In this post we’ll unlock five golden video marketing strategy tips for small business. So, if you’re a business owner wanting to up your digital marketing game?
It can’t have escaped your notice that video use in business and online is exploding, video is no longer an up and coming content marketing trend. It’s very quickly become an integral part of many company’s marketing plans with nearly 7 out of 10 companies making use of video marketing.
As a small business owner, you might be under the impression that only million-dollar companies can create high quality entertaining marketing videos but that’s just no longer true. As technology has advanced, the barriers to entry in terms of video production have fallen away. Video production has really become democratised. Nowadays pretty much anyone can make a start and leverage the benefits of video marketing for their business to help them grow.
Tip #1 – Define your video marketing goals
A video marketing strategy is going to struggle if its sole objective is to sell more widgets. Though that may be the ultimate goal, if you incorporate too much self-promotional content in your marketing strategy, it will be perceived as spammy and go unnoticed.
So, before you start thinking about the details and possible marketing results of your video, you need to define the marketing objectives. Although you’ll still want to drive the viewer to the next step, your goal shouldn’t be for them to walk away feeling like you’ve just assaulted them with a massive sales pitch.
The goal of your video marketing strategy should be to educate, entertain and inspire your viewer. This is the content that gets shared and remembered because your content will be shared on your social media accounts and website. It won’t be difficult for people to find and engage with your brand or business if they enjoyed the videos you’re producing. So, don’t worry so much about trying to create a high-end commercial for your company instead, focus on creating video content that genuinely helps your target audiences and gives them real value.
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It’s not about spraying out hardcore sales messages to all and sundry. It’s about fostering and building relationships with your audience that are based on trust. It’s a long game, but ultimately this approach will lead to more loyal repeat clients compared to the flighty price-based purchasers that are likely to respond to a stream of blatant sales content. In short to determine the purpose of your video marketing strategy make sure that you know your target audience, understand what’s likely to make them share, like and buy based on how your product or service can really help them and then create content that you know, they want, need or will appreciate.
You can also define marketing goals for both revenue and your brand or business. Revenue based goals focus on things like increasing lead form inquiries whilst brand goals involve things like growing a higher quality email list, driving more blog traffic or capturing Google answer boxes for targeted keywords.
Brand goals can be just as important as revenue ones because they help position you and your business for future success and often take into account qualitative feedback based on the objectives then you can plan a strategy that works for you from the platforms to the content as well as measuring results according to the appropriate variables.
For example, if your main objective is to increase the presence of your brand, the number of views of your video is a really good indicator of the success of the campaign.
Tip #2 – Define your video marketing strategy concept
I know that’s a really long title but once you’ve outlined your goals and chosen a video strategy you’ll have to start shaping your plan of action. Determining which formats and topics will connect best with your audience.
Should your videos be instructional ‘how to’s’, should they be brand stories? Should they be narratives or whatever depending on your industry or niche you can even show a character’s development across a number of videos and stories. The goal is to provide something that your viewers will appreciate and that they’ll want to share but what topics should you cover? The more related they are to your business the better.
Research and experiment to determine the most effective style and topics for your niche and don’t be afraid to borrow ideas from those have already been successful. Some of the greatest marketing campaigns have been those that took a strategy from an unrelated industry and then integrated it into their own market.
Tip #3 – Decide who will develop your video content
When it comes to creating videos, you’ve got several options depending on the production quality you’re aiming for and of course your budget, you can use your own resources and put together an in-house production, hire freelances or even go for a DIY production.
If you plan to develop videos on a regular basis with a low budget the DIY approach may be the best option for you. However, if you do this, you’ll still want to ensure that the videos maintain a certain level of quality, even though they’re DIY productions. So, spend some time researching on how to create great video and maybe consider taking a few courses that can provide you with additional insights and enable you to up skill in the right areas.
But when you want to step up the game and take your digital video marketing strategy to the next level, most of the time you’ll have to work with a professional video marketing agency or production company. Now, obviously this option is more expensive however, you do get what you pay for. If you’re looking to create a single impactful video working with professionals is certainly a really wise option.
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These guys are masters of their craft and have the knowledge, talent and expertise to transform a simple concept into an engaging and beautiful piece of film. When deciding the best way to develop your videos keeping in mind your target audience obviously your budget and your time availability and your creativity and let these factors lead you on determining which production company to collaborate with depending on their level of experience and the level of their service offering.
For example, if you have an in-house marketing function in your business, you may not need to be guided throughout the whole video production process in the same way as a sole trader, for example. So, think about where you need help, is it just the filming or is it the development, the pre-production, the production and the implementation too?
You see, not all production companies have the understanding or experience to be able to integrate their films into online campaigns for more of an end-to-end type service. So definitely about what you and your business need help achieving.
Tip #4 – Leave your viewers wanting more
When watching TV, it’s rare to want to commercial to keep going, they’re normally an unwanted interruption to what we were actually watching. However, if you can create videos that actually leave the viewer wanting more, they’ll share like and subscribe to see what content is coming up next and this is when you know that your video marketing strategy has become a success.
Continue thinking long-term what is your plan for building a return audience? Take a look at what other big brands have done. For example, Old Spices YouTube campaign increased sales by whopping 107%.
What was their secret? They didn’t just send videos to their customers they made videos in response to their communities’ feedback. The response approach is a great way to create a conversation with your customer base that can be carried on across other social media channels.
Another way to interest your viewers is by creating variety, videos that go viral are often not product advertisements or how to’s, unless they are super brilliant but short videos that are humorous, inspiring or slightly off the wall.
Tip #5 – Choose a suitable platform for distribution
So, once you’ve established a budget for your video marketing strategy, selecting the platforms on which to publish your videos will become a lot easier to determine. But before you get to the when of posting, you really do need to establish the where.
You should seriously consider which platforms are the most appropriate according to the target audience you want to reach. Each video publishing platform has its own strengths and weaknesses so it’s important to know what each platform has to offer before beginning video production especially when it comes to determining how long or short your video needs to be.
Recording a video and sticking it up on YouTube just isn’t enough, you have to strategically promote it. So, analyze both your content and your target audience to determine which is the most appropriate social network to distribute your videos.
When releasing any video, it’s critical to leverage multiple distribution channels to maximize the reach and engagement. It’s crucial to make sure that your video content is accessible to everyone. So definitely make sure you caption all your video content.
Final Words
So, there you have it five small business video marketing strategy tips. I hope that gets your gray matter engaged and ideas starting to form in your mind as to how you can take your video marketing to the next level.
There’s loads more inspiration you can find on our page and in our YouTube Channel covering strategy and production, everything you need to make the most of video for your business. If there’s something you think we should cover ping us a message in the comments below and we’ll sort that out for you.