This article was written by:
James Mathews
If you were in a room with 100 people and asked them to raise their hand if they consume video content daily I’m sure there wouldn’t be many in the room that would leave their hands down.
Video is one of the most consumed forms of content and if you aren’t creating it for your business you are missing out.
According to Wyzowl, over 85% of businesses have started to use video marketing. Why is video marketing on the rise?
Video Increases Conversions
Video can be used in several ways, one of which is to help your potential customers trust your brand and understand the product you are selling in more detail. Hubspot conducted a study where they were able to increase the conversions of a product by 80% when they added a video to their landing page.
When you think of those numbers it makes sense. For many years the standard on web pages has been text content and people may have become blind to it and skim the content. Conversely, video is easy to watch. Plus, you can even do it when you’re sitting on a train or a lunch break. It also takes less effort on the consumers’ part. As a result, potential customers can sit back, click the play button and listen to your video and decide if that product could work for them.
Video Increases Email Marketing CTR
Campaign Monitor found that adding video to their emails increased their click-through rates up to 96% where normally they would expect a 2-3% click-through rate. While Hubspot found that adding the word “video” to your email subject line increased their open rates by 13%.
If your business runs email marketing campaigns consider adding video and test the results. As with everything in marketing you shouldn’t blindly follow the advice of anyone online and should test each strategy as what works for one person may not work for you.
Video Marketing Improves SEM
Google uses many signals to detect whether a web page should be shown for a searched query and adding video to your web pages can help improve the metrics of some of these factors.
Adding video to your webpages can increase the time a user spends on your website as they tend to watch the video and stick around, whereas websites with walls of text put visitors off and make them click off the site.
Adding video to your content can also improve the overall quality of the content on the page and can generate high-quality backlinks which plays a major role in increasing your rankings and organic website traffic.
Video Builds Trust
Testimonials are a great way of getting a potential customer to trust your business. However, so many companies share testimonials on their sites, that they don’t stand out. Testimonials can also be faked by companies that are not trustworthy but video gets around the issue.
Video testimonials are harder to fake and when you have them on your website you give yourself an advantage over your competitors and your potential customers can see that too.
What do you think is more convincing, a few lines of text saying how great your product is or a 1-minute video of a past client highlighting their experiences with your company.
Video Helps Explain Complex Subjects
Video can explain complex services or products much quicker and in more detail than other forms of content, for busy people this is great and it keeps them on your website to consider your product or service.
If you work in an industry where clients need to be handheld while making a purchasing decision video can help you increase your conversion rate and also cut down on the hours needed to answer common questions about your product.
Video Marketing Improves Social Media Engagement
Video can be used on your website, in your emails and on social media to drive leads and sales to your business. Additionally, video performs very well on social media too with the Digital Informational World reporting that videos can increase the engagement rate of your social media posts by 1200%.
If you take a second and scroll through your phone and look at one of your social media channels how many posts are using video? Probably not many of them and that’s why video gets more engagement because it stands out.
Problems with Video
With all the benefits of video, you would think that businesses would be using it more, but the truth is video has had a high barrier to entry in the past. For starters, costs can be prohibitive (source Lean Labs). For example, the average video costs roughly $1,200 for a basic video. Or, roughly $50,000 for premium quality. As a result, there’s no wonder why some businesses are cautious about incorporating video into their campaigns.
Video marketing agencies are going to be at the high end of that scale while freelancers are often more affordable, with that said $1,200 per video is still too much of an expense to some businesses.
But the best thing about video marketing is your video doesn’t have to look like a Hollywood production. For example, Firewall Technical, a small business, reported that they were able to increase their conversion rates on their security audits by 46% using a screen recorder and a Snowball Microphone. While the Dollar Shave Club was able to grow its brand to a billion dollars all from recording a video and uploading it to Youtube.
Creating Video Content on a Budget
You don’t need any specialist equipment to create videos to grow your brand and can record video for fairly cheap. A DSLR camera that records video along with some lighting would be ideal but if your budget doesn’t stretch that far you can create professional videos with your iPhone, a clip-on microphone and a tripod.
Having a smaller budget doesn’t mean you can’t compete with the bigger companies, it just means you’re going to have to plan harder and execute the video to the best of your ability.
When you create your videos at first you are going to fumble over your lines, get lost in your thoughts and generally be bad at them, but stick with it. The more you practice the better you will become. You also shouldn’t worry about making mistakes because you can edit them out in post-production.
When creating a video, you should think of the goal behind the video and not get pulled in many different directions. For example, if you want to generate more leads, create content around the services you provide. Then, at the end of the video ensure a call to action spurs people to reach out to you.
Alternatively, if the goal of the video is to create trust, then focus on interviews with previous customers. Or, show behind the scenes footage of your staff and company that highlight real people and are not another faceless company on the internet.
Finally, if you don’t have a reason for a video you shouldn’t make one.
The best way to make videos for your company is to start with the why and then create a video outline of everything that you want to cover in that video. You could go as far as creating a script but for some business owners, it may feel unnatural.
Final Thoughts on Video Marketing
If you aren’t creating video content for your business you can see some of the benefits you are missing out on. Having no budget is no longer an issue and even if technology frightens you it’s not too difficult to get your phone out and start recording.
When you’re done with shooting the video you can fix your mistakes by editing them out and you can either pay a small fee on a freelance website for someone to do this for you or you can learn yourself from the many video tutorials on the internet.
James Mathews is the head of content creation at Bounce Color, a website that helps small business owners edit their videos to a professional standard quickly and easily through digital assets.
