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By: Lauren Perrodin

The growing complexity of social media marketing is an undeniable reality for marketers every day. Not only do you need great content, but you have to tweak it for each platform, including keywords, hashtags, images… and certainly short-form videos.

Unless you’ve been hiding far away from the internet for the past 10 years, you’ve noticed the rise in video content marketing across not only social media platforms but landing pages and blogs as well.

According to HubSpot’s 2023 Marketing Strategy and Trends Report, over half of the marketers that used short-form videos increased their investment in future video marketing strategies. In addition, it has the highest return on investment (ROI) of any social media marketing strategy.

Short-Form Video Marketing in a Nutshell

Think of a short-form video as a trailer for a movie. Rather than sitting through a full demo of your product or service or reading through an entire blog about it, a customer can watch the “trailer” of the content, and then read the rest of the content for more information.

It’s a video that can range between 1 and 10 minutes depending on the platform. For example, an Instagram reel can be up to 60 seconds, whereas a TikTok video can be as long as 10 minutes.

There are different types of short-form videos including:

  • Funny yet informative.
  • Serious and on brand.
  • Cartoonish and right in the middle.

Short-form videos are meant to explain an offering, promote a product or generally inform the audience about your brand.

Why You Need Short-Form Video as Part of Your Marketing Strategy

Video can tell the story of your existing or new content more effectively for a wider audience. Wyzowl’s 2023 Video Marketing Statistics report found that 96% of consumers prefer to watch a video over any other type of content.

If you’ve noticed that your blog content isn’t getting enough engagement, or your landing pages are optimized but bounce rates are high, video production could be exactly what your marketing strategy needs.

People perceive video more easily than written content and it’s become a staple for consumers today. Insider Intelligence found that the average time spent on mobile devices per day jumped 13.8% in 2022 and is expected to grow as time goes on due to time spent consuming digital media.

Support Your Content Strategy

An informational page, such as your homepage, could have a short-form video that provides a high-level overview of your business’ products and services. Or, if you have a blog that’s ranking well on search engine results pages (SERPs), you could add a supportive video that explains a key point of the blog — keeping the content fresh and relevant.

Wyzowl’s report also mentions that 95% of video marketing users found that this strategy helped them increase brand awareness, 91% said it increased their website traffic and 90% said video marketing helped them gain more leads. The more people are spending time on your website, the more likely you are to rank high on a SERP — and to create more customer conversions.

Choosing a Platform

Nearly every social media platform has adopted some form of video marketing feature, so which one is best for your business strategy? Understanding your buyer personas — the fictional people who represent your best, most enthusiastic customers — can help you get there.

Buyer personas outline how your consumers decide to buy your product. This can include any number of things, but understanding how they use social media will be most helpful here. Dig into which groups of buyers use which types of social media so you can be front and center during their daily scroll.

The Buyer’s Journey

Video can be used in several different ways that align with the buyer's journey. The buyer’s journey includes 4 steps:

  • Awareness: Realizing they have a need and possibly talking to their friends, coworkers or online forums to see if anyone has information on this need as well.
  • Research: Looking up informational content regarding this subject.
  • Decision making: Comparing prices and past customer reviews among different brands.
  • Purchase: Buying an item and leaving a review online.

At each stage of the journey, the customer will be looking for different types of content. Your video, blogs, eBooks, landing pages and infographics can all support these stages while positioning your brand at the center of the customer’s journey around every turn.

The best way to get in front of customers is by joining video content with keyword-optimized written content — appeasing both the reader and search engines.

With the right short-form video strategy, you could turn your new or existing consumers into brand ambassadors — people who are so excited about your product and services, they tell their friends, family and the public about their experience. You could facilitate this step by encouraging them to post an unboxing video, a reaction video, a live review or simply write an assessment on a public forum such as Yelp and tag your social media handle.

Social media supports short videos by allowing video posts or adding a reel. While a video post is more permanent, your subscribers will enjoy a reel from their favorite brand that’s promoting a flash sale, for example.

As you adapt to using social media videos, tap into trending sounds or themes and uncover what each platform brings to the table. With short-form video, there's a lot in store for your brand.