Successful business owners and managers take pride in their businesses and have passion for what they do. That’s why more and more businesses are integrating video into their marketing. Quality videos placed properly on a business’ website are crucial to the foundation of the business’ image. A bad video can do more harm than good by creating a sloppy or cheap appearance that is contrary to the business’ image. A good introductory video, at the very least, can help establish credibility and demonstrate that the business is really about people. A good video can also attract prospects and encourage them to take action. Video is the best medium to tell your story and engage your customers. If you don’t use video in your business, you are missing one of the most important methods of communication in society. Don’t get left behind. Put videos to work for you.
People who use the internet love to watch videos, and the percentage of people who watch videos is increasing every year (see below). Because of this, Google and other search sites place a priority on relevant video content in searches. In fact, YouTube, the hugely popular video sharing site owned by Google, is the second most popular search engine site, getting more than three billion views per day. People are searching for videos. If you post quality, engaging and relevant videos about your business, you will help people find your business. If you make the right videos, you will also help people do business with you, something traditional SEO (search engine optimization) and pay-per-click can not do.
Video types and uses vary. Videos can be entertaining, informative, educational, commercial, and more. Any of these types of videos can be used for business purposes. It is usually better to make your videos work on many levels at once, rather than concentrating on one type of video at a time. For instance, you don’t need to make an educational video boring. It should be entertaining, too. In fact, all videos should have some element of entertainment in them. That doesn’t mean people should be dancing to all your videos, but it does mean your videos should be worth watching for multiple reasons. Rather than classifying videos into types, it makes more sense to focus on your audience. If you design your videos for your particular audience, you can find imaginative ways to do more than just provide information. You can make videos connect on multiple levels. With this in mind, turn to your purpose. Videos can be used for demonstrating your expertise, selling a product or service, encouraging your clients to interact with your business, attracting attention to get a particular action, and much, much more. Video is the only medium that works on all these levels to accomplish so many different goals.
Seven Steps Using Video to Get More Customers
- Know Your Purpose. What do you want to accomplish? Do you want people to call your business, contact you through email, sign up for a newsletter, or visit your store? Is your goal simply to inform? Your purpose determines what approach you should take with your video. What is the best way to deliver your message? It could be anything from a simple statement of facts to a more subtle and entertaining approach that engages your audience. Don’t just make a video. Design it with a purpose, and start by writing down your purpose and goals.
- Make it Relevant and Worth Watching. Your video needs to be relevant, interesting and entertaining. Think about why people would want to watch it. How does it help them do business with you, or how does it establish you as an expert? Are you providing something of value? Make sure it relates to what people are looking for so they will want to watch it. Design your video for your specific audience.
- Maintain High Quality. Making sloppy videos won’t do you any good unless you want people to think your business is sloppy. Maintaining high quality with your video involves more than just having a clear video image. It involves scripting, story-telling, location, lighting, verbal/visual delivery, shooting, sound, editing, titles/graphics, music, video file settings and more. Make sure to maintain high quality when making your videos.
- Use a Call to Action. Everything revolves around your purpose and the goals you want to accomplish. Your call to action needs to be clear. Tell people what you want them to do now that they have watched your video. It’s an obvious step that is often missed. Should they click on a link, send you an email, fill out a form, or call a particular phone number? Tell them.
- Optimize for Search. When you embed your video on your site and in your blog, remember to include relevant keywords in your video title. This will help increase the likelihood your video will rank higher in searches that relate to your business or industry. It is also a good idea to include a written version of the script with the video, further improving your web page’s visibility for searches.
- Post Your Video. Post your video on your website, on social/business networking sites, or provide links from social networking sites to the video on your site, so you maximize your opportunities for people to watch the video. Provide links back to the particular page you want people to find. Use that landing page to collect information about the people who “land” on the page. You can send them more information, make special offers and work to turn these leads into customers.
- Track Your Results and Respond. Tracking your results will depend on your goals and your call to action. If you want to collect leads, make sure you have a method to answer those leads so you can convert them to sales. Use a database to keep track of the leads and record what you have done to communicate with these potential clients. Whether you want “likes” on Facebook or enrollment in your email list, make sure you know what source is generating these results (how did these people find your web page?) so you can determine the effectiveness of your video marketing campaign and make changes to improve it. Did they find your web page through an organic search, an email campaign, a web ad, or something else? Whatever campaign you use, keep track of it to manage it, and respond to your leads. From there, convert those leads to sales!
Start making and using videos. You can do it yourself or hire someone to do it, but you need to start. If you’re like most people in business, you don’t need more work for yourself. You’re not a video producer or video marketing expert. Your expertise is in your own business. You can always start learning about video production and marketing by finding reliable resources on the subject. But if you don’t want to become a video expert yourself, you should hire experts.
We have solutions, either way. If you want to get started by doing video yourself, Patchin Pictures will help you by providing guidelines and tips for proper shooting so you can avoid many of the common mistakes. But if you don’t want to take on one more involved process, we’re here to do everything for you. We designed our Shoot Your Business video services for the maximum flexibility and options so you can keep the costs down while your business grows, and take advantage of more extensive services as your business success dictates. Even if you don’t work with us for your video marketing, at a minimum, make sure you follow the above guidelines. We’re here to help you make video work for your business. We invite you to give us a call and schedule a free consultation. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Give us a call at 702-240-6777 or toll free at 877-364-3591 or email us at FreeConsultation@ShootYourBusiness.com. We’ll show you some easy options to get started.
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