Developing an Online Video Marketing Strategy, Part 1: Creating Content

Leveraging Current Events

Using current events is a great way to create content. Some great examples come from marketing videos produced during the World Cup in June 2014. According to YouTube, viewers watched more than 1.7 billion minutes of World Cup ads. That's almost 6 times the amount of Super Bowl ads. The “World Cup Munchies” video below comes from Food Tube’s Jamie Oliver.

Identify an existing buzz and a trending topic that people are already talking about and use it to your advantage. If you can plug in your content, if it makes sense for your brand, using current events is a great way to get the most out of your videos.

Industry events and trade shows are another great vehicle for online video marketing. Again, there's buzz and there are people talking. There's a dedicated audience who is talking about something specific to your industry or trade. That's a great way to create content, whether it's before, during, or after the show.

Product Launches

Product launches are a great way to create content. Take the example of the iPhone 6 unboxing video featuring Blue Man Group (below). Obviously, the iPhone 6 is a huge product launch; everybody was talking about it. (And unboxing videos are one of the hottest things in the Internet right now.) What Blue Man Group did was to create their own spin on the unboxing of the iPhone.

GoPro is one company that’s very active on their own YouTube channel and in general with online video. They released the video shown below right around the time they launched their HERO4 4K model. The video obviously demonstrates some of the features in the camera by presenting this amazing 4K footage, but they also released this video right around the time of the volcanic eruptions that were going on in Hawaii around October. They took their own product launch and tied it in with a current event. Again, this is a great way to think about how you can create content during the marketing hype of other products.

Trending Topics

Identifying and leveraging trending topics is another great way to create content with a strong marketing impact. Everybody remembers the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. A Halloween costume shop came up with the ingenious idea of created the DIY Ice Bucket Challenge costume to take advantage of the contest buzz to promote their shop.

Closer to home, try to identify trending topics that are specific to your industry. This allows you to connect with topics that your audience is very passionate about. The video shown below is one we worked on with a tech company called Isola Group.

Note that this wasn't a video that they were trying to sell anybody on; it was just showcasing how sustainability is important to them.

You can also get a lot of marketing mileage out of holiday themes when people are talking about them. Think about what people are talking about on other social media channels, trending topics like Halloween when those topics are in season.