What is Video-First Marketing and Why It’s Essential for Your Business

Read Time: 4 minutes

As a marketer, you likely know you need to consistently research marketing trends to determine what strategies you should be applying to your marketing plans. Thus, you might have heard more and more experts referring to “video-first” marketing as a major trend in 2023 and beyond.

Keep reading to learn more. This overview will explain what video-first marketing is and how you can use it to drive your business’ success.

Understanding Video-First Marketing

Video-first marketing is simply an approach to marketing in which video takes priority. Although you may continue to generate other forms of marketing content, such as blogs, podcasts, etc., your main focus should be on video marketing content.

Video-first marketing is on the rise across numerous industries and niches due to a range of factors. For example, thanks to YouTube, TikTok, and more, video platforms are abundant now. Marketers are taking advantage of them accordingly.

Surveys even indicate approximately 91% of businesses currently use video marketing to some degree. Yours should as well to remain competitive.

Benefits of Video-First Marketing

Video-first marketing offers several potential benefits, including:

Capturing the attention of an audience, as video content drives more online engagement than other forms of content
Allowing a business to establish a unique branded identity through dynamic visuals, sounds, etc.
Facilitating storytelling in a marketing strategy
Forging an emotional connection with an audience

It’s also worth noting that video marketing content can take many forms and serve many purposes. For example, instructional videos can help leads better understand how your products and services may benefit them. Behind-the-scenes videos can provide leads with an inside look into your operations, showcasing your company culture and values. This may also help you attract talented job candidates!

How You Can Integrate Video-First Marketing Into Your Marketing Strategy

As you plan to integrate video-first marketing with your current marketing efforts, remember the following tips:

Set measurable and realistic goals: This is an important tip to keep in mind no matter what type of marketing content you’re generating. You’re more likely to take full advantage of a marketing strategy if you begin by establishing specific goals that you can measure.
Know your audience: Review all the information you have about your target audience. Use this knowledge to brainstorm the various types of video content that might offer value to your audience.
Experiment: Again, there are many different types of marketing videos. Examples include (but certainly aren’t limited to) product demonstrations, testimonials videos, educational videos, comedy skits, FAQ videos, event videos, etc. Experiment with generating and releasing different types of video content and measure audience engagement to learn which types you should prioritize in the future. Additionally, be aware that certain types of videos perform better on certain platforms. For instance, short-form videos are ideal for social media, while longer videos might perform better on YouTube or your website.
Repurpose videos and optimize them: You don’t have to generate new video content for each individual platform. You could repurpose content instead. To return to the above example, a longer YouTube video could be cut down for social media so that it only hits the main points. Because statistics indicate that mobile browsing is now at least as common as desktop browsing, you should also ensure your video content is optimized for multiple devices.

As always, avail yourself of all helpful analytics tools at your disposal. Learning more about what does and doesn’t work will help you consistently improve your approach to video-first marketing.

Video-First Marketing: Potential Challenges (and How You May Overcome Them)

No form of marketing is absent of potential challenges. Being prepared for said challenges is key to navigating them successfully.

Challenges you might encounter when you experiment with video-first marketing include:

Cost: It’s true that producing video content may cost more than producing blogs and other such forms of content. You must therefore budget carefully to optimize every dollar you spend. That said, it’s important to know that an online video maker could help you generate impressive video content much more affordably than you might expect.
Distribution: Generating quality marketing videos isn’t enough—you also need to distribute this content across the appropriate channels to maximize your audience. Start by researching what types of video platforms members of your target audience may currently be engaging with, and create accounts on those platforms accordingly.
Content creation: Creating video content might also take a little longer than writing a blog or putting together an infographic. To ensure you provide your audience with a steady stream of valuable content, brainstorm a long list of ideas and establish a realistic production schedule.

Bonus tip: Don’t assume your videos need to all be live-action to make the right impression on your audience. Animated videos can allow you to generate and distribute branded content without the production restrictions of live-action.

Video-First Marketing Case Studies

Studying examples of businesses that have successfully embraced video-first marketing can serve two purposes. One, it can help you more thoroughly appreciate the potential return-on-investment that video-first marketing can deliver. Two, it can help you develop ideas for your own video-first marketing strategy.

Consider the example of BlendTec. This company is unique in that its marketing team identified and leveraged the power of video-first marketing as far back as 2006, when the brand attracted the attention of YouTube viewers with a video series called “Will It Blend?”

The content of these videos is simple: they depict a blender, well, blending objects that you wouldn’t normally put in a blender, such as phones.

On the surface, the videos were merely entertaining. However, they also served to demonstrate how strong the company’s products are.

That’s just one example. The best way to learn more about how video-first marketing can benefit you may be to identify a case study that’s relevant to your specific niche.

A Final Word on Video-First Marketing

Video-first marketing represents a smart approach to marketing in general for a very simple reason: video content is extremely popular online. By generating video content, you have a strong chance of reaching and engaging your customers. The suggestions here will help.

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Don’t worry if you lack video production experience (or if you have a tiny video marketing budget). Powtoon is an online video maker designed for beginners and professionals alike. Thanks to templates and other such resources, it greatly simplifies the process of creating impressive video content. Sign up today to get started!

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Hanna Abitbul

Hanna is Powtoon's Content Marketing Strategist. She joined Powtoon as a copywriter in 2019, after graduating from university with a specialized degree in marketing and business. She continues to inspire people to create incredible video content with blog posts, videos, guides, and more. Hanna's passions include reading, singing, and caring for animals (#proudvegan). Nothing makes her happier than waking up to her two black kitties who, contrary to popular belief, are good luck!