How To Make Your Small Business Thrive Using Video Marketing

Last Updated on Mar. 5, 2024 – by David Morgan

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Providing guidance in what businesses can do with video to boost traffic and create more customers for their business. How to leverage video as part of your content marketing strategy. Where you can use video ⁄ channels, types of videos, how to use video effectively.

How To Make Your Small Business Thrive Using Video Marketing

1. Why use video marketing?

Our encounters with multimedia, specifically video, are increasing rapidly. It’s now available in more places than ever and being consumed by more people every day. In 2020 we will consume a whopping 674 billion hours of video content on our mobiles, a nearly 20% increase on the previous year.

Video is proven to be a powerful medium in capturing attention, with an ever-growing reach. This is likely why 92% of marketers say video is an important part of their marketing strategy, according to Smart Insights. And yet, some organizations still feel that video marketing isn’t for them.

Video is arguably the most persuasive and engaging medium available today. It’s easy to digest, versatile, and accessible to anyone with an internet connection and it’s easily shareable. With the rise of social media, we see more types of videos shared than ever before.

In our busy lives, we typically prefer information delivered in a short, concise manner. When a prospect lands in front of you, you have a very short amount of time to convey a lot of information. Now is the opportunity to grab attention, skillfully position a product, and elicit a response. People have a tremendous ability to absorb information via video so this is an ideal moment to outline what makes you and your content special.

And video isn’t just about capturing attention and sharing information, video marketing has shown a high return on investment (ROI) with 80% of businesses saying video has directly helped increase sales.

It’s all about the story.

Only catching somebody's attention isn't enough – that’s what we call “SPAM”; you need to make a connection. Storytelling is essential for expressing who you are and what you have to offer. You want your brand to be authentic, accessible, but most of all, trustworthy. The value associated with building a loyal fan base can be huge as 75% of consumers say they will continue to buy a brand they trust.

2. What does video marketing do?

Providing engaging content is a fantastic way to get people talking about your brand – whether in person or via social media. Conversations are there to be had only if you’re prepared to initiate them.

It's human nature to buy from those we know, like, and trust. Once you start to earn trust, customers will become your biggest brand advocates. Give your brand a personality, engage with your followers, and answer questions in a tone that is true to your brand. This is the kind of content your customers can find relatable. They feel they're valued and ultimately, getting the information they want.

Making a connection with your customers is not always a direct push for revenue, nor is creating fun entertaining videos, but it will build awareness and drive traffic to your site. Consider monitoring additional KPIs like views, impressions, likes, comments, follower growth, and traffic. Some of the biggest benefits of video is cultivating an audience, building trust, and hopefully, a loyal customer.

woman standing in front of a laptop in an atelier

A great way to start building trust is by creating a series of short, insightful explainer videos to introduce your brand, explain what you do, and establish yourself as an authority in your respective field of business. Walkthroughs and DIY videos are hugely popular on YouTube and provide another platform to interact with your consumers. With 81% of people saying they have been convinced to buy a product after watching a brand’s video, you can’t afford to miss out!

Videos are more likely to be shared than links and text combined. Utilizing social media to increase your brand’s awareness is essential. There are many different social channels open to us, but each can cater to a slightly different audience. Remember to tailor your video to the platform as your insightful ‘How to’ video may fall flat on TikTok but work great on YouTube.

If you want your video to be a viral success, remember people share emotions, not facts.

3. Where to use video marketing and for what

As with any form of marketing, knowing your target audience is critical.

Thanks to the digital world we live in, almost every social media channel is a video platform. Think about the various forms of content social networks like Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube leverage when sharing content. Consider where your customers are spending their time. For example, if you are hoping to share an instructional video, YouTube is going to work better than Instagram due to its searchability and longer video format. Regardless of your platform, it’s important to craft your content to the platform on which you plan to share as users expect different video lengths on different platforms.

Facebook – 15 seconds
Twitter – 30 seconds
Instagram – 60 seconds
YouTube – 2 minutes

Once you’ve established a brand voice and a content strategy, you can confidently craft marketing material that raises your brand awareness and tailor them to the specific platforms you plan to share them on. Your aim should be to create a brand image so strong that people can tell when content is yours, even if your logo isn’t on it.

300 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute! The competition is rife. If you want to stand out and raise brand awareness, you must be original. Your branding message needs clarity in order to be effective but it also needs to be concise.

The right approach to putting together video content can also increase shares on sites like Facebook and Twitter and drive traffic to your site. Consider what might make someone want to share your video and try to incorporate ways to encourage sharing.

Plus, search engines love video. Search engines determine if your site has content that warrants a coveted spot on page 1 of Google by measuring the time users spend there. By embedding videos into your website, you’ll increase the time spent on your page and move up the search engine ranks.

4. Create marketing videos using stock footage

The reluctance of your average business owner to develop their content in-house is totally understandable. Between budget constraints and the amount of time associated with filming and editing any given video, it can be a scary proposition.

You’re probably thinking, “my videos will never look professional” or “I don’t have the budget.”

So what do you do? Cue the stock footage.

You don’t have to film everything from scratch to get your brand noticed. By repurposing stock video footage, not only do you save money, but you save time. Plus, it’s more commonly used than you might think. You see it many times throughout the day, every day.

Start to Finish within 3-easy Steps

Creating videos is an exciting process, but it can be challenging. Perhaps you’ve made videos before, or this is your first time, and you don’t know which way to turn.

Not all of us have the desire to dedicate hours towards understanding the nuances of video editing. There are some excellent video editing platforms available but they often encompass 100s of editing tools and can be intimidating for a beginner. You’re new to video editing and don’t have the time to learn how to create professional-quality videos, and that’s ok.

There is now an array of video creation apps that allow you to produce videos in just a few clicks.

Choose from a vast collection of stunning templates pre-designed for any promotion. Personalize your content with text and logo, and develop videos that convert.

Grow your business with video marketing today

We've reached a make-or-break moment where video content marketing has become the expectation rather than an exception to the rule. If you wish to grow your business, the ultimate benefit of video marketing for SMBs is becoming part of the conversation, sharing information, and ultimately, creating sales.

Video is only going to get more popular as time goes on, but it needn't be scary. With the assortment of apps on the market, creating and editing videos has never been easier.

No matter your industry or marketing goal, video is essential to your success.

If you found this article useful, why not venture over to our ultimate guide for video marketing? Our guide covers everything you need to know when creating ads or promotional videos for your brand or business.