Maintaining a high rate of customer engagement, while minimizing the marketing cost, is the aim of every small business. Small business video marketing has emerged as the best technique to achieve this goal.
Video marketing guarantees a lot of benefits for small businesses. Plus, nowadays business videos are easy and inexpensive to create. You can produce videos and use online video editing tools to give the content a professional look.
But, what are the actual benefits of video marketing for small businesses? Here are 10 of them.
Strengthens Your Online Presence
The term ‘online presence’ has grown far beyond setting up a basic small business website with the name, logo, and address.
With billions of websites online and millions joining their ranks every week it’s important for small businesses to effectively use marketing techniques to interact and engage with the target audience.
Today, video marketing has become an indispensable tool to establish an online presence.
In this highly competitive world, using video content is an effective way to build a brand and gain credibility that’s so needed for small businesses to attract more customers.
Unlike big companies, small businesses don’t have large digital marketing budgets. They need a tool like video content to strengthen their online presence and maximize its benefits.
A well-made video will not only introduce the business to the audience, it’ll encourage them to learn more about the company. By adding a link or two in the video, you can take them to your website, where they’ll find out more about your business and what you have to offer.
Video content can convert viewers into ambassadors. People captivated by what they have seen will share their experience and opinion in the comments section and/or press the share button to spread the word. One way or the other, video marketing helps your business become a prominent online entity.
Helps Improve Search Engine Ranking
The Google Search Engine has grown from strength to strength because it provides what the users want and are looking for. Very soon, we’ll see more than 80% of all internet traffic seeking video content. Hence, Google loves videos because users love video content.
The search engine giant has a soft corner for video content because it keeps people engaged. The little super high-tech crawlers that Google sends to analyze the websites have found that videos keep people longer on the web page.
Let’s be honest, most of us never venture past the first page of a search engine. Studies too have arrived at the same conclusion. It was found that 75% of all search engine users, browsers only the first page results.
One way to increase your website’s chances of appearing on the first page of the search results is to use video content. Websites with videos are 50 times more likely to be listed on the first page of Google.
Increases Brand Awareness, Affiliation, and Connection
On an average day, Facebook alone witnesses more than 8 billion video views. This number is a small slice in the big social media pie. From the stat, it’s easy to gauge how much people like videos and are responding positively to it.
Our brain processes visual content quicker and better than text. Compared to texts and images, the experts have found that videos get 1200% more shares.
Videos have the remarkable ability to grab our attention and hold it for a considerable duration. That’s because video content provides both visual and audio stimulation. A well-made video activates multiple areas of the brain, which means the audience is deeply engaged with the content.
Deeper engagement signifies the viewers have gone beyond mere interest in the visual content. They develop a stronger connection and affiliation towards the content and the message.
Video marketing is crucial for small businesses. With the right message and a killer video marketing strategy, videos can spread brand awareness and create a pool of loyal customers who’ll come back to you again and again.
Helps Educate the Customers
Passing of information and knowledge that customers need to make an informed buying decision is crucial for the growth of a small business.
Sometimes products and services are sophisticated. Hence, educating customers through text content can be a complex task. Small businesses need to deliver complex information in an easily understandable way to boost sales.
The beauty of small business video marketing is the transfer of information through the medium that the audience wants and prefers. A study found that more than 60% of the website visitors decided to buy after watching a product video.
Videos work because they inform, delight, and educate the customers about your product and service offerings. This medium shows, instead of telling the customers the best features of the product. Plus, video content spells out the problems that the customers face and explains how the product or service will solve the problem.
For a small business, creating videos that educate the target audience about their offerings must be on top of their to-do list.
A digital agency can use a wide variety of videos to transfer essential business information to customers. Product tour videos, company culture videos, whiteboard animation videos, instruction videos, and FAQ videos are just some of the common video types small businesses are using to reach out to customers.
For example, the whiteboard animation video is ideally suited for communicating ideas. The use of animation allows businesses to weave a story around the information. Moreover, an animation video is easy to consume and recall. Research by Dr. Wiseman found the use of whiteboard animation video increased the recall ability of information by 22%.
Supports Email Marketing Efforts
In the present scenario, there is a vast difference between video emails and other email communications. Adding videos to your email communications hooks the recipients and within seconds engages with them. The following are other benefits of video email marketing:
Increases the Reach: Adding the word ‘Video’ in the subject line increases the open rate by 19%. Also, sending video emails boosts the click-through-rate by 65%.
Saves Time: The recipient is freed from the task of reading a long mail. Complex subjects are easily explained and understood with the help of video content.
SEO Benefit: In addition to delivering the message, video emails also encourage the recipients to share the content on social media platforms. This leads to brand awareness, more traffic, and improved search engine ranking.
When designing a video email, it’s easy to get carried away. Some append just the video to the mail; and some include a long text, images, and video. Both tactics could undermine your marketing efforts.
For email marketing to succeed, solid video content must go hand-in-hand with great email templates. An effective video email design must include the business logo, contain the right color scheme, track the right KPIs, and possess all elements that highlight the video content.
Drives Conversions and Sales
Small business video marketing has a key role to play in every step of the purchase funnel.
Brand and product videos create awareness, instruction, and explainer videos boost engagement, and testimonial videos build credibility and trust. Video content engages the prospective customers and moves them along the sales funnel.
More often than not people turn to videos before making a buying decision. According to Wyzowl, 90% of people found product videos helpful and 90% have seen an explainer video to understand a product or service.
There is more. Nearly 8 out of 10 people decided to buy a product after watching a video. Adobe, in its research, found those who watched a demo video are 1.8 times more likely to buy than the rest.
Small businesses that use videos on their website have a conversion rate of 4.8%. This is nearly double the rate of conversions in sites that don’t have videos.
Every small business must use video marketing because 72% of businesses believe the strategy of using video to increase conversion works. Furthermore, nearly two-thirds of all businesses believe video content boosts sales.
The incredible conversion stats after watching video content makes it one of the best marketing tools for small businesses.
Builds Trust With Customers
Trust is a vital element in expanding the customer base and generating repeat business. Customers are more likely to take that extra step of buying a product or service if they trust the business.
Small business video marketing establishes the trust bond between the two parties. In the case of small business, introduction videos allow viewers to know you, understand your business, and like your offer. All these will eventually make them trust you.
People hate sales pitches. They are usually skeptical about claims made by businesses. They feel it’s another marketing ploy.
It’s easy for them to trust a business if an unbiased voice has something positive to say about a product or service. That’s why every small business must use testimonial videos.
Businesses have found that video content is the perfect way to enhance the customer experience. Engagement with customers doesn’t end with the sale. For small businesses to thrive, a long term relationship with customers is indispensable.
You can include after-sales thank you videos, customer onboarding videos, live customer support videos, knowledge base videos in your customer support framework.
Customer support videos also save valuable resources like time, effort, and money. The customer service department of Dell was overwhelmed by service calls. So, the company decided to introduce video content, which resulted in a 5% drop in service calls.
Boosts Social Media Engagement
You can’t rely on search engine traffic alone to boost your business. Take your company to your target audience by marketing your videos on social media platforms.
Many are still relying on blogs and images to gain traction among the target audience. But, in the past few years, we see social media platforms lean towards video content. As a small business, you need to seize the opportunity to stand out.
Small business video marketing has more engagement potential than other forms of content. Produce videos that resonate with the viewers. Also, engaging videos are more likely to go viral, which will drive traffic, conversions, and sales.
Appeals to the Mobile Users
The small but mighty mobile device has the young population hooked to the screen. Information reaches people faster through a mobile device than any other instrument. In their research, Ipsos and Google found that mobile devices have a big impact on business success.
Small businesses can achieve greater marketing success by building video content for mobile users. It’s a mutualistic relationship where both benefit.
More than 40% of all YouTube videos are watched on hand-held devices. People like watching videos on mobile devices. That’s because users are less distracted, which helps in better engagement and understanding of the content.
Besides, mobile-friendly pages with video content load faster. Higher page speed helps boost ranking and reduces bounce rate. Small business video marketing is a win-win situation for mobile users and businesses.
Gives Better Return on Investment
We have sufficiently established that video marketing can do a lot more than creating awareness. Video content is the most versatile tool. You can use it to engage new customers and retain old ones. It can help build trust and aid in customer support services. Videos can drive traffic to the website and boost social media engagement.
On the whole, the time, money, and effort you spend on small business video marketing are worth it. According to a survey, 89% of marketers agree that video content gives them the best ROI. Over 80% of the video marketers say that video marketing has increased traffic, helped in lead generation, and directly improved sales.
The various benefits of video marketing and the high ROI have prompted 95% of video marketers to say they plan to increase the spending on video content.
Final Thoughts
Video marketing is a boon to small businesses. Videos are easy to create, they aren’t too expensive, and they help in conversions, sales, and customer support. There is nothing that video content can’t do.
If you haven’t included videos in your marketing plan, then the 10 benefits mentioned here would have convinced you by now. Adopt video marketing for a positive and long-lasting impact on the business.
Author bio:
Cristian Stanciu is a freelance video editor, owner, and post-production coordinator of Veedyou Media – a company offering video editing services to videographers, marketing agencies, video production studios, or brands all over the globe. I can catch up with him on his blog or on LinkedIn.