Video will account for 69% of online video traffic this year according to analysts at Cisco. We’ve long known that video is the future of visual content, so with this in mind, how can brands create a strategy that gets their work seen and engaged with?

1. Storytelling

This week, we’re looking at video for product promotion. The key aspect to focus on here is story-telling- creating something that depicts brand identity consistent with your previous or ongoing content, and of course, advertising a product that people will want to buy. Effective storytelling should have the viewer wanting to share your video, and they may not if you simply bombard them with the hard sell. A great quote which sums this up is from Antoine Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” A great product video ad will inspire want, regardless as to whether the viewer needs the item or not. Story-telling is essentially using video to relate a tale, with common formats narrating this over a sequence of videos. These can often be both long and short form, and displayed as a TV or online series. A theme with a great strap line helps to pull the story together so creatives can choose to show several short anecdotes, or one sequential tale.

2. Which channels?

Once you’ve created your video or series, it’s crucial to give your content the attention it deserves. If you’ve created several videos, it’s also important to consider which channels will be most suitable for each different type. For multiple short videos for instance, Instagram’s or Twitter’s video feature is a great place to share these- content can range from 15-60 seconds on the former. For slightly longer features, Facebook might be a better medium. And both short and long-form videos are suited to YouTube. With a staggering 1 billion YouTube videos being consumed on mobile alone, content should also be smartphone-friendly- this means serving videos from a responsive platform, high quality resolution and audio, tactics such as zoom to highlight important content, and an emphasis on a shorter rather than longer time-span.

3. Goals

With product advertising, your goals will be to drive CTR, create exposure, and generate engagement. For driving CTR, housing your video(s) on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are going to offer a greater chance for success, as you can accompany these with your site page links. Video within Facebook is good for exposure on the platform itself, while YouTube is likely better for search purposes conducted on Google. For engagement, you want to ensure that your video is seen by your target audience. For this, YouTube and Facebook are once again going to be the front runners. With the former, targeting can be implemented based on the user’s age, gender, interests, keywords, preferred topics and affinity (their interest in similar products), while on Facebook, location, gender, age and interest targeting can be added.

4. Alternatives

And of course, if your business doesn’t have the time, resources or budget to execute a video campaign, the free tools offered by today’s social media platforms are a great alternative, and just as effective depending on your content, audience and objectives. It goes without saying that Facebook Live, Instagram Live and Stories, Snapchat and Periscope, should be high on the list of priorities for video creators and marketers this year. Best of all, content can simply be created and edited on your iPhone if need be. And there are a range of accessible tools to elevate your creations, such as Facebook’s Power Editor, Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, and even free video ad production from YouTube, designed to help small businesses.

Are you a video creator or marketer? Which elements do you think are crucial for an effective strategy? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.