The concept of video marketing sounds like it should be extremely expensive. For small businesses with a tight budget and the need to demonstrate a good ROI, this can be off putting. Fortunately, in recent years the cost of video marketing has crashed through the floor, while its effectiveness has gone through the ceiling.
Here are some compelling reasons why video marketing works very well for small businesses and why you should waste no more time before getting involved.
Video is the medium of choice for mobile Internet users. Even the most mobile friendly website can be a pain to access on a small screen, so a video can put across your message to a mobile user in a way that a 1,000 word blog post could never do. More people access websites through mobile devices these days than they do by desktops and laptops, so if you are a B2C-facing small business, videos will be even more important to let you reach a wider section of your target market.
Videos can give a simple and effective demonstration of how your product or service works in practice. This helps you in a couple of ways. Firstly, it supports your written material and makes it more readily understandable. From the video, your prospective customers will get a feel for how your service will help them personally.
Secondly, this increased understanding encourages more leads, as video content is more immediately accessible than other types of content. Most small businesses operate in a specific niche, meaning they can get pretty technical in the services they offer. However, your target customers – i.e. the actual decision-makers – are not always technical specialists. They are just as likely to be administrators or purchase managers, as they are to be engineers or developers.
You can therefore use your video content to present a more accessible version of your message, that will improve the level of understanding your prospects have when taken alongside your written content.
Most video marketing content is hosted on YouTube, which makes good sense because; a) it’s free, and b) it is the second largest search engine in the world, owned by the first! People search YouTube directly for promotional, instructional and educational content. Furthermore, YouTube content is extremely visible in Google search results, giving your video a good chance of cropping up even if prospects are making general queries.
Not only this, but the Google search bots love video content. Host a video on your homepage and you are around 50 times more likely to be indexed than if you do not.
Videos can have a big impact on the success of your email marketing. Including a video splash screen in the body of your email increases the likelihood of a click through by up to 50%, while some research suggests that the mere inclusion of the word ‘video’ in the subject line increases open rates by up to 10%. This is worth experimenting with, especially considering the number of people who now access marketing emails through their smart phones or tablets.
At JDR we integrate video marketing with our range of bespoke marketing services for small businesses. Video isn’t a miracle cure on its own, but when combined with other marketing channels, such as email, written content and social media, it can help strengthen your brand and bring new customers to your door. Please get in touch for a free quote.