Different types of video marketing cater to diverse audience preferences and marketing goals. Variety allows businesses to communicate effectively with various audiences and objectives. Marketers should consider their goals, target audience, and the message they want to convey to choose from many different forms of video marketing techniques and forms.
Various types of video marketing include product demos, explainer videos, testimonials, tutorials, and brand storytelling. While product demos work well for demonstrating features, testimonials build credibility. Understanding the audience’s preferences and the desired impact helps in choosing the most effective video marketing type.
In this article, we discuss 10 types of video marketing techniques and their use cases – demonstrating the benefits and the most appropriate conditions for utilizing them.
Product Videos
Your clients may have different expectations of what they would like to see in your product marketing videos. They also have various pain points on how to make buying decisions. So, you would want to conduct a thorough audience analysis before you produce a video. However, there are a few best practices for product video marketing:
- Storytelling: simply shooting your product in 360 degrees won’t help. You need to provide a context which often means showing it in use. The video must demonstrate why your product is irresistible
- Short and direct: best marketing videos are short and often less than 30 seconds, especially when they involve social media marketing, as well. Some of your customers may accept longer videos as long as you pull on their emotional strings
- Relatable: marketers aim to increase relatability between the brand and the audience. For this purpose, texts and images are not useful. As with the majority of types of video marketing, you want your product marketing video to illustrate emotion and honesty, which is why marketers often portray real people.
Explainer Videos
Explainer videos are short-form productions that demonstrate how things work in a simple way. These often need clarification with product marketing videos as marketers frequently utilize explainer videos to showcase the benefits of a product/service and provide explanations on how they work. The most common types of explainer videos are:
- Live-action – non-animated videos that businesses use for explaining physical products or people-oriented services
- Animations – often appear in the SaaS industry as they best illustrate non-tangible products and services
- Whiteboard – similar use-cases as with animated explainer videos but involves hand-drawn explanation on a whiteboard
- Screencast – screen-recorded video of a user showing how to use a product or a service
Explainer videos are often more casual than other types of video marketing techniques described in this article. They try to address the audience directly and frequently use “You” and “Your”. They get straight to the point at the very beginning of the video and never last longer than 90 seconds.
Testimonial Videos
Testimonial videos inform the audience of their genuine feedback regarding a product or service. These videos aim to establish trust and authority among the viewers and give potential customers an authentic perspective. In contrast to written reviews, testimonial videos feel more relatable – you can see and hear a product user. There are several recommendations on how to create a highly converting testimonial video:
- Keep it real – don’t provide the script for clients on what to say. Let them genuinely express their opinion regarding your product or service
- Ask questions in advance – make sure that you send your questions to the clients in advance so that they have time to think about the answers
- Pick a natural environment – don’t use artificial settings or unusual habitats for your video, on the contrary, go for a casual environment that best suits your product/service
- Create a comfortable atmosphere – make sure your respondents feel comfortable, you can even involve them in choosing a place for shooting or changing the questions if necessary
Educational Videos
Educational videos are often “How-to” videos that provide valuable information for viewers. These video marketing types answer the most important question in a simple, yet very detailed way. Marketers incorporate branding elements and promotional tactics in these videos, as most people have advanced visual and auditory memories. Educational video marketing frequently occurs on social media and short-form video platforms, such as YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, and TikTok. Some of the guidelines for creating effective educational videos are:
- Answering questions – first, understand what the question that may concern your audience and find the best possible way to answer it in a short but precise manner
- Encourage to find out more – don’t display everything you have to say or provide, intrigue the audience and let the leads find out more
- Determine the stages in the sales funnel – decide at which stage of the buyer journey your video is helpful, is it for raising awareness? For guiding them towards your platform? For using your product?
- Build trust – make sure you demonstrate why your company is authoritative and reliable when discussing a certain matter, why should your audience trust your video?
Webinars
Webinar marketing is one of the most frequent types of video marketing especially for B2B industries. B2B inbound marketing specialists often incorporate webinars to improve brand awareness and promote certain products or services while entertaining and educating the audience at the same time. Webinar marketing is capable of bringing in valuable leads, increasing conversions, enhancing brand recognition, and initiating customer loyalty. However, successful webinar marketing requires strategic planning. Here are some tips for webinar marketers:
- Mobile optimization: always optimize your webinar format and content for mobile phone users. Majority of your attendees will be joining with their phones
- Descriptive title: your webinar title for marketing purposes must be descriptive and clear, make sure your audience understands the content and scope of your webinar content through the title
- Time and date: try to choose the best suitable time for your audience and ensure that it does not overlap with their busy hours or weekend evenings
- Recording webinar: you want to nurture your leads. Providing a recorded webinar for those participants who could not attend an entire event shows your commitment to client satisfaction
Video Ads
Video advertising is a short-form informative production that appears on a user’s screen before, during, or after the main video your audience is watching. You may encounter video ads on platforms like YouTube (in-between ads), TikTok, Instagram stories, etc. In contrast to product videos, video ads focus on the direct and quick approach to promoting an item or service, usually within the first few seconds of the production. Video ad marketing has strict guidelines that marketers must follow:
- Capturing attention: some platforms won’t allow your video ad to play long enough. Hence, you need to capture the audience’s attention within the first 3 seconds
- Brand mentioning: start by mentioning your brand. Make sure that the first two sentences introduce your brand name in a natural manner
- Video ad format: choose your video ad format according to your audience, advertising platform, and your needs. You may go for unskippable ads, banner ads, or in-stream ads.
- Optimize for mobile: the majority of internet users now use their mobile phones. Make sure your video ads target mobile users first
- Captions: incorporate captions and subtitles to reach audiences with various needs. Also, don’t forget to use inclusive language for your video content
- Engage viewers: you can use buzz marketing techniques to create unexpected and surprising moments within a video to grab the attention of the viewers
Personalized Videos
The main purpose of personalized video marketing is to create a sense of exclusivity in your prospective clients. Such types of video marketing significantly improve the relationship and bond between a customer and a brand. Personalized videos are often recorded for a very specific target group that addresses a particular pain point or challenge. The content of the video is based on the preferences and user behavior of the target audience. Marketers use personalization in different stages of buyers’ journey. Here are some examples:
- Lead generation – attracts potential customers by focusing on their past behavior analysis and preferences
- Onboarding – welcomes new clients and introduces company culture, brand, products, or services
- Recommendations – based on the past interaction of clients with your brand you can recommend specific products/services you believe they may need
- Complementary products – suggesting additional products or services that suit your client’s preferences and goals
- Loyalty – videos target loyal customers and often celebrate various milestones, birthdays, and achievements, or involve special offers
Animation
Animated video marketing focuses on using characters, illustrations, sound, and text with the single purpose of grabbing attention. Two of the most common reasons why marketers prefer animation over live-action videos are its affordability and capability to describe abstract and non-tangible things. Many researchers also suggest that animations attract more viewers in the advertising industry than real-life productions. These are the most important tips for animated types of video marketing:
- Make your video descriptive, informative, and visually appealing
- Maintain consistency in your style, tone, and brand image
- Don’t lose a touch of professionalism
- Build your animation in an entertaining way
- Make sure you highlight your products/brands’ advantages and benefits
DIY Videos
Do-it-yourself (DIY) videos are the top choice for small businesses with limited resources. These videos are very cheap to create and yield highly efficient results. DIY video marketing strategies capture audiences’ attention very quickly and have long-lasting results. Your viewers feel as if they are in control of using a product and finding new ways to utilize it adds up more excitement. DIY marketing is also the quickest way to showcase your products and services and feel more natural, genuine, and reliable for the audience. Let’s review the best practices for creating a Do-it-yourself video marketing plan:
- Pain point – find a common problem or pain points of your customers that you can solve in your DIY video using your product or service
- Be authentic – don’t shoot your video in a professional setting and don’t overdo your video editing or special effects
- Keep it simple: DIY videos must be for complete beginners, considering your viewers know nothing about your product or service
- Use user-generated content: if your clients have used your product and have DIY videos uploaded on the internet make sure you use them in your production or at least mention them
Brand Videos
Branded videos are very popular types of video marketing for large corporations and international businesses. They target different stakeholders including partners, customers, influencers, and even prospective employees. Such videos describe the brand culture, mission, and vision, as well as highlight the strengths and authority of the brand. While brand video marketing is promotional the production itself should use as little advertising as possible. Some of the best practices for branded video marketing are:
- Don’t choose topics too broad: your viewers should not feel lost; make sure you choose one or two significant points to illustrate your brand
- Humanize your brand: viewers get engaged when they feel related to what is shown within the video, make sure your content is relatable
- Be genuine: people can easily tell if your video is staged and they will often feel annoyed; don’t be artificial and demonstrate real people, real values, and real brand image
- Don’t use jargon: when humanizing their brands marketers often become too casual; using jargon or unprofessional language damages brand reputation
- Use data as proof: data and factual information are what works the best in terms of persuading your prospects; ensure your video displays your achievements in terms of numbers and percentages