Language School Video Marketing: Is Infotainment The New Default Marketing Strategy?

Are people getting lazier to read and consume text-based information and switching over more and more to watch videos instead?

How is video helping your reputation?
People are different in how they consume and process information. Some people are visual, others more audio oriented, others need to touch something and this could translate to them printing out information and not only consuming things in front of their computers.
However also with new technologies that enable you to stream video content to your television video becomes are more and more dominant form of how potential language school customer consume information about learning languages.

Videos: Time and Cost Intense To Produce?

Luckily technology progresses fast and video cameras are getting cheaper and with almost everyone having high-tech smartphones now everybody can be a video producer instantly.
The problem is that having the technology at hand does not make someone a great producer. Look at Youtube and the constant influx of unbearable shaky, blurry or outright boring video content there is.
So time and cost is still a factor to produce meaningful video content that speaks to your desired audience and inspires them to take action toward buying your language services and courses.
It might be an option to reach out for traveling video specialist and offer them free language training services in exchange for their services if you are on a limited budget for your language school.
Or you want to invest in one or two team members to give them the opportunity to upgrade their skills with video creation and marketing as a long-term investment.
The money spent on this will get you valuable return of investment as video as marketing factor is something that you simply can ignore anymore.

Videos: Technical Challenges To Adapt To Modern Devices

One of the most time-consuming aspects in dealing with video is the challenge to make video content available to all device that a potential language student is using. A video needs to display equally good in a smartphone as on a table or on their home-based desktop systems.
Luckily most video platforms where you can host your videos today take care of those technical specifications. This is also a reason why most businesses chose to use those platforms as an alternative to save and manage videos on your own web hosting.

Videos: Promotional Videos Versus Reality Videos

When you think of video most professional companies in the past produced high-quality promotional videos that were quite costly but were the base of their marketing messages. Basically promotional videos that can also be used as ads on television and other public media outlets.
With the advent of social media, the more “reality show” styled content is taking over. And it is logical. This kind of content looks less like advertising and self-promotional.
“Sampling the Reality Of Your Language School” with smartphones can be done very easily even within asking students to play out real-life situation showing themselves struggling (and succeeding) applying their new language skills.
There is a variety of video content you can produce, and you should try at least once each of them to test which one those gets the best results from your potential language students.

Videos: What Kind Of Video Content To Produce?

The most popular videos are short language instruction videos. You could use them to give a sample how your classroom experience would feel like. Some language schools offer free mini-courses where subscribers receive a short language training every day for 7-10 days via email. Sometimes those videos are only available exclusively to the email subscribers as opposed to some of the public videos available on YouTube.
You could film personality video clips about your featured teachers and why they are the ones people love to learn a new language with. (After all personalities and people can’t be copied. While a high-tech classroom can be installed and used by any language school, specific talented people are only available to one school at one given time frame.)
Of course, you can film your language school environment – preferably “public relation style” documentary videos. Open door days, receiving an award from your local government for contributing to the local business success, receiving your “Certificate Of Excellence” from Tripadvisor. There are many “day to day” success elements that could be turned into a short and informative video clip.
And the most desired video content: filmed testimonials of happy language students that look believable and not scripted. Those will make a long-lasting impression on potential new language customers who are unsure if they should study with you or not.

Videos and Copyright Infringement Issues

There will be always people who steal and copy videos just to put them online so they can make some money with showing Google ads on Youtube with them.
Some of those are very smart and claim to do it under the “fair use law” that allows others to use small parts of your content for them without asking you for permission.
Be aware of this and when you produce and publish video online always make sure to display that you are the rightful owner and have the copyright to it.
Depending on how often you find video content abused (for example sample language training courses that are all of a sudden used on teaching platforms like Udemy being used without permission while the others make it earn money without crediting you) – you might need a lawyer to enforce your video rights.
It all depends on how much effort you put into producing your original video content and if you see those “copyright violators” as free additional marketing instead.
So there are no general recommendations that can be set – in the end, it is your individual business approach on how to produce and share your language school video content.

Video Platforms as Networking Opportunity

Hosting videos on video platforms are not only convenient and time-saving because of technical requirements, but is most often a question of how to benefit from their networking opportunities.
Video platforms that are social media itself like the two main ones being Youtube and Vimeo have the clear advantage that you make it very easy for potential customers to discover and share videos with others.
The benefits of hosting your videos on YouTube are obvious: since Google owns YouTube, it will help your website ranking and SEO marketing efforts and you can easily use the paid advertising options to get instantly qualified traffic sent to your website.
Because Google is mainly displaying snippets from YouTube, language schools using other video hosts may get lost in the search results because those the prominently visible snippets are a much more enticing result to click on.
Vimeo has no video advertisements like YouTube (if you use the free YouTube services and risk distractions for viewers to your language school services of your competitors) and you have a much better chance that a viewer will watch the entire video without any interruptions.
Vimeo is also known to have more quality artistic content. While on Youtube you will encounter a lot of free low-quality often time-consuming “not so useful” content – because people have to pay a monthly fee on Vimeo it is more likely that those people stay away.
Vimeo video hosting fees are not expensive and easier to afford by the way. On the other hand, it has of course significantly less traffic than YouTube.
Hosting Videos on video platforms alone will not get you instantly free traffic after all – you still have to engage on other meaningful Internet marketing activities to get people to watch your content.

Enhancing Video Marketing Success With Transcriptions

This is a very important aspect for multiplying the effect of video marketing: transcribing your content. It is additional work and investment of money for sure. But it will help search engines recognize much better what your content is all about and also will help hearing-impaired viewers.
Turning audio and other media into text gives you also additional content that you can post on your own website and social media along with your original video content.
Hint: Search engines (as of October 2018) still can’t read audio media, yet.
And transcripts add to a more positive user experience which has a huge influence on the ranking of your website as well.

Other Video Services To Consider

Wistia: The video hosting site that aims for business use – it stands out with their fantastic business-centered options such as integrating calls-to-action during your video and the very important email-collection tools to increase the number of subscribers for your newsletter.
DailyMotion: If popular media companies as Mashable and BuzzFeed using it are using it there is are reason for it. With over 120 million unique visitors per month (based on ComScore’s data) it has a well-established audience with the focus on being European viewers.
Vzaar: Similar to Wistia and is very popular for infomercials and educational videos, so it could be a perfect fit for your language school. An interesting aspect might be that they can deliver content in China which is most often a challenge with most other video hosting platforms.
Vidder: The specialty of this video service created for businesses is their ability in creating interactive videos – they have special built-in player options that increase how viewers react, comment, play, and share videos. They offer superior analytics and track the viewer’s process in consuming your video content.
Vevo: Vevo is a great example of how specialized video for niches can work and you have most likely seen them on Youtube. Vevo calls themselves the world’s leading all-premium music video and entertainment platform and is specialized on highest quality experiences on YouTube.
Depending on your budget and focus for your language school – for example, if you offer language courses that teach how to dance or perform specific music arts that your country is known for – it might be worth the effort utilizing their network.

Video-Marketing Works Best Together With Your Internet Marketing Mix

Video marketing is only as effective if all your other parts of your Internet Marketing are working together. Video itself alone is not a magic pill or over-night secret in getting more sales.