Video marketing is becoming one of the most popular ways of getting your brand message out there. Whether you use a videographer or shoot your own, including videos into your marketing mix will have a beneficial effect on visitor engagement and your site’s Google ranking. Most of us like to click on a video and if the content is informative, attractive or just plain funny we are also more likely to share it with our friends and work colleagues than most other forms of communication.

It used to be that businesses needed to employ an expensive camera crew to produce a video marketing end product. With the advent of smartphones and their high quality cameras and other quick and easy ways to film everything from customer testimonials to live events, we are all becoming more confident and better used to off-the-cuff ‘real’ video that can be quickly posted to social media or added to a website with the minimum of fuss.

Youtube and Facebook

Youtube is now one of the largest search engines owned by the largest search engine (Google). If we need to know how to do something, we are very quick to turn to Google ‘Google it’ is becoming the standard response to ‘How do I… ?’ Youtube is jammed full of video tutorials, product reviews and how to guides. Every topic from makeup Vloggers to software and life hacks. Uploading your video content to your own Youtube channel is a must!

Facebook; we have all seen the videos in our timeline that auto-play, you can turn this off if you wish… Google it 😉 Upload your video to your business page or status (whichever is the appropriate place) and you have marketing collateral that will auto play.

Video Marketing for Small Businesses

With more and more businesses beginning to use it in their everyday marketing, here are our quick tips for getting the best out of video:

• First decide whether you need a professional team or a friend with a smartphone. If you’re thinking of filming a 3 hour training session and wish to devise a corporate video brochure; time to call the experts. If you’re at an exhibition and want to show a snippet of your demo and post it to social media immediately as a ‘stand grabber’ a friend with a smart phone will be the fastest method. Horses for courses!
• Research other company videos, view some online content and note what you like and what you don’t like about them. Learn some basic skills, there are plenty of resources online about creating more professional looking videos and learning these will give you a better idea of what is possible and what is possibly going to be expensive!
• Length is important. If you haven’t grabbed your customer’s attention in the first ten seconds then you are fighting a losing battle. Beware if your video is too long and expect to see people clicking away in large numbers after the two minute mark.
• Provide good information. It’s no use just posting a video saying ‘buy me, buy me, buy me!’ You need to provide something useful to that potential customer. Think long and hard about your content. Think ‘who cares’. Take time to rough draft what you will say and practice it. If you do it wrong – keep the film – who doesn’t love a blooper video?
• Make it easy to share. As with other forms of content marketing, share-ability is the key. If you’re viewer can’t pass the good news onto their friends, family and colleagues with a simple click of a button then you are missing out big time.
• Use in-video links. The technology is now there so that you can provide links within the video content you post which can take potential customers directly to your website.
• Include a transcription. Content on video cannot be seen or heard by some people so always include a transcript of the content. This also boosts your search engine rankings. Do re-read this before making live, what sounds great on a video doesn’t necessarily transcribe into a good read!
• Let customers embed your content. If you post a video on a site such as YouTube you already have the tools for someone to embed the content on their own site. If you are hosting on your business site then make sure these tools are also available.
• Remember the right SEO. When you upload a video treat it as you would any page of content. What about keywords? Have you got the right tags? Have you provided an optimised description?

Creating engaging videos for your customers and potential visitors is a great way to get your brand message out there. It is also a fun thing to do and can give your website and your business a stronger and more personable character that attracts more people to your product or service. People buy from people!