If you’re looking to make money online, you’ve probably considered trying your hand at video marketing. After all, if you can captivate, entertain, or inform viewers with video content, you can almost certainly figure out a way to monetize that content. Whether you’re a professional videographer or a wannabe at trying to hustle on YouTube, figuring out how to make money with a video marketing campaign can seem like an exercise in futility.
Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to walk you step-by-step through the process of how to easily and effectively make money with a video marketing campaign. Keep reading, and you’ll discover the precise methods to dramatically grow your channel (and your bank account)
Step one: Define your niche and target audience
The very first step in your money-making journey as a video marketer is to define your niche and target audience, and build a buyer persona. In case you haven’t guessed, we’re going to tell you about a service called “Video Creator + Product Searcher” by HubSpot that can help you define your niche and target audience for your video marketing campaign. For those of you who have a product or service that you’re looking to promote, this tool can help you come up with compelling video content that will connect with your audience.
In the tool, you’ll enter your niche and the main keywords you’ll use to define your video content.
After you’ve entered your niche and keywords, the tool will give you a few suggested buyer personas, along with demographic information about your ideal buyer. You can then modify these suggested personas as needed and, finally, you’ll see a shortlist of videos that match your target user.
If you click on any of the videos in the shortlist, you’ll be taken to a page that displays that video’s headline and description as well as its prices. From here, you can learn more about the video by clicking on the video’s “i” symbol. From this page, you can also learn more about the product or service the video is promoting. Finally, you can click on the “Buy” button to access the retailer’s website and make a purchase. (You can also add affiliate links to your Video Creator’s suggested products, if you’re trying to monetize other websites.)
Step two: Find your video’s main message
Once you have a shortlist of video ideas, it’s time to pull the main message from each video. You’ll do this by writing a short summary of the video’s main points and, hopefully, you’ll discover a theme that ties each summary together. Let’s say, for example, that you’re producing a how-to video on building a wine cellar. Your first summary might be:
“Wine cellars are expensive. However, by following these step-by-step instructions, you can build a wine cellar for just £500.”
You can write a similar summary for each of your video ideas. When you’ve written a summary for each video, it’s time to take a step back and consider what you’ve created. Does your video summary match the video’s topic? Is it written in a compelling manner? Is it different enough that it will draw in your target audience? You’re not trying to pitch your video to someone who has no interest in wine cellars, are you?
Step three: Create a buyer persona and target audience
In Step 1, you defined your niche and audience. In Step 2, you learned about the product or service you’ll be promoting and found keywords to describe that product or service. Now, it’s time to take those two steps together and flesh out a buyer persona and a target audience. A buyer persona is a mental image of a person (or group of people) that represents your target audience. You’re aiming to create a persona that will relate to your product or service and, at the same time, make the viewer curious enough to click on your content or to enter their email address to receive more information.
To create a buyer persona, you first need to decide what type of person you’ll play in your video. Perhaps, you’ll play the role of an aging baby boomer who wants to pass along his knowledge of history to the next generation. In this case, you’d want to create a buyer persona that’s interested in history and has plenty of cash to spend on educational materials. Alternatively, maybe you’ll play the role of a parent who wants to make sure their children experience a safe and happy childhood. In that case, your buyer persona might be tech-savvy, smartphone-wielding millennials who want to track down the hottest toys and gadgetry. Of course, you could always play it safe and create a bland, unrecognizable persona and go with the first draft that comes to mind.
When you’ve defined your buyer persona, the next step is to create a persona for your video’s target audience. To do this, you’ll need to enter your keywords into the “Target Audience” field on Video Creator’s “Build and Run a Facebook Video Ad” page.
For instance, let’s say that you’ve defined your niche as “historical fiction authors,” and that your target audience is millennials. If you’re trying to sell cookbooks to this audience, you might want to create a persona that’s interested in history and has a love for food. You could define your target audience’s demographics as follows:
Age: 26-35
Gender: Mostly male
Race: Caucasian
Interests: Cooking, history
When you’ve finished entering your target audience’s demographics, it’s time to consider what type of video content you’ll produce. Let’s say, for example, that your target audience really enjoys watching videos about travel and you have a travel video idea that you’ve had brewing in your head for a while. You can create a short video explaining where you’ll travel to and how long it will take to get there. While you’re at it, you could also throw in some tips on where to stay and what to do while you’re visiting. The possibilities for a travel video are endless.
Step four: Test your video’s messages
Once you have a video that captures your audience’s attention, it’s time to test the video’s messages. To start, you can use the “Basic Tests” button on Video Creator’s “Build and Run a Facebook Video Ad” page. This will allow you to test a single video’s message without having to create a new ad for each variation. While you’re on this page, you can also test different headline, description, and thumbnail variations to see which one performs best. (You can also use this page to learn more about your target audience and how to engage with them on your behalf.)
If you decide that the video with the original headline, description, and thumbnail performs best, you can build upon that base video’s success and try to improve upon it. If not, you might want to start from scratch and create a new video with a new theme.
Step five: Measure the success of your video
With all of that said, you now need to measure the success of your video’s messages. To do this, click on “Campaign” at the top of the Video Creator’s homepage. Here, you can see the analytics for all of your videos. From here, you can track your video’s views, reactions, and shares as well as examine the demographic information about your target audience. You can even compare this data to similar videos on your channel to see how this particular video compares.
If you decide that this video is performing well, you can use the “Set SMART Goals” button on Video Creator’s “Build and Run a Facebook Video Ad” to set a specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goal for the video.
If you decide that this video is not performing well, you might want to start over again and try a different approach.
Step six: Create a video schedule and plan out your video content
The last step in creating a successful video is to create a video schedule and plan out your video content. For those of you who are running your own YouTube channel, you can use the “Video Schedule” widget located on the right-hand side of the homepage. Here, you can enter your channel’s URL and the date on which you’ll upload your next video. (You can also put in your channel’s social media platforms — like Twitter and Facebook — so that your viewers can learn about new videos as they’re released.)