If you aren’t currently marketing your business through video, you are definitely missing out on a huge potential audience. It’s now possible to record high quality video for a very low cost, using tech that we all take for granted such as our mobile phones and tablets.
You can also distribute the content through most of your social media channels. Not only uploading it to YouTube but also sharing it across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. To gain the widest reach you need to meet your customers where they are and most importantly you need to give them content that adds value not just markets to them.
Focus on the Story, Not the Promotion
When someone watches a video, their unspoken expectation is to be informed, educated or entertained. Video is not the place for the hard sell, rather you want to raise awareness of your business so that people remember you when the time comes for them to make a purchase or book a service.
Depending on your business model one approach, which has been very successfully implemented by Vape Club, is to keep your viewer up to date on information which impacts them. By creating a short video which outlined the recent changes in the legislation around vaping, the company provided content which is important for users of e-cigarettes to know and in the process reassured them that their products were compliant.
Educate your Audience
One way to capture your audience’s attention is to take the main focus of your business and to then approach it from an unusual slant. Blendtec, who make a range of blenders, are probably one of the most famous examples of this. Not content with just focusing on the benefits of their products they instead introduced the Will it Blend campaign, where in each video they tried to blend something new, and often unexpected, such as an iPhone. Not only did this show the power of the blender it was so unusual it made the company highly memorable.
Red Bull is another example. Because their drink is all about energy, their video marketing is high octane and showcases a mix of athletes, daredevils and risk takers demonstrating their unique skills. While your business might not have the same budget as these companies, it’s still possible to educate your audience about what you do, but from a unique angle.
Time is Key
One important element of video marketing is timing. You can often stay ahead of the curve by creating content which is time sensitive and therefore will catch trending keywords in the search engines, as we saw with the Vape Club example above.
However, the converse of this is also true. Much of the content you create should be evergreen so that people finding your videos months, or even years, down the line will still find something of value in them and make them interested in finding out more about you.
Be Open & Extrovert
The key to video marketing is not to be shy. You need to get in front of people and convey your message to them. If you only have a small team, maybe enlist the help of all your staff to bring ideas to the table and get involved in creating content. This can be a fun way to engage staff in getting the message of the company out to the wider world.
If you take the example of Walmart in the USA, they offer a wide array of content on their channel including not only ways their own products can be used, but also showcasing testimonials and even including collaborations with other partners and bloggers. If you sell B2B it’s worth thinking how you could leverage the content of your clients to make it a win-win for both companies.
Video is not going away any time soon and if you haven’t ventured into this form of marketing yet it’s definitely worth your time and investment. It’s still possible to capture a whole segment of audience that your competitors might not even be aware of.
About Carson Derrow
Absolutely – video is a powerful way to provoke an emotional response and build a connection 🙂