I’m guessing you’ve heard about the power of video to your marketing efforts, right? For example, did you know that including video on website landing pages makes them 53 percent more likely to show up on the first page of Google? Or that a customer who watches videos of products/services is 85 percent more likely to make a purchase? Yeah. Those are all true.
As marketers, we hear these stats and they make an impact. Well, video makes the same impact to your customers.
If you’ve heard about the power of video but weren’t sure how to incorporate it into your small business, below are some ideas of where video can fit into your marketing mix.
1. To Simplify Concepts/Messaging
Whether you’re a technical company trying to simplify a product so normal users grasp it, or you want to break down a complicated concept to make a larger point, video can be your greatest ally. Video allows you to talk directly to your customers, while also visuals. As a result, it’s better suited for educating users and helping to spread your message.
For example, Stay Smart, Stay Healthy is a new-media venture that aims to help people understand something that is far too complicated – the healthcare industry. How do they do it? Through whiteboard videos that make difficult concepts personable and show how they apply to our lives.
Here’s a video they did about how to get the most out of your health insurance. It currently has more than 145k views.
2. Your Brand Story
Social media has shown that users really do care about the story behind your company. We want to know more about the brands that we’re loyal to and we want to know more about the brands we’re considering being loyal to. Video helps to capture this.
For example, below is a video that my employer Overit created to show people who we are as a company and the types of project Overit has worked on. It’s given us an asset we can use to let people in and see what we’re all about and what we do.
3. Product Videos
Product videos show people what it is they’re about to buy. It breaks that third wall and shows them a living, breathing representation of what could be theirs if they’d just hit the purchase button. This is incredibly powerful – regardless whether you’re selling a $500 technological gadget or just a pair of shoes.
For example, Zappos revealed a few years ago it was able to increase sales 6 to 30 percent simply by adding videos to product pages. They didn’t change anything else. All they did was add videos. That’s powerful.
Zappos is so crazy about reviews they even encourage users to submit their own videos to share their Zappos experience.
4. Customer Testimonials
One area that’s seeing a lot of growth right now are customer videos. Many of the larger brands are now creating campaigns solely around building video testimonials. They understand that there’s nothing quite as powerful as hearing from a customer, in their own voice and environment, how a company has helped them to achieve a goal or even improved their quality of life. These videos often run between :15 (perfect for Web) and :60, and are a great asset on their own, or paired with other marketing material.
5. Screencasts
Screencasts give small business owners another powerful way to add video content to their websites in a way that is helpful and beneficial to their user. Screencast videos allow SMBs to walk customers through a specific process and show them what is happening (or what should be happening) on their computer during different stages of a task. Screencast videos are great for directing customers through sometimes-confusing tasks like setting up a new account, engaging with the community for the first time, or how to install a piece of software.
Above are just a few ways that marketers can take advantage of video on their website. The possibilities for using video to market your brand, stand out, and to show off what you have to offer are virtually endless. How have you been using video to market your company? Or, if you’ve been shy to, what’s been holding you back?
Stephen
Wow Lisa, those stats in the intro are truly eye-opening. 85% more likely to make a purchase or 53% more likely to show up on the first page of results?
Or how about increasing sales 6 to 30 percent ONLY by adding video? Numbers like those are just impossible to ignore.
Thanks for this post!
Dave Curtis
I’ve been on this for two years now Lisa and what you’re saying is absolutely true. Since adding just four or five videos to one site sales have nearly doubled [edited by Editor]. It takes a little work getting things ready upgrading equipment, software and going through a few dozen practice runs purposely looking for whatever possibly can go wrong (plus I’m using FBs The Frugal Filmmaker group plus the accompanying Youtube thefrugalfilmmaker channel) with lighting, sound and dealing with direction in order to be prepared for disaster before it can happen during live production!
Video is definitely the way to go, and I think that based on the returns I’m seeing on my own client sites the number of videos to shoot for is at least twenty business product, concept or service related videos to beef up the site and (YouTube) channel and bring in some good content and keyword diversity.
Ti Roberts
Lisa,
Video is becoming more and more important to standing out within your market. I realize that video is pivotal to the growth of my business and my blog so I’ve been taking the necessary steps to put a video making process in place to cater to my subscribers needs.
Thanks for sharing this post with the community!
Ti
Jacob Giles
Some visitors are sometimes too lazy to read, especially long articles. Videos are a great way to make eye contact, somewhat, and it’s a great way too to interact with the readers. It’s most convenient than rather just articles.
I’ve always wondered whether its more beneficial to use YouTube or Vimeo (or both) to host your videos and then embed these to your site? Which of these video platforms is more powerful?
Ben
I liked your article except for the 5th point. In my experience, If you are making a video to explain a process it usually means there is a problem with the UI in your site that needs to be fixed.
On another point, the more exposure your site has, the more of a chance your site has of gaining traffic from multiple sorces. It is def worth small businesses taking the time to distribute their video to as many sites as they can so they can beenefit from added backlinks/SEO and traffic.
In distributing video content to multiple sites (one of the posters above mentioned YouTube and Vimeo, for example), is there a chance of being “dinged” for duplicate content, much like I could get dinged for posting the exact same blog post in multiple places on my site or on multiple external blogging sites? Thanks!
robert
It took me quite some time to see a business blog worth reading. Definitely awesome!!!
Wow. That was pretty awesome. Zappos doesn’t have videos on every single product page, though. At least, I don’t THINK it does. Still, having a video does shoot conversions through the freaking roof.
Hi Lisa, thanks for posting. I would like to bring the concept of emotional branding to add value to the second point. Emotional branding is a resonating experience which grows gradually, especially when it comes to news generations of consumers -digital-natives- who react better to interactive and participatory marketing efforts.
Cheers! Max