With the variety of marketing tools available to brands today, video is one that should not be overlooked.

Don’t be afraid to get creative with your marketing strategy by incorporating videos into your brand promotions. Whether you’re posting directly to YouTube, or sharing content through social media, videos are a great way to increase conversions, inform your customers, and set yourself apart from the competition. While it may seem like a challenge to tackle at first, a simple video can make all the difference for your business.

Here’s how you can use video to your advantage when promoting your brand.

Email campaigns

If you’re not using videos in your email campaigns, it’s time to start now. Don’t miss out on all of the benefits that they can provide to your business. According to Animoto, adding the word “video” into your email title can increase open rates by 19%, click-through rates by 65%, and reduces unsubscribing by 65%. Videos can often catch and retain the attention of your audience better than an image can. This could make a huge difference for your business! The next time you plan out an email campaign, consider using a video instead of an image or plain text.

Get social

Social media has completely transformed the way that we promote our brands. It provides an avenue for content to be easily shared to anyone, anywhere in the world. Videos are the perfect medium to be shared because they are often entertaining and engaging. It’s easy and free to upload videos to sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be using social media to promote your brand. You can be direct and ask for your followers to share your video or you can create an introduction video to pin to the top of your social media feed. Keep in mind, shorter videos are often easier to digest as most audiences don’t have a long attention span on social media.

Take advantage of autoplay

Autoplay is a great feature for marketers to use. Autoplay causes videos to begin playing as a user is scrolling through their social media feed. This makes your audience more likely to continue watching the video all the way through if it has already caught their eye. This means that you should start the video out with eye-catching, intriguing content that will grab your audience’s attention right away. Once you hook them, it will be much easier to reel them in all the way. Who knows, your video might just encourage them to become your new customer!

Optimize for search

Just like with any content you publish on the internet, make sure your brand’s video is optimized for search. After all, you want people to be able to find your content! This means that when uploading you must include the proper keywords in the tag section. You should also make sure that the title is a good description of what the video is portraying and includes your keywords. If you are uploading to YouTube, it’s also necessary to follow these rules for the description section.

Have a call-to-action

If you are trying to use video as a tool to increase engagement, include a call-to-action in the video. People are more likely to engage with content if you prompt them to do something rather than leaving the video open-ended. If you’re trying to get people to visit your site to buy a product, at the end of the video include the phrase “Find out more by…” or “Visit our site for more information”. Also include contact information so they can reach you and link to your website not only at the end of the video but also in the description. This way, information is easily accessible for your audience. You don’t want to give them a call-to-action that’s impossible to complete!

Track analytics

You track everything else in your marketing strategy, so don’t forget to do the same for videos or you will miss out on a ton of valuable information. Videos can do a lot to change the traffic and conversions to your site. Tracking your data through Google analytics provides insight so you can see how your efforts are paying off, or what kind of changes you need to make to improve the results.

About Lauren Usrey: Lauren is a student at the University of Texas at Austin and a marketing communications intern at Swyft. She supports clients with social media, blogging, and tech PR activities. Swyft has offices in Austin, Denver and Houston and provides digital marketing and PR services for tech companies seeking rapid, sustained growth. Some of the services provided include content marketing, social media strategy and ad buys, email marketing, and media relations.