How to Use Short-Form Video in Digital Marketing
7 Minute Read
In today’s attention economy, the average attention span is now somewhere between that of a goldfish and a squirrel on caffeine. People want something short, snappy, and memorable—or they’ll take their business elsewhere. How do you get your brand to stand out? You need to put short-form video front and center.
TikTok has nearly 2 billion users worldwide and has driven more than $3 billion in consumer spending annually in the last few years. Other platforms have embraced short-form video content to considerable success, with Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts driving significant traffic and attention.
Platforms like these have made short-form content all the rage. If you’re ready to take your video marketing to the next level, you need to start adding these bite-sized beauties to your repertoire.
What Is Short-Form Video?
As a rule, short-form videos are about 5–60 seconds in length. Some marketers claim videos running 2–3 minutes in length are also short-form, but we think that’s pushing it—especially given that the average person’s attention span has plummeted to 47 seconds. If it can’t be watched in under a minute, it might as well be a novel.
@pups more evidence that puppies are just dog toddlers 🥹🐶 #dogtok #dogsoftiktok #puppytiktok #puppyplay #dogfamily #dogtoy #puppydog #puppychildren ♬ original sound – pups
Equally important to the short-form video experience is the “feel” of the videos. They’re designed for mobile, so vertical video tends to be the norm.
@reese_rountree we still love don
♬ Jojo Siwa is a Bagel – Josh
Why Are Short-Form Videos Good for Marketing?
Ultimately, what’s good for your digital marketing is what helps you reach your goals and grow your business. That likely includes multiple marketing and advertising channels. Your customers will also make their preferences known by how they interact with your brand and your content. If they don’t like what they see, they’ll probably gravitate toward your competitors.
Short-form video marketing is beneficial for consumers and businesses alike for several reasons:
- Digestible – This isn’t the time for deep dives. Short-form content is quick and to the point. This makes the video digestible for consumers and easy for you to produce.
- Authentic – People aren’t looking for slick, polished, and corporate anymore, especially when it comes to social media video marketing. Authenticity is a must. Thankfully, it shouldn’t be difficult for most businesses to “get real” in their videos—as long as they’re not hung up on outdated strategies that keep the customer at arm’s length.
- Memorable – Lots of viral moments in recent years have come from short-form videos. That’s because the best viral videos are short and impactful, which makes them easy to remember. And, because short-form content is quick and easy to produce, it’s a lot easier for you to make something memorable when a trend is having a moment.
- Trendy – Short-form video content is a great conversation starter, and you can be part of the conversation by creating videos that tap into trends and memes. This is good for your visibility, helps to show that your brand is part of the conversation, and proves that you pay attention to what your customers/the community are saying.
- Searchable – From organic search to trending hashtags on favorite social media platforms, short-form videos that rise to the top are easy to find. That’s a win-win for you and your audience, as it can get your brand recognized and align your video clip(s) with what your customers are looking for online.
So how can you master short-form video in your digital marketing? We’re glad you asked!
5 Ways to Use Short-Form Videos in Your Digital Marketing
First, you’re going to need a solid short-form video strategy. Think about where your customers are and the goals you’re trying to achieve. This will help you know where to post video content (Ex: your website, YouTube channel, social media profiles, ads, etc.) and the look and feel of the assets.
Second, you’ll need to produce the videos. This could be done by your team and/or in partnership with a video marketing agency. Be mindful of video length, aspect ratio, and other elements, as these can affect where the videos can run and how well they perform.
Once all the pieces are in place, you have multiple options for using short-form content to bolster your marketing and ads:
1. Driving Reach and Engagement
Reaching potential customers and getting them to engage with your brand is one of the key goals of social media marketing. By creating short-form videos that appeal to your audience’s sensibilities—their needs, their desires, their concerns, their aspirations, their sense of humor, etc.—you can build a loyal following and get people to engage with your posts.
@twelve3media do we have a deal? @Mark Cuban #hellosharks #sharktank #trending #officehumor #agencylife ♬ original sound – tiktokcontent
2. Building Brand Awareness
Consumers don’t want to read your mission statement or watch a bunch of commercials. They want to see your brand in action, and they probably want to see it in 60 seconds or less.
Custom marketing videos can communicate the key points about your brand on platforms like YouTube Shorts and social media sites. Unless they’re short format, people probably won’t pay much attention. So keep the videos short, uncomplicated, and on-brand, without being stodgy or formal. In other words, give the people what they want.
@twelve3media omg she’s levitating again #agencyhumor #officehumor #levitate #corporatehumor #corporatelife ♬ Return To Innocence – Short Radio Edit – Enigma
3. Improving Search Rankings
It’s important not to think of videos and other assets in a vacuum. All aspects of your marketing should support each other. Short-form videos can be used to promote:
- Service and product pages on your website
- Blog posts
- Long-form video content (such as how-to guides, customer testimonials, etc.)
- Podcasts
- Webinars
By driving traffic to your website and raising visibility for keywords and search queries, short-form video content marketing can support your search engine optimization. You can also optimize video clips for native search by using hashtags, targeted titles, detail-rich descriptions, trending audio, and other features to help users find your videos and stand out in trending conversations.
@alilegal A draft that I waited to post until there was a happy ending for my client who recieved full custody 👏🏻 . #custody #childcustody #lawyer #law #custodybattle #michigan #familylaw #lawyersoftiktok ♬ original sound – Ali Brady
4. Advertising
Whether on your phone or a desktop computer, you’ve seen at least one ad that’s a short-form video. Even some of the ads you see on TV use that format. You can tell because these videos don’t look or sound like normal commercials—and that’s a good thing.
People have gotten wise to older advertising strategies, and they’re fed up with the gloss and artificiality. When done well, digital advertising is a lot more direct, less complicated, and more real. That’s what people want to see from organic content. Ads with the same style are more likely to resonate because they align with users’ expectations.
5. Driving Leads and Sales
Short-form video isn’t all about capturing attention, though that’s a big part of it. Platforms where short-form content makes the biggest impact are becoming powerhouses for brands to meet their business goals.
TikTok Shop offers a unique digital shopping experience that gives sellers the ability to demo products through videos and live streams and entice people to buy right on the platform. Instagram Reels also offers robust in-app shopping capabilities.
Even businesses that don’t have native online shopping can leverage short-form content to drive traffic to their product pages, landing pages, etc. These destinations should be outfitted with in-depth descriptions, FAQs, photos, long-form videos, and other assets to drive conversions that seal the deal.
Getting Started with Short-Form Video
A lot of small and mid-sized businesses think about video production as a one-and-done project. It used to take so long to prepare, shoot, and edit high-quality videos for digital and traditional media. Fortunately, the popularity of short-form gives brands the freedom to break away from the old process. Now you can point and shoot instead of making something Oscar-caliber.
Once you jump on the short-form video bandwagon, you need to keep moving. It takes consistency, creativity, flexibility, and a detailed understanding of your audience to regularly produce exciting, on-brand short-form content. You and your team also need an in-depth understanding of the best practices and guidelines for posting videos on each platform you use.
Sounds like a lot, right? No one said being a short-form video marketing expert is easy, but you don’t have to do it all by yourself.
Twelve Three Media Is Your Premier Video Marketing Partner
For multiple departments at Twelve Three Media, short-form video content has become a serious weapon in our formidable arsenal. We see potential for short-form videos across multiple marketing channels and industries.
We partner with clients to deliver outstanding results. This includes all aspects of creating short-form content:
- Understanding your brand identity and messaging inside-out
- Analyzing your audience and the competition
- Identifying areas of opportunity to create video content, including short clips
- Determining the best platform(s) for video marketing
- Editing videos for optimal display on social media, your website, and ad networks
- Repurposing ads and long-form videos for short format
Our team also offers comprehensive video production capabilities. We can help you with everything from scripting and pre-production to on-location shooting to editing and final delivery.