When it comes to marketing your small business, video marketing can be an incredibly effective tool.
Videos allow you to connect with potential and current customers, fostering a connection that can lead to conversions.
Plus, videos are great for SEO – they help you rank higher in search engine results pages.
If you’re looking for ways to boost your business with video marketing, check out these seven ideas.
1 – Create a company introduction video
Video is a fantastic way to introduce your business, who you are and what you do.
Often embedded on the homepage of your website or within your about us page, the company introduction video should explain how you help your target audience. Make it about them, not about you.
When planning this video, start by answering the question, what problem do we solve?
Keep the video short; 2 or 3 minutes is the ideal length.
Make sure you include clear instructions to the viewer about what to do next, your’ call to action’.
2 – Produce customer testimonial videos
Taking a customer testimonial and presenting it in video format takes this social proof to the next level.
Asking your satisfied customers to share on camera their experiences of working with you is a compelling way to influence prospective customers.
We tend to base our buying decisions on the actions of others we judge to be ‘just like us’, which is what makes real-life customer testimonials so powerful.
If you need some help with capturing video testimonials, get in touch. We will create (for free!) a video capture page for you with a personalised link your clients can open on their smartphones to record their 60-second testimonials.
3 – Use explainer videos to showcase your products or services
Excellent video marketing should be engaging, emotional, educational and empathetic.
Creating and sharing explainer videos empowers your customers to make better buying decisions or get greater value from their existing purchases.
Sharing educational content positions you and your brand as a leading authority, increasing the likelihood of referrals and repeat purchases.
Explainer videos form an essential part of your video marketing mix, showing prospective and existing customers how to get the most from what you do.
4 – Interview thought leaders and influencers
Thought leadership videos can take various formats, including recording a keynote speech, a webinar presentation, or interviews with industry experts.
By interviewing thought leaders and influencers in your profession, you strengthen your position as an authority.
Video call technology makes it incredibly easy to record a conversation between thought leaders, which Bear Content can subsequently edit to share as marketing content.
You can also extract the audio from a video interview to make a podcast.
5 – Present your key people
A staff profile video is similar to a company introduction video but focuses instead on individual team members.
Customer-facing staff should have a short (1-2 minute) staff profile video, introducing them to prospective customers and making it easier for existing customers to refer them to others.
A compelling staff profile video will give you an insight into the experience and qualifications of that team member, along with some personal insights.
6 – Sell with video adverts
Going back a decade or longer, television adverts were the preserve of substantial businesses with significant advertising budgets.
Technology makes it affordable and practical to create video adverts, ready to deploy across social media channels.
Promotional rather than educational, video adverts are designed with a single goal – to sell your product or service to an audience.
The most effective video adverts tend to be very short, say 30 or 45 seconds, and sufficiently engaging to capture the attention of your target audience for that time.
7 – Newsjacking and reacting to breaking stories
One of our favourite content marketing tactics is called ‘newsjacking’.
Even the smallest business can leverage breaking news and trending topics to gain awareness or even virality.
Creating videos that react to news allows your business to inject its opinion into today’s most important stories.
Making video content that explains what is happening in the world and why it matters can quickly boost your authority and profile.
By piggybacking off the more significant conversations in the media and online, your business can be discovered by a significantly larger audience.
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Well, there you have it! Video marketing is a great way to connect with potential and current customers and help your SEO efforts.
Which types of video marketing will you create first?
Don’t forget to consider what type of video will fit your small business – whether that’s an explainer video, a customer testimonial video, or even an advert.
We hope this article has helped spark some ideas for you – get creative and have fun with it!
