ rankings on search engine pages. In fact, a website is 53 times more likely to show up first on Google if it has a video embedded in it.

However, for benefits like those to come into play, you need to understand the differences between the various types of marketing videos and the stages where they perform best.

8 Types of Marketing Videos For a Successful Content Strategy

Now that you understand the power of video content, it’s time to take a look at some different types of videos so that you can match them to your specific marketing needs!

1.   Explainer Videos

Often, one of the most challenging parts of connecting with an audience for a brand is to explain the value behind their product simply and engagingly. Luckily, explainer videos are perfect for that!

They’re short marketing videos that are used to describe a company’s product, service, or message. Explainers are simple, powerful, informational, and engaging, and they’re also one of the most valuable resources for marketers right now.

These types of marketing videos work by tackling a specific customer pain-point, followed by an explanation of the company’s solution to it, which is, of course, the best solution your audience can find on the market.

How Can You Use Explainer Videos?

Explainer videos are perfect for moving your prospects across the consideration stage of the decision-making journey.

Right now, your (hopefully!) future customers are evaluating different ways of solving their problems. With an explainer, you can show them why the solution you’re giving them is the best alternative around.

2.   How-To Videos

Step one, set a goal. Step two, create a numbered list of steps that will help your audience achieve that goal. Step three, make a video about it. There you have it! A how-to video!

Jokes aside, how-to videos fulfill a very specific role: to be helpful to your audience and easily shareable.

With this type of marketing video, your message will revolve around your target audience’s particular objective and how to achieve it through a step-by-step explanation.

Even though how-to videos also fall under the category of educational videos, marketers often classify them separately.

This is because of their distinctive structure and the way they are geared toward a somewhat different purpose and type of audience.

How Can You Use How-To Videos?

How-tos are pretty versatile and can be used to achieve different goals along a sales funnel.

You can include them in the awareness stage to organically attract interested leads and present your brand as a reliable resource. You could also use them during the consideration stage to showcase the usability of your product, etc.

3.   Educational Videos

Is education supposed to be engaging and fun? Well, with educational videos, it is.

Educational videos are meant to provide information to viewers, but they need to do it in an interesting and compelling way!

They use certain narrative resources (like interesting graphics and a sharp script) to get the audience’s attention and combine them with interesting topics their target audience will find relevant.

A brand that employs these videos correctly will have its audience start seeing them as a reference in their industry, which will definitely help in building brand trust.

How Can You Use Educational Videos?

Educational videos are a great asset to have during the awareness stage of the buyer journey.

During this phase, your audience may not even be aware of the fact that they have a problem in need of a solution, so your job is to educate them and stir their interest enough to move further down the funnel.

With educational content, you’ll deliver valuable information and start their relationship with your brand with the right foot.

4.   Testimonial Videos

Customer testimonials take the power of an online review, and they elevate it to a whole new level.

Here, you put people in front of the camera (past customers) to share their honest experiences with your brand. There’s nothing more convincing for future customers than the opinion of people like them.

Some variants of testimonials are case studies and customer stories, which are also excellent ways to communicate the success stories of happy customers. When filming these kinds of videos, always remember to tell a story that starts with your customer’s pain-point, which will spark identification in your audience.

How Can You Use Testimonial Videos?

Undoubtedly, during the decision stage of your marketing plan, testimonial videos excel at giving your prospects that last push they need to finally make a purchase.

As mentioned before, customers trust the opinion of their peers, which makes it easier for them to make a decision.

Just remember to hook viewers with a strong start and use engaging visuals that keep them entertained until the end!

5.   Company Story Videos

Company story videos show a part of the business that’s often ignored: The people behind the brand.

What’s a company without the people that are responsible for its magic?

These types of videos have the power to humanize any brand, and in this era of instant communication and constant movement, audiences crave this type of human connection with the companies they engage with.

Customers like to identify with the core values behind the brands they like, the people that embody them and form a sense of familiarity. Company stories help toward all of those objectives.

How Can You Use Company Story Videos?

During the last stage of the buyer journey, the decision-making stage, your prospects are craving for you to give them good reasons to buy your product instead of the competition’s.

They’re almost there… and what they need is precisely this: Video content that resonates with them and that provides the human connection that lets them identify with your brand.

6.   Video Ads

A type of marketing video that most people will already be familiar with, video ads or commercials remain nonetheless a powerful tool to add to your video marketing toolbox.

Videos ads are all about your brand and products. Overtly promotional, ads are designed to ‘sell’ something to your audience – even if that something is just your company’s image.

They tend to be short – as not to overstay their welcome on users’ screens – but a good ad can accomplish its goals in less than a minute, with 30 seconds being the ideal length that most video ads fall into online.

Having said all that, do keep in mind that most successful video ads also include some narrative that makes them memorable and branding cues that have them feeling unmistakably yours.

Anyone can make an ad that delivers information efficiently and expediently, but a great ad does so in a way viewers won’t soon forget!

How Can You Use Video Ads?

For starters, video ads synergize extremely well with PPC strategies, making your clickable ads far more engaging and compelling to target audiences and improving overall ROI.

As for marketing goals, a great commercial can do wonders for your brand awareness, drive increased attention to your online presence (for example, by directing viewers to visit your website).

They can also be a great way to funnel people into your lead generation landing pages.

7.   Product Videos

True to their name, product videos are all about presenting your offerings to your audience in the best possible way.

A staple nowadays in the e-Commerce arena, a great product video is often the next best thing online shoppers have to a hands-on experience with your product or service.

Moreover, they do the job quicker and more engagingly than any text product description could ever accomplish.

The best product videos are built around three key aspects: uses, context, and instructions. That is, they aim at presenting your product in a familiar context so that viewers can imagine themselves using the product themselves and enjoying its benefits.

Last but not least, it’s not uncommon to have these videos deliver relevant instructions or vital information to add value to the content and increase the benefits your viewers can reap from watching.

How Can You Use Product Videos?

First and foremost, awesome product videos are great to improve consumer confidence in your products and brand as a whole. Also, these videos excel at getting your prospects closer to a purchase decision by putting your product and its benefits in the spotlight.

Lastly, when done right, these videos tend to perform really well in terms of organic positioning. They tend to attract lots of attention and rank higher on search engines like YouTube’s result pages, potentially improving your overall reach and nurturing lead generation.

8.   Social Videos

In today’s marketing world, ignoring the power and versatility that having a social presence can bring to your strategy is not a mistake many companies can afford. As such, social videos should be a top priority for any brand trying to grow its social presence.

In practical terms, these videos can share aspects with the other styles we’ve covered so far in this piece.

However, the key difference is that a social video has to be tweaked from the ground up to fit the technical specs and requirements of the platform it’ll be uploaded to, and the expectations of said platform’s audience.

Meaning that you wouldn’t want to upload the exact same piece to your Instagram account that you would share on your company’s Facebook page.

Beyond that, social videos tend to be short – with the notable exception of content for YouTube or Facebook, whose audiences tend to like longer content.

It’s also vital that these videos be uploaded natively on the platform you created them for (instead of just embedding them), as this tends to improve discoverability.

How Can You Use Social Videos?

While your social videos will provide many of the same benefits from the core style you are mixing them with, social content, in general, is great to improve audience engagement by uploading content that generates shares, likes, and comments.

Social videos are also great at boosting brand awareness and redirecting traffic to your other online presence.

If you’re working with videos, you’ll likely need to transcribe your audio into text for captions and beyond. We use and recommend Rev.com for their transcription services that feature same-day delivery and 99% accuracy.

Types of Marketing Videos Summary

Using video is essential, of course, but using video in a smart way is what will actually set your content strategy apart. Now that you know some of the most engaging and compelling types of videos and how to use them, you’re at a very good starting point!

And remember, as a very visible part of your marketing strategy, you need to make sure the quality of your video is up to par. Otherwise, you risk giving audiences the wrong impression, and that will hardly get you where you need to go!

So, are you ready to start developing your killer video content strategy? Time to get to it then!

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About the author: Victor Blasco is an audiovisual designer, video marketing expert, and founder/CEO of the explainer video production company Yum Yum Videos. Besides running the business, he’s a lifelong student of Chinese philosophy and a passionate geek for all things sci-fi.