8 Things Small Businesses Can Achieve With Video Marketing
Ever since its surge in popularity in 2016, video marketing has come a long way. The year 2017 witnessed the rise of video marketing to the very top of marketing strategies list of marketing firms and agencies around the world. After all, they had already guessed the potential video marketing held, when it was still in its budding stage. However, these tactics back then were supported by expensive production equipment and little or no analysis of engagement figures.
This was soon corrected in 2018, which marked the beginning of video marketing as an entire business strategy and thus analysis and measuring ROI against video marketing as no more a thing of the past. 2019 became the year where more business, not just corporates but also small businesses understood the inherent potential of video marketing and started integrating it into their marketing efforts steadily and increasingly. YouTube saw a surge in How-to videos and short story-based ad videos conveying social messages, and of course product videos, among others.
“Video Marketing refers to the use of videos to promote and market products and services. It helps boost engagement with your target audience via social channels by educating the about your products and services and making the engagement more interactive than was possible through social posts and blogs.”
Why small businesses need to integrate video marketing in their marketing plan?
As per a research conducted by HubSpot back in 2017, 54 % of the respondents who were asked the question, what kind of content they preferred viewing from brands and businesses they follow, replied that preferred video content social posts, newsletters, blog posts, or offers like free eBooks.
The research report made a lot of sense, especially because video content caters to both the visual and auditory senses of their audience which lead to a long-term impact on the audience’s brain. This is one of the reasons why videos are an excellent channel for creating long term recall in your target audience’s strategy.
By using video marketing as your leading marketing tactic, you can ensure high open rates for your emails, click-through rates, and of course conversion rates. Videos have an inherent capability of boosting trust in their audience. What people can see they end up believing better. This is what small businesses need to leverage. Unlike corporates, small businesses work on limited budgets which restrain them from exploring larger markets and more people. A neat website might not always create the kind of trust you want to create in the minds and hearts of your target audience. However, having a video that explains what you do or who you are on your home can manage to earn some trust, for sure.
Here are some stats that support the thought behind the effectiveness of video on conversion and open rates when used in emails and newsletters.
• Videos on landing pages are capable of boosting conversion rates by more than 80%.
• By adding the word “video” to the subject line, you can ensure that your open rates increase by 19%.
• In a survey conducted by HubSpot, 90% of the respondents said that videos help them in making purchase decisions.
However, video marketing is not just being used by marketers but also by the sales team, who have been using videos for their pitches to make them more professional and helps convert prospective clients and delight customers.
Therefore, video marketing is not just restricted to the brand awareness stage of the marketing funnel but has taken over the entire marketing and sales funnel as an effective tool that can attract audience better, boost engagement, increase recall, lead to conversions faster and with a higher success rate.
8 things a small business can achieve by using video marketing
Now that we have discussed the immense potential video marketing holds in dominating the marketing and sales sphere, let us see how it can help small businesses grow and expand further.
1. Create your mark in the world’s second largest search engine
Currently, YouTube is viewed by over a billion people, who invest a total of 250 Mn hours of video, every day. This makes YouTube the second largest search engine after Google and that is a big deal for marketers and businesses, alike. YouTube alone is giving you a focused group of target audiences who are ready to consume content on the platform. All you need to do is create and market, relevant, tasteful, and easy to digest video content pieces for your target audience to get them hooked to your brand.
If you don’t know where to start, give How-to videos a shot. Educational videos never go to waste. There are millions of people on YouTube, always seeking for ways to do things and learn new things. In order to explore YouTube well throughout the marketing and sales funnel, give some time and thought in understanding how you can fit video marketing in your buyer’s journey.
2. Achieve a higher search rank
It’s true that you can achieve a higher search rank for your business by adding videos to your website. If you would like to rank significantly higher on search engines like, of course, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, videos are the way to go. You can even embed a single video on your website’s home page, which gives your website visitors a sneak peek into what you do in an easy to understand manner. Not only does it help visitors connect with your brand better but also, videos help you in ranking on Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) by close to 50 times. It is also one of the best pages to keep the audience hooked to the first page and help them find out more, thereby reducing bounce rate of your website.
3. Help customers understand your product better
Customers are wary about investing into a new product or a service. It helps leaps and bounds if you help them understand what they are buying by explaining the concept to them along with giving them an idea about the look and feel of your product. This is especially important in the age of ecommerce, where click and mortar has not left the option of feeling and testing a product before a customer actually buys it. In fact, about 85% of your website visitors are more likely to purchase from you after watching a product video. That is the power video marketing yields when it comes to product marketing and sales, and you should definitely give it a try!
4. Give customers what they want
Did you know that by the year 2021, 80% of total consumer website traffic will comprise video traffic? This figure alone us a good idea that consumers these days are preferring video content consumption over all other formats and the number is increasingly exponentially. Also, about 4 times of all consumers would prefer watching a video about a product rather than reading up about it. Your consumers want to be spoken to rather than be written to. Video gives a much more personalized experience to your target audience which they prefer and cherish.
5. Increase email CTRs
Want to skyrocket your email marketing success by boosting those CTRs? Try including the word “video” in the email subject line. This alone can increase your open rates by about 19% and your click through rates (CTRs) by as much as 65%.
As per a study conducted by Martech Advisor, embedding a video in your email can increase CTRs by an astonishing 300%. However, the best way to include a video in your email is to link it to YouTube or to your website using a still from the video. This will give your subscribers a peek of what the video looks like and the best part, it allows them to move from that email to your website to view the video.
Attaching the actual video inline is not a great idea as it increases the size of the email which in turn increases its chances of heading to the spam box. Also, majority of the email clients do not have inline playing feature and that beats the purpose of having an embedded video.
6. Get more social media coverage
As more and more social media platforms keep updating their algorithms to show more personalized content to their users, small businesses and brands are facing a tough time gaining eyeballs than they used to do earlier. They now need to fight the algorithm to stay on top or at least get a chance to be featured on the feed of even their loyal followers who have actually liked their page.
Fortunately, video posts get precedence over link shares and other social posts on most social media platforms. This has made it easy for small businesses to get the much-wanted space they need to convey their brand message to their target audience. Video content gets boosted often which leads them to show up on multiple feeds and engage audience through the fun and eye-catching videos.
Social media users would not mind stopping mid-scroll to check out the video, like it, comment on it and share it. The more your video content is engaged with, the more the algorithms will start sharing it with others with similar profiles and interests.
7. Tell a compelling story
Video marketing lets you achieve the task of sharing compelling and heartwarming stories using visual and audio stimulation. Short stories or narratives portrayed through videos have a lasting impact on the minds of consumers just like movies do. Tell your brand story through a video and have more prospects and consumers connect with your brand than they otherwise would. If they like it, you can trust the video to become viral as your audience share it over and over again.
Another way to create stories that help influence customer buying decisions are product and service reviews and recommendations from your customers. Before they buy anything, consumers prefer going through reviews of the products or services they are contemplating purchase of before actually investing in it. Seeing a fellow consumer review the product and give a positive feedback about their service experience helps strengthen their decision of buying your product. Request your customers to record videos of their experience of buying from you and add those snippets together to create a Video testimonial for your brand.
8. Develop strong brand affiliation
Like we have mentioned in this post earlier, the audio-visual stimulation provided by videos activate areas of the brain which lead consumers to engage with the content you share, better. This active engagement leads to stronger brand recall and affiliation which would otherwise take ages to create when using channels such as newsletters or offers.
When scrolling through their timelines/ newsfeed on social media channels, videos just start playing through auto-play and in those mere seconds capture the attention of their target audience. If the video is nicely planned and executed, there is a high chance that the audience will actually last through the crucial first 10 seconds and go on to complete the entire video. When they invest that much time and attention to something, they would also like to share they thought or opinion on the content. This is the kind of engagement we aim for when using video marketing. Creating a strong brand affiliation by using stellar video content is one of the best things you can achieve through your video marketing efforts.