Growth-hacking is the “lean startup” term coined by Sean Ellis for using conversion marketing tactics like content marketing, A/B testing, and analytics to grow a company quickly and efficiently. This strategy has helped many companies accelerate their growth by focusing each and every tactic and initiative on the singular goal of growing. Growth-hacking tactics can also be applied to a company’s content marketing efforts, and one of the best tools to emerge for this is video.
Comscore statistics shows that web users who view video stay two minutes longer on a site and are 64% more likely to buy something. That’s enough of a reason alone for video to be a part of your content strategy and explains why landing page videos generate such great results. But besides having a landing page video, how else can your brand growth-hack your content marketing with video? Here are a few clever ideas to get you started.
Video Newsjacking
Newsjacking is the art of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story to amplify your sales and marketing success. The popularity of a news story may drop off in a matter of days or hours, so in order to ride the popularity of that story to benefit your business, you’ll need to act quickly.
First, you’ll need to decide how this story could be interesting to your audience and come up with a unique angle so viewers will reference and share your video over the other stories on the subject out there. Keep in mind, you won’t have much time to write a script or storyboard your video if you want to get traction from this technique. Instead, opt for a quick and easy video platform like Twitter video, Instagram video, or a DIY animated video coupled with relevant hashtags to record your story instead. Afterwards, be sure to share your video on social networks and with any partners or brand influencers who can help you spread the word. If you can offer a unique twist on a popular story, your audience is guaranteed to share it.
Tools to use: Google Trends, Google Alerts, BuzzSumo
Reach out to Video Stars
Many businesses are unable to allocate a lot of time to the creation of video content or still believe video is a costly investment. If your brand falls into these categories, why not reach out and ask the experts in your industry to do the heavy lifting for you?
YouTube Influencers have become more popular among teens in the U.S. than mainstream celebrities. With 100 hours of video uploaded per minute and 6 billion hours of viewership per month, YouTube can be very powerful when it comes to marketing your message. Make a list of the experts in your industry who already have an audience on YouTube or even Facebook, and see if they would be interested in developing a quick tutorial video or record a review for you. This tactic gets high-quality video content in front of your audience and promises promotion for your contributor. Most won’t do this for free, but if you can leverage just one or two video influencers, their word-of-mouth marketing power can generate twice the sales of paid advertising and a 37% higher retention rate, so it will definitely pay off.
Tools to use: Famebit, Tubular
Enrich Your Email Marketing
Another way to growth-hack your content marketing is by including video content in your email campaigns. Half of marketers who used videos in their email messaging reportedly saw increased click-through rates, increased time spent reading their email, and increased sharing and forwarding (eMarketer).
Want to boost your open rates? MarketingProfs reports open rates can be increased 20% just by including the word “video” in the subject line. To further increase your chances of success even more, consider using a static image and a link above or below it that takes your viewer directly to your landing page where the video auto-plays. This way, you only require a single click from your audience to reach your landing page.
A/B testing is also key for all email marketing efforts, so try a few extra tests when including video. Test different subject lines, the placement of your video, and your video calls-to-action to see how you can continually improve your efforts. Compare your video-enriched emails to those without video and you’ll be able to measure just how much your email marketing ROI will increase.
Tools to use: Mailchimp Video Merge Tags, BombBomb, TailoredMail
Conclusion
There’s no doubt creating and sharing valuable video content is a great way to generate awareness and growth for your brand. In fact, 57% of consumers say that product videos make them more confident in a purchase, and the retention rate for visual information can reach 65% vs.10% for text-based information. With the countless number of web and mobile video tools available, video is increasingly becoming a low-risk and low-cost way to grow your business.
Do you have any video growth-hacking tips that have worked for your business? Share them in the comments.
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