Video content entertains and informs but can also play a meaningful role in your company’s marketing.
Online video marketing can add a punch to your company’s marketing efforts and catch you audience’s attention in a way that traditional marketing and photo advertising just don’t. It gives you company a face and sets you apart from your rivals while telling a story about your company’s products and services.
Whether you need to announce a new product, or recruit employees, online videos can make it easy to develop a deeper connection with your audience while providing the information you need to get across. Here are some ideas on how to use online videos to benefit and market your company.
Calculating the ROI of Video
The first thing to know about using online videos for your business is that not all videos will be equally effective. Creating a good one can cost thousands of dollars. That money is worth every penny (and then some) when the video hits its mark, but if you aren’t tracking the return on investment, or ROI, on each video you won’t know which ones are working for you — and which ones against you.
Save yourself a lot of time and even more money by tracking the ROI of your videos.
Purposeful Videos
The most effective online videos serve a specific purpose. If they were designed to showcase a product or service you company offers, make sure they succeed. Use the video to give that information, and that’s it. Don’t insert a sales pitch on an instructional video or talk about the history of your company on a video about troubleshooting one of your products.
Short, focused videos keep your audience’s attention while delivering real value.
Customer Testimonials
Customer testimonial videos typically run from a fifteen second snippet all the way up to sixty seconds and are a great way to leverage your current customer base. Your happiest customers can be your biggest advocates and potential customers will feel reassured in their decision to take action if they see (and hear) the benefits and virtues of your products/services.
Event Videos
If you are speaking at an event or someone else is discussing your company at a conference then it’s a golden opportunity to capture that content on video. Demonstrating your industry expertise and prowess in front of influential business people is valuable, but you can leverage that experience even further if you can share an event video with potential customers, business executives from your industry.
Product Presentation & Demonstration Videos
You can also use videos to benefit your company by creating “overnight expert” videos. These short films highlight a single product, explain how to use it, and discuss its best features. They can be used in-house to train new employees about the different products you offer, displayed on your website to offer more information to potential buyers, or uploaded on social media as a fact-based advertisement.
Indeed, customers appreciate the practical approach.
Viral Videos
When one of your marketing videos gets the right media attention and goes “viral”, your company will enjoy loads more exposure. While you can’t guarantee a video will go viral, you can take some steps to improve the odds that it will be a success.
Viral videos share a few common traits: they are engaging, entertaining, and often unexpected or very meaningful. Unlike commercials, which simply seek to sell your company’s products or services, videos meant to be viral are more fun. For instance, if you sell blenders, you could do a series on whether your blender will blend various pieces of produce and some more unusual items too.
Takeaway
The above are just a few of the different types of online videos that can benefit your company. Which one will work best for your company? You will need to take in your industry, brand and customer base into account before making that decision.
Whichever type of video you choose, don’t forget to track the ROI of your videos to make sure you video strategy is on the right path.