Drum roll, please… and the Academy Award for Best Business Video goes to Acme Corporation for their new Turbo Widget product. We’re not quite sure what a Turbo Widget is (or does), but the video certainly looks good. It's a good thing their friends and family watched the video, because their prospects, customers, and business partners certainly didn’t. And if those people didn’t see it, then they certainly didn’t turn that video into a business transaction. But at least it looked good. Damn good, in fact.

Seen this before? Are you guilty? We all are. Fortunately things are changing for the better and video marketing is leading that charge. However, like so many other viable market opportunities, charlatans and alchemists quickly look to fill the void. ("We'll make your video viral with video marketing.") I’m amazed at how much “video marketing” chatter there is out there, but I haven’t heard about what video marketing actually is. Enough is enough, so let's define it because it matters to your business strategy, your marketing initiatives, and your return on video investment.

Video marketing is:

Getting the right video in front of the right audience to trigger the right action.

Simple? Yes. Powerful? Yes. Effective? Only if you link all three (video, audience, action) together. When you link these components, you get positive and measurable results. When you don’t, you’ve created an awareness campaign, a term used by marketers to describe an initiative that resulted in no business action. It was acceptable ten years ago, but not in today’s highly-competitive business climate.

Though we’ll be exploring each of the theses “rights” in greater detail over the coming months, it makes sense to look at each briefly now.

Right Video. A great video is on message and delivers a clear and compelling point. The right video sticks. If there’s an on-screen speaker, it’s someone the audience can relate to. If there is animation or motion graphics, it amplifies the value proposition rather than detracts or distracts from it. Video marketing uses the right video content, which doesn’t necessary mean over-done and expensive production.

Right Audience. These are the people who will use the video as part of an informed decision. The audience can either be consumers or businesses, but they have to see the video. We’ve already stated that the right video sticks, but it only sticks with the right target audience. The new world of online video allows for much more precise and economical targeting, but it requires both strategic planning and metrics-based tactical execution. Video marketing is about getting the video seen by the people who care.

Right Action. Don’t make people think too hard; they have enough on their minds. There’s a simple question from the target audience that so many marketers just don’t answer: “What do you want me to do?” Unlike other types of media, video makes the audience far more likely to do something. (Read: take action.) If the video is on YouTube, give the audience a link back to a website where they can get more information, communicate with someone, or place an order. The action you want them to take must be aligned with the video, but it must also be natural to audience, otherwise they’ll walk away. Video marketing incorporates video seamlessly into the transaction path.

Video marketing is about getting the right video in front of right audience to trigger the right action. Unless you take this approach, your video may well be a bust, Academy Award or not.

When creating playlists for your YouTube channel, don’t hold back. A well-organized channel is a useful channel, giving viewers the option (and the motivation) to stick around longer, browse related videos, and get more interested in your brand. Based on our research of over 3,500 businesses who use YouTube, we found that the most successful channels have five times as many playlists as the least successful. 

Keep in mind that you can also include other users’ videos in your playlists. This can be a good way to engage your community. For example, if your business is a pharmaceutical company, you might want to include a playlist of carefully curated videos of people speaking about a relevant illness.

Incorporate playlists into your marketing campaigns and use them as a way to group related content, saving your viewers time filtering through other content that might impede a call-to-action. Both Google and YouTube recognize a hot playlist, which will help your search marketing efforts.

Follow these steps to create and edit playlists on YouTube:

1. Sign into your YouTube account and click on your username in the upper right corner of the page. Click Video Manager on the drop-down menu that appears.
2. Select Playlists from the vertical navigation menu on the left, click the New button, and type a title and description for your playlist. Don't worry, you can always edit these later. Click Create Playlist. (Please note that if you don't have any playlists yet, the Playlists and New buttons might appear in a slightly different location than if you already have playlists.)
3. The Edit Playlist options will come up. For marketing videos, you most likely want your playlist to be public, and you should allow embedding, liking, and disliking for maximum engagement. You won’t be able to choose the playlist thumbnail until after adding one or more videos. The Delete Playlist button is also on this page if you ever need it.
4. You can add videos in several ways: On the Edit Playlist page, you can copy the URL into the designated spot after clicking Add Video by URL. Just paste the URL of your video (or someone else’s) and hit Add. Keep an eye out for the Add to button that appears below videos throughout the site. You can click this to gain access to a dropdown menu of all of your playlists, as well as your Watch Later and Favorites lists. Throughout the site, video thumbnails have a plus button that appears in the lower right corner of the thumbnail when you hover over it. This brings up the same menu of options as the aforementioned Add to button.
5. Now that you’ve added some videos to your playlist, it’s time to go back to Edit Playlist and choose a thumbnail. Just click the round circle next to your favorite thumbnail. (Choose a close-up of a face or recognizable object if possible.)
6. Re-order and remove videos if you’d like. Use the icons on the left to move things around and the ‘x’ button on the right to delete videos.
7. Including videos from other users? You can use the ‘notes’ feature to write anything you’d like - your own short description of the video, why you’re including it in your playlist, etc. This will be publicly viewable.

Repeat the process to add more playlists. Remember, a well-organized channel will get you better results than a big jumble of random uploads.