You have a lot of work to accomplish as a small business owner. The last thing you want to do is add video marketing to your to-do list, especially if you have no expertise with video and aren’t sure where to begin.
Many small businesses are reluctant to use video marketing because they think it is too complicated, time-consuming, or even costly. You’re not alone: 16% of video marketers don’t use video marketing because they don’t have the time, while another 17% don’t use video marketing because they think it’s too costly.
Video marketing does not have to be expensive or time-consuming. This post will show you how to get started with video marketing for your small business in a time-saving and productive manner.
What is Video Marketing?
Marketing is a crucial component of a company’s overall success. All of the steps involved in customizing your products, news, sales, distribution, customer service, and other company activities to meet the needs of your most valuable asset are included in marketing.
There are numerous ways to sell your company using digital platforms today. You have options for email, social networking, and even video marketing.
Video marketing is a cost-effective and quick approach to promoting your products and services. Unlike traditional video advertising, which aims to pique attention and increase sales, video marketing content aims to engage your customers on a deeper level. Small video content may be private, purely draw interest, and resonate more with audiences than other mediums.
Enhance your online visibility, establish better market awareness, increase interaction, and build trust through video marketing. Video advertising is a type of video marketing that allows businesses to monetize their products or services. Small business video content can even be funny, instructional, inspiring, motivational, or moving.
Why small businesses should use video marketing?
We’re used to seeing high-budget videos from companies like Nike, so generating an impact with a low-budget video may seem unattainable. Small business video can assist put a face to a call and permits a target market to see the genuine nature of your enterprise and offerings.
However, one of the most significant advantages of video marketing is that both low-budget and high-budget videos have the potential to go viral. Small business videos are effortlessly processed and they can get humans’ attention simply as quickly. This is tremendous in helping to bring about brand recognition.
5 video marketing ideas for small businesses
There are numerous methods to use video in your small business, and deciding where to begin can be difficult, especially if you don’t have much time. Don’t be concerned! Here are five sorts of results-oriented videos that may be common in any small business to help you save time (and money).
1. Brand story videos
People may learn more about your company’s history, mission, and what sets you apart from your competition by watching brand narrative videos. Small business video incorporating text, music, and snapshots makes it an ideal medium for conveying compelling content.
64 percent of customers find brands that declare their mission more appealing, and 52 percent say they are more compelled to buy from particular brands when they stand for something other than their products and services, as well as whether market values align with their own.
Being open about your background and values, especially in such a personal and immersive medium as video, can help you feel more connected.
2. Product videos
Product videos demonstrate products, their features, and how they function. Product videos are a wonderful method for small businesses to promote their products and be seen by potential buyers, as 96 percent of people use video to learn more about a product or service. They interact with users for longer intervals of time on your website. Small business videos may be also a great way to grow subscriptions on your social media outreach.
Teton Sports is a women-owned small business (WOSB) that sells outdoor gear. One of their screens is demonstrated in this product video. This movie includes music, subtitles, and a brief demonstration. This movie, which has over 40,000 views, is an excellent example of a short and brief video that is easy to construct on a cheap budget.
3. Educational videos
By educating your audience on topics in your field or niche, educational videos allow you to establish yourself as an authority or expert in your field. Guides, directions, questions, and answers, as well as tips and tricks, are all examples. With small business video, you may promote your services or products and increase your conversions charges from prospects to shopping for clients
You value your audience by teaching them something new – usually how to execute a task linked to the product you’re offering – rather than explicitly advertising your items or services. This helps you develop credibility in your industry and build trust with your audience. Small business videos out of your social media outreach may be used to power site visitors to your website.
Deadstock Coffee & Gallery demonstrates how to make coffee at home in this video. Video is both educational and inexpensive to produce. Without relying on video fraudsters, small businesses on a budget and with limited time can do something similar using simply their cameras or smartphones.
4. Social proof videos
The concept of social evidence is that our behavior can be influenced by the acts and views of others. You can use the authority and influence of people outside your business to promote public awareness and build good market sentiment with your small business marketing videos. The platform for your small business videos is diverse. You may use your videos in your internet site’s social media handles that consist of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn in addition to different platforms on the net, which includes Google.
Customer witness videos and product evaluations, video partnerships with brand ambassadors as influencers, and user-generated video content from your social consumers are all examples of these types of videos.
5. Behind-the-scenes videos
Your customers will get a glimpse of the person or individuals behind the scenes of your business using behind-the-scenes videos. You can, for example, collaborate on videos, share personal tales, or illustrate your company’s daily operations, such as how your products or interactions function. With a compelling small business, videos come outnumbered messaging, which is a first-rate manner for increasing your outreach.
One of the advantages of behind-the-scenes videos is that they are quick to make. Kirrin Finch, for example, is a men’s clothing fashion designer who has a brief behind-the-scenes video on her Instagram account that reveals how they produce their outfits.
How To Make Low-Cost Direct Marketing Videos For Your Small Business
Here are a few steps you can take to make great films for your small business in a day or two (or even hours) for a low price.
Step 1: Establish your goal
Before shooting your film, you must first establish clear objectives. Starting with a large “WHAT” is one approach to accomplish this. “What is the goal of my video?” you might wonder. This will assist you in determining your objective. Here are some examples of goals you can attain and the types of films you can use to achieve them:
Make the market more aware (brand story videos)
Sales compulsion (product videos)
Customers should be familiarized with products (educational videos)
Increase your credibility and trustworthiness (videos with social proof)
Step 2: Come up with ideas
Begin by gathering ideas and inspiration from coworkers, competitors, and well-known businesses.
You may make Twitter lists or utilize the site to display Facebook features and spy on your competitors and large companies if you’re on Twitter. Examine their films and take note of their strengths as well as places where you may improve.
If you have a blog, you can use analytics to determine which posts are the most popular and then reuse that content in your films.
Finally, once you’ve established a presence on social media, you can generate topic ideas by studying your most successful postings. You may also use social media to set up listening to keep track of your customers’ frequent comments and questions, which you can then respond to using videos.
Step 3: Prepare a script
Scriptwriting can aid in the working of your video, the creation of an account, and the mapping of the complete video stream. Even anything planned and written can assist break your anxieties if you’re embarrassed in front of the camera.
You can add things like an introduction, a call to action (CTA), product benefits, and more depending on the goals of your film.
Step 4: Gather your tools
Gather all of the tools you’ll need for your small business video creation business before you begin filming.
To shoot, you don’t need a lot of pricey camera equipment. That is something that only your smartphone is capable of. You may also get a cheap tripod for your smartphone and a microphone to improve the sound quality of your video.
Canva also allows you to make free video thumbnails and video covers.
Finally, here are six simple small business video editing tools to maintain your latest movies polished and professional.
Step 5: Select your location
Don’t ignore the importance of location, location, location! Make sure your subject or merchandise is well lit if you’re shooting. When shooting outside, keep an eye on the sun to avoid glare and shadows.
Choose a location with no background noise or needless distractions, whether you’re shooting indoors or outside.
Step 6: Hit record
You are now ready to begin after completing all of the necessary preparations. Remember that you don’t have to be Martin Scorsese or produce high-quality videos. Instead of striving for perfection, concentrate on bringing your genuine self-closer to you and communicating your small business’s fundamental values to existing and new consumers, errors and all. Now it’s time for action: lights, cameras, and action!
Four Low-Cost Video Promotion Strategies for Small Businesses Videos
It’s time to focus on advertising and distribution now that you’ve finished your video. Following these guidelines, you can achieve this on a shoestring budget.
According to Pew Research Center research, seven out of ten Americans use social media. This implies that one of the best locations to advertise your video is on social media, and Buffer makes it simple to distribute your films across many platforms. We also provide a guide to assist you in setting up and optimizing YouTube, the most popular social media network for video promotion.
2. Use video on your landing page
After watching a brand video, 84 percent of customers believe they will buy a product or service. Because customers are most likely to buy your product or service on your website, it makes sense to include a video about your company on your landing page to assist boost sales.
A video of two people laughing in a chair was embedded on the Wildbit landing page, with text to the right of the video and graphics of a rainbow on the right and left borders.
On its landing page, the small software business Wildbit featured a 10-minute video tale about the brand.
If you’re beginning a small business and don’t yet have a website, you can construct a mobile landing page using our homepage. You can still embed a link to a YouTube video on your website for your visitors to watch.
3. Partner with influencers
Working with influencers has the benefit of increasing your brand’s exposure and reach while also increasing your social awareness. Not only do 49% of consumers trust influencer referrals, but 40% of consumers shop after seeing anything on Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram.
Working with micro influencers is always preferable for small businesses because they have a smaller but well-connected audience than larger influencers. They’re also more likely to be less expensive or willing to form partnerships in exchange for free products.
Paid social ads can help you improve your videos and get them in front of more people, especially if you’ve observed that they’re already performing well organically.
The most generally utilized ad platforms in small businesses are Facebook and Instagram ads, and the advantage of both is that your ads don’t cost more than they should.
Use Buffer to help manage your small business video production and distribution
It can be time-consuming, costly, and daunting to market a small business video. However, this is not always the case. Buffer offers a variety of tools and services to assist small company owners, startups, and entrepreneurs with their video marketing and content marketing initiatives. Buffer is a crucial marketing tool for small businesses, with time-saving templates, free landing pages for your small business, a planning tool to help you organize and distribute your social media posts, and a library full of free materials like these.