4 Steps to the Video Marketing Small Business Needs
4 Steps to the Video Marketing Small Business Needs
Video marketing is the hottest trend in marketing right now. Customers report that watching a video is their preferred way to learn about a brand or research a product or service. For a small business, video marketing can be a steep learning curve. How do you get video content? Where do you use video to compliment your marketing strategy? This article gives business owners tips and tools they need.
Video marketing gives small businesses a great way to promote their company online. Video content can be used on a variety of platforms like your company website, a landing page, email marketing, social media like YouTube or Facebook, and even at live events. Video marketing success starts with a solid marketing strategy. Create quality content and use video to convert viewers to customers.
The hardest part of video marketing is getting started. It’s challenging to Figure out what kind of video content you need and where to get professional-looking production and editing. Learning how to use video effectively to drive engagement, promote your brand, generate leads, and convert clients isn’t a walk in the park either. Follow the steps below to get started and hit your target on any budget.
Small Business Video Marketing
Whether you plan to use video content to spruce up your social media or hope to make it the workhorse of your content marketing program, it’s best to start out by setting clear goals. That’s the best way to identify and prioritize projects that will help you make progress.
When you’re setting long-term goals for video marketing, think about your target audience. What are they looking for and where are they looking? That will let you know what type of videos you need and where you need to present them.
Once you establish a foothold with a few videos that present your message in an effective way, you can branch out to create videos that focus on a specific type of customer, a specific product or service, or specific social media platforms.
In addition to creating content, you’ll need to develop a process for making sure you get the details right. You’ll also need a process for analyzing performance data and making tweaks to optimize the return on your investment.
Start Strong by Thinking About the Big Picture
The folks at Wistia have offered some pretty straightforward advice to small businesses looking to make a big impact with marketing videos. “Start with the videos that will have the biggest impact on your business”. So, how do you do that?
Every business is different, so there is no “X” marks the spot sort of answer to the question of what video will have the biggest impact on your business. At the very least, you need to have some market research to go off of. Ideally, you’ll have a documented strategy for your marketing program that will help you determine where and how marketing videos will fit in best.
When you’re starting out, it’s helpful to think of ways to create multiple uses from each video production project you set in motion. Can you plan and produce a single video that can be edited to do well on a website, on YouTube, on Facebook, and more? If so, you’ll be using video to its’ fullest potential.
There are certain types of marketing video that lend themselves to being reused across different platforms. The most common are the explainer video, the testimonial video, and the brand awareness video or company story.
Explainer Video
If you’re only going to make one video for your small business, make it an explainer video. It will give you a tool that can work well online and at events. Use it on the homepage of your website, on a service page, a landing page, or on social media.
A good explainer video will keep it brief but dig into the details enough to provide viewers with a clear understanding of how your company solves the problem they have. Video production quality is important if you’re looking to impress viewers enough to turn potential clients into new customers. But the quality and clarity of the information are paramount.
If you have a camera and some basic video editing software, you can create an explainer that will generate leads for free. Find a good example from a competitor or a company you admire and let your creativity guide you from there.
Testimonial Videos
The great thing about a testimonial video is that you don’t have to script video content. When the customers who love your small business are willing to talk about why they love it, all you need is a camera and a time to get together with them.
One of the biggest challenges for a small business is building trust with its target audience. When your potential clients see themselves in the happy customers featured in a testimonial, it gets a lot easier to make it over that hurdle.
Testimonials are great to use on your website or landing page but they can be just as effective when you use them to increase engagement by sharing them on Facebook, YouTube, or other social media platforms. Ask for testimonials from your satisfied customers every chance you get.
Tell Your Story
Sometimes the best way to get started in video marketing is to forget about the marketing part for a while. Telling your audience your company story is a way to get video content that will increase brand awareness and establish trust with viewers. It’s also a great approach to video if you plan to break the finished product up into different-sized-bites to be used across multiple platforms.
While a product video tells the audience what you do or how you do it, your company story will tell them why you do what you do and who you do it for. The difference between the two comes to light in the way that they establish your brand and build customer loyalty.
Branch Out To Keep Things Interesting
The folks at Sendible know how hard marketers have to work to drive engagement for content marketing. They provide some solid advice that any small business can use to make marketing videos do the heavy lifting.
As a general rule, it’s important to create video content that is educational or entertaining because that is what makes it relatable and shareable. When you consider that over half a billion people watch video on Facebook every day and that social video gets 1200% more shares than text and images, you begin to see why video is worth the effort you put into it.
Once you lay the foundation with one or more of the big three marketing videos, consider branching out to create specific pieces of content that are made to do one specific job.
Educational Videos: Use them on social media, a blog, or in emails to grab attention, generate leads, or nurture customer relationships.
Entertainment Videos: Do a great job of grabbing attention on social media.
Explainer and Demo Videos: Put them on your site or a landing page to help generate and convert leads.
Event Videos: Nurture customer loyalty by sharing events on social media, your blog, or through email.
Testimonial Videos: Make them the cornerstone of your website or landing page to convert more leads. Share them on social media to help generate more.
Company Story: Feature them on your website to let potential clients know who you are and why you do what you do.
Tutorials: Grow your audience by posting tutorials to your site and social media or send them out to your email subscribers.
‘Thank You’ Videos: Make them a part of your sales funnel to nurture loyalty and make it easy for your biggest fans to share your company with others.
Getting The Details Right Makes A Big Difference
More often than not, when a small business is intimidated by video marketing—it’s the “video” part that worries them more than the “marketing”.
It indeed takes “talent, time, and resources” to get a small business video content that will provide a boost to the broader strategy. Just ask the folks at Wordstream. They’ve put together a list of the devilish details that set good video content up for success.
Make sure there is a smiling face in the thumbnail for your video and you’ll get more plays.
Use giveaways or other campaigns on social media to drive traffic to your video.
Take advantage of the share buttons on video players to make it easier for videos to go viral.
Don’t forget to ask your friends, family, and loyal customers to share your video content.
Video and Email combine to be a powerful force for small business marketing.
Spend a little bit to give your videos the support they need on social media.
Make a plan to feature high-quality video content at your live events.
Pin fresh video content to the top of your Twitter feed.
Share video content on Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, and anywhere else you connect with your audience.
Optimize the Results Through Analysis
The folks at MarketSplash remind us that investing in a video isn’t a sprint that’s over when you post the content. They remind us to take advantage of the useful analytics tools on most video platforms and to kick through the finish line.
Generating growth for your small business through video marketing isn’t something that you can achieve through luck. Getting started means identifying a good idea and letting your team run with it. If at first, you don’t succeed, analyze the data and figure out why. Then fix it. Then do more and do it better because you’ve learned important lessons.
Keep a close eye on site-traffic, video views, audience engagement, the number of leads generated, and sales conversion rates to know whether your marketing video is getting it done.
Argonaut Productions Helps Small Businesses
If you want to grow your business, video marketing is a great way to connect your brand to your audience across a wide range of online and in-person platforms. If you’re not sure where to begin we can help. If you’re having trouble creating quality content, we’re happy to offer advice. If you need tips to boost the performance of the content you have, we can do that too!
Give us a call or book an appointment through our website to learn more about what we do, who we do it for, and why we love what we do.