Video marketing strategy: a guide for 2023

Video production—at least filmed video production—is undoubtedly more affordable and easier to accomplish today than in the past. Despite personal skills and talent, for example, any smartphone now ensures excellent quality video shooting, and there is a wealth of relatively easy-to-use editing software available. 

The matter becomes more complicated if we look at the issue from an exclusively professional point of view, relocating video production within the marketing strategies of a company or any content creator working at a non-amateur level. In this case, videos cannot simply be pleasing or interesting or entertaining, but must meet precise objectives and must be consistent with the communication that the brand (or content creator) develops for all the media and touchpoints on which it is present. 

This is where equipment (editing software, video cameras, graphics and animation programs, and so on) and specialized skills (which are acquired by having accrued a wealth of qualifying knowledge) become important again. But an effective video marketing strategy is not just about the technical aspects of the processes involved; instead, it has a lot to do with concepts and methodologies. To put it differently: it’s a holistic approach and not a set of weakly connected tactics that work independently of each other. 

This post aims to help you build a video marketing strategy by offering a guide to the most promising marketing actions of 2023 while providing an overview of what video marketing is, today.

Many people coincide the birth of video marketing with the launch of YouTube, the video sharing and distribution platform that, since 2005, has revolutionized the very concept of video content. From that point on, the technology for creating videos, progressively simpler and less expensive, became accessible even to the uninitiated, and the introduction of smartphones to the market made viewing easier and more convenient by allowing, thanks to connectivity, a freedom of enjoyment that was previously unthinkable. 

In the space of a little more than a decade, conditions were created for a kind of “perfect storm:” a convergence of factors that has resulted in the increasing availability, at affordable prices, of tools for the production, distribution and enjoyment of video. Today, we can consume video content online when we want and where we want, and we spend an average of 19 hours a week in front of the screen of our PCs, tablets, and cell phones. It’s therefore not surprising that videos have quickly established themselves as the tool of choice for marketers, as they can more effectively convey the company’s messages to target audiences.

Parallel to this irresistible rise, the crowding of the media arena is also growing day by day: the amount of videos vying for users’ attention now defies any measurement. The background noise caused by information overload is also, inevitably, reflected in the design of video marketing strategies. To bring order to the interconnected reality in which we live, harnessing its richness of suggestions and minimizing its physiologically chaotic nature, brands’ video marketing strategy has gradually diversified, leading to the creation of more interactive, creative, and innovative content. 

The more that your video marketing strategy can interpret different market and consumer trends both correctly and quickly, and then go along with those changes, the more effective it will be.

We will now explain the trends that your video marketing strategy must be aware of in 2023 to gain a competitive advantage, and we’ll review the essential steps that every video marketing strategy must include.

All decisions made during the video creation process, from analyzing the brand’s communications needs to evaluating performance, flow into the video marketing strategy. Specifically, there are seven main steps that your video marketing strategy cannot miss. Let’s look at them together.

What actions should the target audience complete after watching the video? In a video marketing strategy, video content is designed to pursue a number of different objectives, such as connecting with the target audience, informing consumers and customers about products or services, promoting and marketing products and services, growing engagement on digital and social channels, and increasing brand awareness. 

Who are the potential consumers (age, place of origin, habits, interests)? Which channels do they prefer to use during their purchase paths and in which time slot? If we look at the popularity of user-generated videos, we might speculate that the ideal marketing frontier is the segmentation of audiences composed of a single viewer. It is the horizon of one-to-one marketing, which until recently was nothing more than a hypothesis and today is no longer so unapproachable. Personalized video, which translates data from numerous sources into stories in which the user himself is the protagonist, represents one of the most powerful technological outcomes of a now widely established trend that is putting customers back at the center of business communication. 

It’s essential to receive insights from the different contexts in which the digital and analog presence of the product, service, or brand is built. Transparent and comprehensive internal communication that reaches both the different business roles directly involved (creatives, marketers, sales, project managers, business decision makers) and the stakeholders helps avoid misunderstandings that could result in the loss of time and resources once the project is already underway, especially for extensive changes. Sharing the goal, or rather the objectives, of the video marketing strategy is crucial. Information regarding deadlines, scheduling, and especially budgets must be conveyed in a timely manner. Creating a clear timeline for each step in the process and planning for occasional delays will help minimize the risk of unplanned expenditures and meet deadlines.

Interactive and personalized videos, videos with different lengths and sizes, explainer videos, and brand videos are just some of the most popular ones. The video formats that you can use to tell stories with images have multiplied as more and more communication functions need to be fulfilled. Now more than ever, customers have high expectations and are drawn to brands that can offer them unique and technologically advanced shopping experiences. Although the technologies deployed to support the format variety are diverse, we can trace back to one constant: The companies that have been more innovative with their video marketing strategy are using video automation tools, thanks to which they have made the production process faster and more efficient. Not only that, more advanced video automation platforms make it possible to create interactive videos, which tend to be more engaging and multifaceted and prove extremely effective in building a relationship with customers, both acquired and potential. The demand for interactivity, along with the demand for greater personalization, will gain even more strength in 2023. This is because contemporary consumers want to be recognized every time they connect with a brand and now take it for granted that they can interact in an increasingly fluid and frictionless way. 

Consumers are omnichannel: they want a customer journey that moves seamlessly between different channels, digital and offline, and they perceive transitions that take place in hybrid contexts (for example: buying online but in store) as very positive. This is why in 2023, companies that have not yet done so will have to adopt a fully omnichannel approach. Only then will they be able to intercept the trajectories of the consumer (potential customer or already acquired) throughout the buying process, at different times and on different channels (largely online but also offline). A successful video marketing strategy should therefore involve distributing content across a mix of channels, developing ad hoc versions of the same video for each medium. This is not a trivial matter. Creating a video according to the technical characteristics of the individual channel can be a long and arduous process. Here, too, automation can offer providential help by adapting the format. In addition, advanced video automation tools can monitor video performance across all of the brand’s channels and track the evolution of the customer journey over time.

We have said it before: we live in an era of information overload; marketing and advertising also make a substantial contribution to this. It’s not only about the quantity of messages we are inundated with but also their quality and opportunity. The crux of the matter is that in order to carve out a space of visibility in the daily news flow, brands must produce content that is relevant to the viewers to whom it is directed. In 2023, the only video marketing strategy that will really work will be one that produces useful and meaningful videos that “make up” for the time the user decides to spend watching them. Realizing that the perceived value of video must be such that it justifies the time spent, marketers have increasingly invested in explainer videos in recent years: videos with great informational value that explain often complicated concepts, processes, and problems (e.g., the use of a product or service) in a simple and understandable way, breaking them down into easier-to-understand ideas. Often, when faced with hostile topics, the viewer tends to get distracted and abandon the path to understanding, either because they find what they are being told too difficult or because they cannot quickly find the information they need, or because they are simply bored. Explainer videos prevent the viewer from having a disappointing, or worse, frustrating experience because they can concretely respond to real needs. They convey even very complex messages clearly and fluently. They don’t aim to sell but to inform and educate—without being overly rhetorical or pedagogical. 

Digital marketing makes it possible to track an exorbitant amount of data that, once cleaned and categorized, can be analyzed with a degree of granularity and depth that was previously unthinkable. The video marketing strategy that will achieve the best results in 2023 is one that involves the use of video marketing analytics, which defines the data sets you need to focus on to achieve specific goals and selects the metrics you need to pay attention to (reach, demographics, engagement, conversion, retention). Video analytics are invaluable to companies because they give marketing and sales teams a comprehensive view of how leads and customers interact with video. Once all the information that comes from video analytics is contextualized within a marketing strategy, you are able to more accurately focus on the type of relationship the brand has established with the individual user. A video production platform equipped with analytics capabilities can be a crucial support in being able to provide a clear and comprehensive overview of the data at hand.

In this brief guide to the video marketing strategy of 2023, we wanted to remind you of the main stages of a video marketing strategy, from identifying goals, identifying target audiences, aligning with and adopting the most appropriate technology, choosing the channel mix, developing relevant content, and selecting metrics. We have delved into each of these steps by projecting them into the near future, where the trend toward interactivity, personalization, omnichannel, and the systematic use of data will still be prevalent and will likely gain further strength. In any case, whatever transformations lie ahead, video will play a key role in keeping brand-customer communication vital in the year to come.