Video marketing is the best way to share your personality and your expertise. It’s how you entertain. It’s how you relate to your audience’s biggest struggles and share your best solution (namely, your product or service).

You know you’re supposed to be making videos.
You tried making videos.
But they’re not working!

What gives? Is it that video marketing works for every niche but yours?

No, friend. That’s not it.

The problem is that when you’re making videos for “video’s sake,” you are not going to get very far because, while that may technically be video marketing, it is not effective video marketing.

Imagine trying to put together a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle without ever look at the picture on the box. You might get your border done. You might group together some similar colors and even get enough pieces together that you get an idea of a garden with the blue sky, red barn, and babbling brook – but you aren’t able to actually able to bring it all together to complete the puzzle because you have no idea what the actual picture is supposed to look like!

The biggest mistake you can make with video marketing for your business is not having an overall strategy!

Without it, your audience will likely be unclear on what you do and how you can help them. So how do you fix that?

3 questions to ask when laying the foundation for your video marketing strategy:

WHO am I talking to?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and bet that if you have been in the small business world for more than 5 minutes, someone told you to do one of those “ideal customer/client avatar” exercises where you determine what tv shows she watches, where she shops, how old is she, etc.

I don’t care about any of those things.

Seriously, I don’t care how my ideal client takes her coffee (or maybe she prefers hot tea, which is mind-boggling to me, but whatever). If she has the problem that I am solving, she is my target market.

Which is the perfect lead into…

WHAT is your ideal audience’s problem?

Now we start to care about the specifics because the more specific you can be about identifying and relating to the pain point and struggle, the more relatable you become to your target market and that builds the “know, like, trust” factor.

Which leads us to…

HOW do you solve the problem?

Your solution could be your product or service. Or it could be words of encouragement. Or it could be practical steps they can apply to move closer to their goal (like this blog post is doing!)

Ask these 3 questions about your business, on the whole, to establish your over-arching strategy and then ask these questions with each video that you make so you are super clear on the purpose of your video.

Now that you’ve laid the foundation strategy, let’s start building the 3 video pillars on top of it.

Video Piller #1 – Teaching videos

Teach from your expertise. Offer tips and tricks that your audience may not know about. Record tutorials on software or products that would benefit them. Provide details so that your viewer walks away with a small win that makes them want to come back for more.

Video Piller #2 – Entertain/Encourage videos

I’m not talking telling jokes or dancing like a fool (I have ZERO rhythm). Simply sharing the behind-the-scenes of your business, telling your personal story, and sharing your perspective on hot topics related to your product or service are all ways to create these videos.

Video Piller #3 – Showcase Product/Service videos

It’s time to show off what you have worked so hard to create! Show the product itself, offer a virtual tour of whatever you offer, talk about the benefits they will enjoy because of it, and share client testimonials about the transformation experience they had because of your product/service.

Watch the video to get more examples and details about all that I talked about here in the post and be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel so you get notified when my next video comes out!

You don’t have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great!

Zig Ziglar