Video Marketing: Why You Need It and the Top WordPress Video Plugins

Video marketing is when you promote your business through the use of video.

While it sounds simple, incorporating video marketing into your content strategy takes practice and finesse. 

Whether you are an experienced video marketer or you’ve just come across the topic, here’s a quick overview of video marketing and how you can use it to elevate your website. 

After this article you will know:

• What is Video Marketing?
• Why Use Video Marketing?
• How You Can Use Video in Your Content
• Marketing vs. Monetizing:  What’s the Difference?
• Top WordPress Video Plugins
• Video Marketing Tips and Best Practices
• Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways

What is Video Marketing?

Video marketing is the practice of using video to advertise, market, or promote your brand, product, or service. It is an essential part of any solid content marketing strategy.

The goal of video marketing is to increase customer reach and engagement through social and digital channels, educate customers, and ultimately boost sales.  

Why Use Video Marketing? 

Video marketing is surely a term you have heard of before, but maybe it’s something you didn’t choose to research and invest in. 

However, if you thought it was a passing trend, think again. 

According to Cisco, by 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic — 15 times higher than it was in 2017.

Furthermore, 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video.

That means if you don’t have a video marketing strategy, you aren’t marketing yourself where customers are telling you they spend the most time. 

We could really keep going on and on with the statistics, but there is no shortage of research that says you should be using video as part of your online marketing strategy.

If you’re still not sold, here are the four most important reasons to invest in video marketing.

Video Marketing is Great for SEO

Possibly the most convincing argument for why you should add video to your site is the boost you’ll see in SEO. 

Video can help improve your search engine ranking in a couple of ways:

• It increases your click-through rates: Including video on your page drives a 157 percent increase in organic traffic from search engine result pages (SERPs).
• It increases time spent on your page: visitors spend over twice as long on a page with video than on one without.

The more people visit your page, and the longer they spend there, the more valuable Google thinks your content is. In fact, Martech.zone says you’re 53 times more likely to show up first on Google if you have a video embedded on your website.

Additionally, search engines like Google have multiple search engine categories. Video, as a whole, is a large and commonly-searched category. Using the right keywords in your video title and description can give you a significant SEO boost. This is true whether you embed the video or host them directly on your website.

To get the most value out of your content, take further steps to optimize it for SEO. Write interesting, accurate titles and descriptions and include backlinks to your products.

For a complete guide on how to optimize your website for SEO, check out our WordPress SEO: Complete Beginner Guide.

Video Increases Conversions

Not only does video give your website’s SEO a major boost, it should in turn increase conversions as well.

Research shows that adding a product video to your landing page can increase conversions by 80%.

Boosting your site’s SEO with great video content will get more people to your site, many of which are likely to turn into conversions. 

Video Humanizes Your Brand

With more and more companies turning to automation, people want to know that they’re talking to a person, not a machine. Video provides an opportunity to create trust and add a human element to your brand.

People can hear and see you. They see your eyes, smile, body language, facial expressions and more. They know who you are based on what you share and how you show yourself.

A video touches more of the senses, specifically sight and sound. For visual and audio learners, that is wonderful. If you combine it with a hands-on tutorial that they can follow along with, you’ve also touched base with kinesthetic learners.

If you’re looking for ways to get started, you can introduce your business, showcase products and/or services, show some behind-the-scenes action within your business, share customer testimonials, or teach your audience something.

It’s Highly Shareable

One of the great things about video is that you can share it anywhere. And it’s easy to do so.

When you create an original video, you can share excerpts on your blog, send out snippets in your newsletter, or create short clips to post to social media. 

As an added bonus, viewers will have the opportunity to click through to your site and view the full video.

How You Can Use Video in Your Content

There are numerous ways you can work video into your content. The more creative you are the more content ideas you can come up with to market your brand. 

Below are a few of the most popular types of videos used in video marketing. 

• Service demonstration: If your business is providing a service, such as a carpet cleaner, electrician, or plumber, then the easiest way to promote your business is with a demonstration of your service. Show your audience how to clean a stain, install a ceiling fan, or clean out a clogged drain. By showing your expertise in the area, you are personalizing yourself and demonstrating that you can be trusted in your field while also creating brand recognition.
• Product reviews: If your business involves sales, then you can bring in customers with reviews of some of the products that you sell. Try to be fair and objective, but at the same time push the positive attributes of the product so that you can increase your sales. Choose products that you know are good quality and that will sell well if people are aware of them. Then, create a review or your own version of an “infomercial” along with links to your online storefront to sell the product.
• Meet the staff and office: A great way to personalize your business and draw in more connections to your brand is with short videos introducing your staff to the world. You can also show tours of your workspace so that people can see your professionalism reflected in your workspace.
• Non-profit ideas: If you are seeking donations for your non-profit, then you can actually show what the money is going towards. If you are doing carpentry work to build a wheelchair ramp for someone who is disabled, then show the work going into it so that people can see the personal side of these donation requests.
• Customer testimonials: We all know how important reviews and testimonials are – people already love them. But video just brings them to life. It adds a human touch and makes them more believable.
• Vlog: Just like your weekly blog, only you’re talking about your topic in front of the camera rather than on paper. For the time-crunched, it’s a great way to learn more about your products and services without having to sit down and read – plus, it really helps the topics come to life.

Marketing vs. Monetizing:  What’s the Difference?

When you use video platforms such as YouTube to market your products, you are creating content that can promote your brand and create recognition and bring viewers to your website to become potential customers. You don’t actually make money on the videos, but you do use them to bring in customers so you can earn money on the back end.

However, when you monetize your videos, you are actually getting money for those videos specifically. Sure, you may earn money indirectly by bringing in web views and encouraging brand recognition. But that isn’t the main means of making money.

Video Monetization Strategy

If your goal for adding video to your content is to monetize your videos, then you’ll want to take a slightly different approach to your video marketing strategy. 

Here are a few popular ways to monetize your videos:

• Product reviews—Again, let’s say you are running a plumbing service. You can monetize your videos by doing video reviews of tools that a person may want to buy to do their own plumbing work. These can be products that you can link to on your website (which will earn you money when they buy them from you) or affiliate links that take them to a retailer like Amazon which will give you a percentage for each customer referral who buys the item.
• Product mentions—You don’t have to give a product a review. You can just mention the products during the course of the video itself and emphasize that it is the one that you choose to use. Then, you can reap the same benefits when the viewers decide to purchase these items.
• Sponsorships—If your videos get a lot of views, it is actually possible to get corporate sponsorships from companies. These can be the manufacturers for the products you sell who are basically doing paid advertising on your own videos.

Top WordPress Video Plugins

So we’ve covered the basics of video marketing, you’re sold, and now you want to add it to your site.

Adding video to your website might sound like a challenge. Fortunately, it’s fairly easy thanks to a large selection of WordPress plugins.

There are a lot of WordPress plugins available for embedding video on your website. So you don’t have to go digging through the plugin depository, we compiled a list of top WordPress plugins to help get you started:

Advanced Responsive Video Embedder

ARVE allows for drag-and-drop video placement and has numerous other features you need such as autoplay (if supported by the provider), shortcodes, customization options like aspect ratio adjustment and a What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor.  (The paid version boasts extra features.) 

Featured Video Plus

Featured Video Plus is a great option. It works just like Featured Images. You’ll need to host the video somewhere (on your website or a third party location like YouTube, Dailymotion, or Vimeo) and post the URL into the box on the post edit screen. That video will then be displayed in place of a post image.  As a bonus, it also works with Soundcloud and Spotify (including playlists).

Video Sidebar Widgets

Video Sidebar Widgets can display videos from 14 different sharing networks. Shortcode has been added so that you can embed your video in your content. The Random Video sidebar widget won’t work properly if your website uses a caching plugin. If you do use the Random Video option on a page or post, you can make sure not to cache that page or post (if your plugin allows it). The other features work well.

YourChannel

YourChannel is a plugin that prides itself on user-friendly integration with YouTube. Like all of the video options listed here, it’s responsive and backed up by user reviews. You can integrate video playlists and use a banner image in the footer of your videos.

There is a free version that does everything you need. The only difference between FREE and PRO is that the PRO version doesn’t let your visitors leave your site for YouTube.

YouTube Showcase

YouTube Showcase is a powerful YouTube video plugin that helps you display your videos in a gallery or grid view on your website. It is a very simple and easy-to-use plugin. Each video has its own page with comments enabled. All you have to do is insert the YouTube Video ID on the video page and it automatically generates the page.

Reviewing Other Plugins

There are other plugins that have been highlighted elsewhere, but are no longer maintained by the developers, incompatible with the newer WordPress versions, or have been removed from WordPress for not meeting standards.

Before you use a plugin do a bit of research to find one that is best for your needs. 

It may seem like several of these plugins cater to third-party hosted content, but don’t let that discourage you. YouTube is, after all, the second largest search engine on the web. Test your plugins on a sandbox or staging environment prior to installing them on your live site.

If you are new to installing plugins or just need a refresher, check out our guide on How to Install WordPress Plugins. 

Video Marketing Tips and Best Practices

Now that you know why video marketing is important and how to incorporate it into your website, it’s time to cover best practices for creating, posting and sharing video content. 

• Know your audience: One of the best ways to do this is to research the competition. Check out some other people in your niche and see what they’re doing and what gets the most engagement. Once you know that, make a video you think would be interesting to your audience. It’s a good bet that whatever is working for them will work for you as well.
• Keep it professional: Shaky camera movement is okay once in a while, but constantly using it can make viewers bounce due to annoyance and motion sickness. Use a tripod when you can (this is especially true for live video).  Better yet, hire a professional videographer if budget allows. 
• Shoot with a script. Ad-libbing can make it seem like you don’t know what you’re talking about. Write a script and stick to it to make sure the video comes out as you planned. 
• Keep it Short – The same principle applies to video that applies to blogs: keep it simple. Consumers want content that is easy to digest, no matter the format. Experts say that the ideal length for a Twitter video is just 45 seconds, while Instagram is a mere 30. A good rule of thumb? Keep it as short as possible while still including all of the relevant information.
• Include a Call-To-Action – Every video you post should lead viewers back to your website, whether it’s to make a purchase or sign up for your newsletter – and you can’t achieve those objectives without making them clear. Include a CTA at the end of each video and repeat that same information in the written video description.
• Don’t oversell yourself. If every video involves a sales push, you will lose your audience quickly.

Where to Share Videos

Once you’ve shot some videos, it’s important to know where to share them. There are dozens of different places you can share your business videos, but these are just a few of our favorites:

• YouTube: YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google (it’s actually owned by Google), so uploading your video here is a no-brainer. Remember to fill out the title and description with the appropriate keywords so your video can be found amongst the millions of others already on there.
• Your Website: Once you’ve uploaded your video to YouTube, you can grab a little snippet of code and easily embed it on your website. Place your videos “above the fold” (or high up on the page) so visitors can quickly spot them.
• Social Media: If you’ve been on social media lately, you know it’s all about the videos. In fact, over 100 million hours of video are watched every day on Facebook alone. Whenever possible, upload your video to the platform directly rather than sharing a link. Certain sites give higher search rankings to “native” video.
• Newsletters: Newsletters can get boring and, as we’ve already said, people don’t like to take a lot of time to read. Video can spice things up and increase engagement. Try popping one in your next newsletter and see how much your click-through rate jumps up.

Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways 

Video marketing is fast becoming the best way to create engagement and increase conversions, but it’s important to have a strategy. 

As you move forward with video marketing remember: 

• Video marketing is the practice of using video to advertise, market or promote your brand, product or service. 
• There are several benefits of adding video to your site including boosts in SEO and conversions, as well as adding a human element to your brand. 
• You can add video to your sites numerous ways such as vlogs, product reviews and demonstrations, and how-to videos. 
• There are multiple great WordPress plugins that make adding video to your site simple and easy. 
• Follow best practices when creating and sharing video. 

For more ways to market your website, check out 10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website.