by Sean Gordon, founder of vidREACH.io
In 2019, it’s absolutely impossible to log onto Instagram or Facebook and not be inundated with video content from all of your favorite brands. When you’re a marketer, you notice and pick up on the small details, but some may not realize that even small businesses can embrace the ethos of video and make it their own. Those massive follower counts and likes on videos can all be yours with the proper campaign plan, and when you start truly parsing through content it becomes apparent how DIY some of these campaigns truly can be.
The obvious question becomes this: why can’t you make this happen? What’s getting in the way of you transforming your marketing department into a video machine? It may be a question of budget, you may be looking around and thinking that you simply don’t have the equipment or personnel to make it happen. On top of that, if you’re working for a small business there’s a strong likelihood that you’re responsible for wearing many hats. If you don’t have much background in video, it can seem like a daunting skill that you simply don’t have the time to pick up and make worthwhile.
The truth of the matter is that video is always worthwhile, even on the smallest of budgets. You can make it happen just by opening up the camera on your iPhone and getting to work. Say goodbye to the idea of scripts and lighting, of over-the-top cameras and boom mics hanging over head, and welcome the innovation that video can deliver to your marketing department.
Now that it’s time to transform your office into the set of the next major Christopher Nolan film, here are eight all-out reasons you can lean on when selling your team on the wonders of video.
1. You can identify with your customers through a greater brand relationship.
Video uses multiple senses to appeal to its viewership, augmenting your ability to build a relationship. The greatness of video derives from a complicated psychological connection that humans have when both their audio and visual stimuli are engaged simultaneously. We’ll skip the scientific details behind it for now — the critical part for you to understand is that video delivers so much more to your customers and prospects than either text or an infographic ever could. The positives of both video and audio components being whisked together bakes the perfect cake of brand recognition.
All of this is to say that video provides marketers the perfect opportunity to connect with their customers on a more intimate and human level, one that an introduction email simply can’t manage. Having a face and voice to attach to the words of a brand are essential elements, especially for a small business that is striving hard to build long lasting loyalty with a developing client list.
2. Video is cost-efficient, and the returns are something to marvel at.
The initial impression that most marketers share when it comes to apprehension towards video is that the costs will simply make the endeavor not feasible. When you’re dealing with a microbudget, particularly if there’s a lot of pressure to maintain it at shoestring, video might simply freak you out a little. Your first idea when you think of a strong video is glossy, high resolution with excellent sound that far exceeds the amount of funding available in your coffers.
Here’s something to be delighted about: odds are that you or someone in your office has access to a fully-equipped camera built in to the device that they’re texting their spouse on right at this very moment. The explosion of technology in cell phone cameras means that the average cellular consumer in 2019 owns a camera with capabilities that only Hollywood big leaguers and National Geographic photographers would have laid eyes on twenty years ago. And that device you’re punching in spreadsheet data on? There is more than likely some form of accompanying video editing software eagerly awaiting you to just click and open.
More often than not, the videos that you click ‘Like’ on are recorded on a smartphone. And 9 times out of 10, you’re going to be working in an office with somebody that has a smartphone with a great camera. You don’t need to be a Hollywood producer to make it all happen; you have everything you need to get the job done within the four walls that make up your office.
3. If video isn’t a part of your strategy already, then you’re neglecting an incredibly powerful search engine.
Do you know what the next most popular search engine is behind the great Google? Sitting square in the number two spot for most used search engines is none other than YouTube. Every day, over a billion users venture over to YouTube to search for videos. One of the most popular genres are ‘How-To’ videos, something that should be an essential component of your company’s video campaign.
Let’s try a quick exercise right now: search for a common question you get from customers about how to use your product on YouTube. Depending on the size of your company (although we’ve absolutely seen this happen for businesses with less than a dozen employees), somebody else has already made a video explaining their workaround for an issue common to your product line. Why let anyone else be the authoritative voice on how to operate your product? Use video and get on YouTube; it’s one more layer of marketing that you need to be involved with.
4. When customers understand how your product works, they’re simply more apt to buy it.
This may seem more like common sense than anything, but it goes a little deeper than that. You may be offering an innovative product that requires some degree of learning and expertise to interact with. Not a problem for the experienced user, but definitely a problem when you’re trying to expand your offerings to a more diverse clientele. Help them understand it up front and you might just secure more buys in the long run.
You should strive for your customers to understand your products, as in really get how they function. Yet another reason why video is crucial for your marketing team is the ability to use it for explainer videos. Research has shown that when customers interact with a product video on a company website, they are somewhere between 60%-85% more likely to make a purchase. Use explainer videos to show-and-tell, and your customers will tell you what they think with their wallets.
5. Customers would rather watch than read any day of the week.
…so give them what they want! A recent marketing survey showed that over four times as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. That’s a huge, game-changing number that shouldn’t be ignored. It’s obvious that video is the medium that you should be leveraging if by nothing more than that fact. This doesn’t mean you need to avoid text completely; sometimes the most dynamic video examples exercise use of text in a creative way that still covers the technical details, but does so in an engaging manner. Video is meant to put everything into motion, including your text and images, drawing attention in for maximum retention of your brand’s details.
6. The metrics on video gives one more outstanding point of data to play with.
Who doesn’t love having some more data to make use of? As video has grown in popularity, the options to measure metrics within video has seen similar growth. Being able to analyze not just when videos were skipped, paused or re-watched, but also diving deeper into the locations of viewers, where they clicked-through to your video from and a mountain of other analytics gives every marketer a major snapshot of their customer composition. You can see details like where viewers are watching from and get information about their attributes that will help you focus marketing videos towards similar demographics. Facebook makes excellent use of this feature, allowing for deep customization of where video advertising will be directed in a way that has never before been seen in the history of advertising.
7. You don’t just want to be on Google; you want to be on the very top of a Google search.
Owning the raw power of video and making the most of it pushes your results up the ladder. Video makes sense on YouTube, but the interplay between YouTube and their owner, Google, helps boost your results up further. Studies have shown that Google calculates video presence in their algorithm, so having video is an absolute necessity if you want to own the SEO game. The fact is that most people never go beyond the first page of results on Google, meaning you absolutely need your business to occupy those top spots. Video has been demonstrated to elevate Google rankings by over fifty times than those without, making it a requirement for all businesses, big and small, to go the extra mile and deliver.
8. You can finally start to build that social media following.
The great “chicken or the egg” argument can be applied to social media and video: which built which? The answer probably lies in an interconnected relationship between the two, and because of that you should see why video is so important to the social media aspect of your brand. Sharing and connecting with video on platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat are necessary for small businesses to build out a presence in their community and pivot towards the coming decade of web-based marketing. Your easiest way to reach out to customers is on social media, and they’re most likely to interact with video content on social media, so it makes for a home run scenario for any marketing team to embrace a digital video platform.
So sure, video may seem like a bit of a complicated enterprise at its surface. Peel back the layers and acknowledge the reasons why it’s important, including the fact that it’s incredibly easy to do for more marketers, and you should be pivoting your attention towards this innovative method for maximizing customer engagement right about… now.
Sean Gordon founded vidREACH.io to engage candidates, prospects, customers and employees – all on one platform. Sean has created new lines of business, reinvigorated stagnant company cultures, and mentored hundreds of employees who have gone on to do great things.
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