7 Benefits Of Video Marketing For Small Businesses
There’s is a huge opportunity right now for you to drive growth and improve sales conversions with video marketing in your business.
But, do you know why video works especially well for small businesses?
In this article, I’m going to dive into 7 benefits of video marketing for your business and cite statistics along the way to back up each claim to add some context.
Once you understand these top benefits and the advantages of video, you’ll begin to brainstorm a potential video marketing strategy for your business.
1. Better SEO
Technology is gettin’ good! Today, algorithms can measure and score your content based on engagement and analyze the words spoken in your videos to rank them higher or lower depending on what they deem to be a better experience for people on a particular platform. This goes for any of the popular social media platforms and search engines.
Whatever the platform, each of them strives to keep people using the platform for as long as possible and having a great experience. This is because it attracts advertisers, their source of revenue. A mediocre experience overflowing with ads will cause people to leave in droves to another platform. Remember that Google is the world’s largest search engine, and they own YouTube, the world’s second-largest.
2. Higher Reach
Social media platforms are prioritizing video over all other mediums because of how much more engaging it is for people compared to other formats. In fact, video has many times more social media engagement than anything else going:
Social video generates 12 times the shares than text and images combined (smallbiztrends.com)
This means you’ll get much more exposure with your marketing videos for the same amount of effort. This goes for both organic and paid advertising reach on social media.
The cost to acquire a lead becomes much lower when using videos because the click-through rates are cheaper. Whatever is a better experience for their users on the platform, is what the algorithms will reward. Your best chances at consistently better rates are by using video content. When given a choice, mobile users prefer to watch videos rather than scroll through the same content in text form.
3. Boosts Understanding
“A confused mind never buys,” the saying goes. If you have a great product or service, but you fail to clearly articulate the features and benefits of it to potential customers, they won’t buy. They need to understand it and visualize what life can be like with your product before they make their purchasing decision.
Also, it’s best to understand what questions people are asking beforehand, and then answering them in your videos. You can look into tools like Google’s autocomplete in their search bar, YouTube’s autocomplete in that search bar as well, or something like Google Ad’s Keyword research tool. (Which is free btw.)
Video, compared to all other forms of content has the ability to quickly boost someone’s understanding of what you do or sell. It also allows people to quickly discover if your product is the right fit for them. When you incorporate video into your sales process, you’ll be able to educate and warm people up before they come to see you. You’ll find yourself spending less time on the tire kickers and those who are not the right fit. Win-Win!
Did you know that video marketing can generate for your business some serious income? According to Transcribefiles.net , including a product video on the landing page of your website can increase the conversion rate by 80 percent. Video marketing for small business can work so well irrespective of the industry. Videos can also result in a direct increase in business sales. Recent research reveals that over 74 percent of viewers who watch explainer video of a particular product end up buying the item. (socialmediamagazine.org)
4. Gives People What They Really Want
Today, people are getting more choosy with what they want to spend their time on. If all things are equal, people always choose to watch the video rather than reading. Video is a passive activity and compared to reading, people find watching something to be a much better experience.
So, give them what they want. If video allows someone to see and understand what you do and how it can help them in a shorter amount of time, let them have it! There’s a reason why explainer videos and other educational video content can be found everywhere. It works.
While only 20% of viewers will read the text on a page, 80% will watch a video The truth is that today’s modern man is relatively lazy, especially when it comes to consuming information. So while reading a large wall of text will usually turn the average consumer away from learning more about a company’s products or services, showing them a short, punchy video is almost guaranteed to grab their attention. (theboostapps.com)
Video traffic will account for 80% of all internet traffic in the world by 2021! On top of that, 4x as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it, according to eMarketer Without a doubt, video content is your audience’s medium of choice. Knowing that, why not give the people what they want? (vidyard.com)
5. Increases Conversions
On average, sales tend to double on landing pages and websites with video. The right information needed to make a purchase decision is able to be communicated much faster to people when they can watch a video compared to just reading text. Also, when there’s video involved, people tend to stay much longer on a page.
A study from Invodo revealed that people now expect video to be part of their shopping experience. An interesting note from that study as well: people don’t care about the length of a video, they care about the quality. Meaning, they’ll spend the time watching a video of any length as long as it provides value and not waste their time. It’s not the shortening attention spans, people have more options than ever before. They’re much better at choosing what they want to spend their time on.
What better way to sell a product than to see it in action? Adding a product video to your landing page can increase conversion rates by as much as 80%. (praguepost.com)
Reel SEO data shows that 60% of marketers claim video marketing has drastically increased their conversion rates – sometimes even as high as 2-3x. (tarproductions.com)
6. Builds Trust
So far, we’ve learned that video content boosts conversions, and people are more likely to buy or take action after watching a video. But do you know the factor that causes this? It’s trust. With video, we have the ability to connect and empathize with the right people on a more personal level, better than all other types of content. Going one step further, people connect and build trust better with other people, not objects or landscapes for example. Find a way to include people in your video: customer story, founder origin story, case study where you changed someone’s life for the better, etc. After trust is established, the other pieces fall into place more easily during someone’s journey to a purchase decision.
An Animoto study found that nearly 75% of consumers are more likely to buy a product if they’ve seen a video explaining it before making a purchase. (theboostapps.com)
7. Allows You To Scale More Quickly
It’s impossible to ignore the benefits of using video in your marketing campaigns especially for a business eager to grow its customer base. With the ability to reach potential clients anywhere, even in their pockets on their mobile devices, video marketing opens up a range of possibilities that traditional marketing methods can’t touch.
Businesses that use video are growing revenue 49% faster than those that don’t. The numbers speak for themselves, but we’ll say it anyway: You need video. (vidyard.com)
Video has become the great equalizer for small business owners. Allowing them to scale their online presence to compete with large corporations. It was not that long ago when it sometimes took a loan to pay the high budgets for video marketing and was only open to just a few who could afford it or had connections. Now, with social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc., you now have the ability to reach potential customers at any budget. The tools to make and distribute videos are everywhere now. Mobile devices today are more than enough to get started. Most include basic editing capabilities for video as well. Video production has become accessible to just about everyone.
Even if you’re not ready to spend money on video ads or other paid digital marketing yet, there’s still plenty you can do to reach a larger audience and build your online presence. It probably won’t happen as quickly. First, understand that effective videos that create sales are not that way because their just entertaining, they also provide great value for the people watching them. In general, people greatly appreciate it when they learn something new, especially if it helps them do something better.
So, when planning out your marketing videos and coming up with ideas, don’t try to be funny, viral, or attempt to copy the latest trend and fad. Those rarely translate into any sales. Instead, research and plan out the types of videos your potential customers would value and connect with for your content marketing.
This is not meant to sound condescending, but engaging content begins with understanding what engages the people you’re trying to connect with. What problem does your product or service solve? How does it save someone time? What features does your brand offer, and how does that benefit your customer? Take the time to define and plan out what a successful video marketing campaign looks like for your business and the goals you want to achieve. A great strategy we use here at Synchro is to define the goal and build out campaigns for our clients backward from that goal. It makes the process a lot easier. Try it!
Secondly, understand how each social media platform works and its features. You may not know this, but Facebook is a closed platform at this point. Unless you’re paying for advertising it’s difficult to be discovered organically to new people. Have you noticed that you only see your friend’s posts and no one new? LinkedIn, on the other hand, is in a growth stage and Instagram seems to be as well. In a growth stage, a platform’s algorithm will show you people’s content and posts from outside your direct network and suggest people for you to connect with or follow.
Conclusion
By no means is this an exhaustive list, but I hope this gave you a better understanding of the benefits of your video marketing efforts along with some ideas to include in discussions about your marketing goals.
Video creation and effective video marketing do require some research and planning before you hit record. When starting out, don’t worry about making everything perfect, focus on providing value before worrying about the right lighting and high-end cameras, etc. The priority should be to begin and commit to being consistent. You don’t have to produce videos on a daily basis, even one video a month can have major benefits.
Also, think outside the box for your video marketing content.
Here at Synchro, for example, we find customer testimonial videos for our clients that are shot as a selfie from their phones perform way better than any of the higher end videos we’ve produced. We discovered in our analytics that it connects better with viewers and creates more purchase conversions. Our assessment is that this style is more real, in-the-moment, and more trustworthy.
A great example of some outside the box thinking on a tight budget is the now-classic video by Dollar Shave Club. It created millions of dollars in sales for them:
A great example of some outside the box thinking on a tight budget is the now-classic video by Dollar Shave Club. It created millions of dollars in sales for them:
And Finally…
If you’re considering video in your marketing to help scale your business, it’s very helpful to talk to a marketing expert, like us! Here at Synchro, we’re passionate about video and combining it with the right marketing strategy to help businesses reach the next level.
We’re offering businesses a complimentary 30-minute strategy session where we’ll help you map out a marketing campaign to achieve your marketing goals.
Get in touch with us asap!