Small Business Marketing with Video

As a mom of an 11-month-old, I have enjoyed following @TakingCaraBabies on Instagram. She’s a labor and delivery nurse turned sleep consultant whose Insta profile boasts 1.8 million followers. A few weeks ago, she posted a video of herself awkwardly dancing in front of a cell phone, dubbed over with crying, and captioned with: “When you just want to post about baby sleep but the algorithm insists on reels.” 

Though farcical in intent, this Taking Cara Babies reel is right: video is a must for marketing these days – including marketing small businesses.

Why Small Business Marketing Needs Video

People Like Watching Video Content

According to a Forbes article on small business video marketing, 66% of consumers would prefer watching a video to learn about a product rather than reading about it, and they spend about 16 hours per week watching video. Additionally, 81% of all businesses use video in their marketing – even B2B marketing. 

YouTube is a Search Engine 

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, boasting more than a billion users. “How to” searches are extremely popular. So if you’re not capitalizing on that deep potential customer pool, your marketing is missing out. 

Social Media Videos Work

According to Animoto’s Social Video Trends: Consumer Insights for 2020 report, most consumers discovered and made a purchase from a brand after watching a video ad. In fact, 93% of the businesses surveyed said they obtained a new customer thanks to a social media video, and 71% plan to create more video content in the future. 

Need more reasons to use video? Check out this article to learn more ways your small business marketing benefits from video. 

How to Use Video to Market Your Small Business

Social Media Posts

Social media is probably one of the best places to start posting video content. The Animoto survey mentioned above found that 64% of businesses earned a new customer from video content on Facebook and 73% of marketers found new customers through Instagram Stories. 

The platform algorithms prefer video content because it tends to hold people’s attention longer than static images. And videos generally garner higher engagement: One report found that Instagram videos received 150 comments on average while images only received 65. 

You can add video to your social media in a variety of ways. Reels and Stories are popular options. You can even add some simple animation to a post, like this review post we created for our client, Oncology Rehab and Wellness.

Blog Posts

If you or a member of your team is comfortable in front of a camera, using video in blogs (or, “vlogs”) is another great way to incorporate video in your small business marketing. Just like written content, you need to have a plan for steady and quality vlog content (read our article on creating content for your small business marketing to learn more). 

Our client Aero Elite Flight Training takes videos of himself sharing answers to common questions  that his clients and potential clients want to know. He sends the videos to us for editing, transcription, and posting. You can see an example of one of his videos here. 

Animation

Especially if getting in front of the camera just isn’t your thing, you can also use animation in your videos. This is especially ideal for videos explaining your business or a service/product you offer. Animated videos are an efficient and engaging way to deliver information to customers. They allow you to explain a concept with eye-catching colors and characters.

For our client Sapling Wealth Management, we created a short series of animated videos explaining 401(K)s for employees of Sapling’s clients. The videos are simple in design, but use text and motion to keep a dry and complex topic engaging and understandable. 

Virtual Reality 

Small businesses can also market themselves by using virtual reality videos. We recently conversed with A.D. Carter from Retail VR about this new video option and how it affects small business marketing. 

With virtual reality, customers can visit a small business from the comfort of their couch. The videos can provide a general or detailed, interactive experience with your small business, allowing potential customers to connect emotionally with the feel of your business before walking through your doors. 

Virtual reality means that a retail store can be explored outside regular brick and mortar operating hours. A brewery can show off dining and bar spaces, performance venues, and even menus. Potential guests can tour a local hotel’s accommodations and dining space online.  

Virtual reality also offers interactivity and engagement. Customers can explore your parking options, outdoor dining, kid-friendly amenities, and more. Retail stores can connect their virtual space to an ecommerce platform like Shopify, allowing customers to purchase items as they virtually browse the store. 

Small businesses can market themselves with virtual reality on their websites, Google My Business profiles, and more. Museums, retailers, restaurants, and hotels can all benefit from virtual reality in their small business marketing by letting potential customers browse the space and plan their trip. Managed IT providers can use VR to guide customers to a specific switch in a server room that needs to be reset 

With all of the possible applications, virtual reality has many benefits that can be well worth the investment.

3 Quick Tips for Making Videos

1. Keep Your Audience in Mind

If you’ve done your target audience research, you should have a pretty good idea of the information your audience would like to know in a video and the platforms where they would like to consume it. Most businesses benefit from video on their website. Not all businesses benefit from video on TikTok, unless their target audiences include Gen Z-ers or school teachers.

2. Show, Don’t Sell

People do not like hard sells over video. Quite frankly, it’s a turn off. Instead, emphasize demonstrating products and services, telling client success stories, explaining the mission behind your company. Create an emotional connection, and sales will follow. 

3. Quality, not Quantity

Rather than making a quantity of mediocre videos, focus on making quality videos people will enjoy watching. Though people spend a lot of time watching videos these days, you need to demonstrate that your videos are worth customers investing the time to watch. For starters, keep the camera still, use adequate lighting, and minimize background noise.  

This article from Business Insider has more helpful tips for creating video content for your small business’s marketing. 

Market Your Small Business with Video

Because so many 21st century customers consume content through video, small businesses stand to greatly benefit from incorporating this tactic into their marketing strategies. 

If you want to create videos, but you don’t know where to start, how to edit, don’t have time – or just aren’t comfortable in front of the camera – give us a call. We can help you use video strategically for your small business and within a budget that works for you. 

We invite you to schedule a conversation with one of our consultants.