Top Four Ways To Use Video To Grow Your Business

Businesses of all sizes, from the brand new to the well-established, are including video in their long-term marketing strategy to grow your business. It is the business marketer’s sole responsibility to understand the target audience of a company, their demographics, preferences, activities, and so on, to come up with the most appropriate video creation.

Once a target audience is established and understood, it is then the marketer’s role to come up with video creations that portray the products or services of the business in their best light.

I’ve previously written about how effective video is, but briefly, it comes down to the following concepts:

• Trust building
• It is more engaging than other marketing forms
• Reduces advertising expenditures
• Improves search engine ranking
• Excellent for social media and mobile internet users

Best ways to use video for business growth

Below are the top four most effective ways to use video for your business and the best ways to implement the strategy:

1) Social media platforms

Ranging from entertainment, apps, games and interaction to effective promotion of wide-ranging companies, social media is the absolute best source for online engagement and the greatest breakthrough of the internet.

Latest figures show that there are more than 3.78 billion active social media users; this is an unprecedented audience waiting to be reached – and there are many ways you can do this, some more effective than others.

When you look at creating videos for social media platforms, you have a few to choose from. Let’s break them down:

• Facebook – 2.89 billion active users
• YouTube – 2.291 billion active users
• Instagram – 1.386 billion users
• Twitter – 206 million daily users
• Pinterest – 454 million monthly users

By adding video to your business’ social media channels, you have the option of millions of people seeing your brand.

The first rule is to ensure that your video is fully optimised for mobile devices, as there are literally billions of people who solely use mobile to access the internet. Moreover, those with desktop computers will also use mobile to access their social media accounts regularly throughout the day.

If your video doesn’t play well, I can assure you it just won’t be played.

You have around five seconds to gain the attention of a social media user through video content. Granted, this isn’t a great deal of time to get your message across, but it is enough time for potential consumers to decide if they need/want to watch your video. The message you want to get across can come later.

Another golden rule is to make sure your video is engaging. It should also be relevant, interesting, and catchy – so, a few rules, all equally as important as each other.

2) Use YouTube

As we know, online video is growing exponentially, and where else is better to upload yours to than YouTube? With over 4 billion videos viewed every day, this is the place to head to with your business video.

Let’s look briefly at the stats:

• It’s the world’s second-largest search engine (after Google)
• It’s the third-most visited website (after Google and Facebook)
• Globally, it receives around a billion visits each month
• Every 60 seconds there are 100 more hours of video content uploaded

YouTube is so colossal that you’re pretty much guaranteed to find a group of people that’ll become raving fans of your business. Using YouTube is a great way to increase the authority of your brand.

Approach other (non-rival) website owners and ask for your links to be embedded into their content; every time they do, it increases your video’s ranking in search results on both YouTube and Google. This is also something you can pay for with specialised link-building agencies.

Associating your domain name with your YouTube channel shows the platform that you are the official representative of your business. So, when consumers search for terms relating to the products or services you offer, or indeed your brand itself, YouTube is more likely to point directly to your channel.

3) Explainer videos

If you have ever stumbled across a brief and highly engaging animated video, then this is very likely an explainer video. In essence, this video form tends to be under two minutes long and will solely concentrate on one specific service or product. Explainer videos are effective ways of attracting a target audience and educating them about your business.

An explainer video can make a potential consumer want to know more about your business and lead them to seek out more information; ‘click here’ or ‘check out the link below’ are two great ways to help this along.

Fundamentally, an explainer video will address a specific problem and explain how your business’ product or service will counteract this and enrich their life. Some well-established companies use celebrities or influencers, but this isn’t necessary; most companies will happily do their own – much like me!

4) Webinars

Webinars are virtual events you can host for your business that has some huge benefits, such as convenience, reduced marketing costs, increased exposure, and effective business promotion. Your audience can engage with you, ask questions, and ultimately build a relationship with your business.

You will be able to capture participant details and develop profitable sales leads.

Here are some tips on how to organise and run a successful webinar:

Pick a topic – The nature of your business will dictate the topic of the webinar, but the key is to choose a specific area to focus on that will interest your target audience. What would they want to know more about? How do you fit in with current affairs or trends? What knowledge can you share that’s useful, relevant, and interesting?

Pick a format – There are many different formats to choose from when organising a webinar, which you can tweak to meet your aspirations, aims, and confidence as a host. It could be highly interactive for a very small group or a much larger event with fellow speakers.

Create the content – Successful webinars use a mixture of brilliant content and supporting visuals; a talking head only captures attention for so long. Consider how best to create some slides and include a range of charts, graphs, pictures, and video clips, in addition to live demos. Write a schedule with dedicated time slots for slides, talking with the finish focusing on Q&As.

Choose a platform – This doesn’t have to be paid for; options like Google+ Hangout, Skype, and Zoom are all free and all-sufficient. But, when choosing a platform, some factors to consider are: how many participants can be accommodated, how easy it is to switch between speakers, the ease of screen and slide sharing, and if there’s a recording functionality (to reuse the content).

Further research should include:

• Selecting an appropriate time and date
• Inviting people to your Webinar
• Ensuring you have the right equipment to run it smoothly

Webinars take time to organise but are a low-cost and low-risk way of engaging with an audience.

To Sum Up

So, these are my top four ways to use video for business. Video can be used to promote a product, service, or the company itself, and it is the most effective form of marketing today. If you want to learn more about this subject, check out my own video here, and leave me a comment if you have any further questions!