Videos. You know, those things you click on, watch, and share? They just may be the key to your marketing strategy. Countless individuals, business, and major companies are moving toward video to complete their marketing strategy. Why?
Because Video Is Powerful!
It’s simple, fun, entertaining, diverse; it’s anything you want it to be. If your business wants a piece of the cake, you can implement video with SnapChat, Periscope, explainer videos, tutorials, commercials, and countless other creative ways. Your social media marketing strategy is utterly incomplete without video. So to help you find your feet in the video world, I’ve formulated the “Six C’s” of video marketing to explain why integrating videos in your business is so crucial.
1. Videos Captivate
You look at images. You read articles and posts. You listen to podcasts. You experience videos. Videos captivate your potential and existing audiences, which is the first step to converting them into loyal customers. This type of medium is the most interactive – asking your viewer to pay attention audibly and visually.
We have short attention spans. Tweets are limited to only 140 characters. Vine and Snapchat videos are limited to six and ten seconds respectively. Instagram is limited to a single, visual image and maybe a brief caption. Anything longer and no one will stick around. Your business’s videos must capture the attention of your audience and hold them. It’s okay to have long videos on your YouTube channel, but for social media, make it succinct. It will disseminate.
2. Videos Communicate
Videos communicate your business’s purpose to your audience. Even if you don’t directly address it in your videos, mentioning your products or services or expressing a certain mood in your videos communicates your purpose to the viewer. If you always seem “out to make a profit” or have a negative tone in your videos, your audience will pick up on it and conclude that the purpose of your business is to profit, cheat, and degrade.
Whether you’re just starting out or have been in business for a while, creating a killer explainer video is a must for your business.
You need to communicate the basics of your business. You need to tell your audience why you care about them and why they should care about you. Plus, marketing an explainer video will result in much higher conversion rates than any other video, since the topic is your business.
3. Videos Compel
Your videos convince your audience that your business is worth checking out. The easiest way to amp up your conversion rates is to add a call to action to your video. Tell the viewers where to find you and provide them with links to your website and social media accounts.
Make your call to action enticing. Plopping in a link or business name at the end of every video is a surefire way to cripple your conversion rates. Sure, if your video was interesting, some viewers will click on the link to your website or even take the time to Google your business name to find you. But if you do something creative with your call to action, several viewers will become devoted customers.
Good call to action:
- Tons of social media outlets: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, Tumblr, Vine, YouTube with her username.
- Unique to her channel: colorful rainbows, channel logo, previews and links to more videos of hers.
- Engaging: presents an entertaining video then follows up with an entertaining outro; talks to the viewer and encourages them to check out her videos.
Bad call to action:
- Difficult to locate: “Blow-Out Deal” on the left is microscopic and only the small, unmarked text links to the deal, not the whole image; registration link is very small and unappealing; no visible newsletter or social media outlets.
- No personality: generic colors like gray and white; generic font.
- Not appealing or engaging: nothing that jumps out at you; no video, text, or image to communicate with you.
4. Videos Circulate
How easy is it to click the “share” button after watching a video? Exactly. Viewers have tons of platform options for sharing your video with their friends and family. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat, Vine, Periscope, Instagram, Reddit, Google+, and more all allow the user to share and send videos and links.
Even if your video doesn’t become viral, you’d be amazed at how many times it’s circulated. Not just shared or linked to, but emailed, texted, talked about, thought about. Simply having a good video, sharing it, and encouraging others to share it will ripple your video among thousands of minds and tongues. Text is sometimes hard to remember, but videos provide a visual, memorable ground for viewers to talk about. Any marketing strategy that gives your business this much circulation is worth adopting.
5. Videos Convey
Videos are the perfect outlet to express your brand. Gary Vaynerchuk explains this major advantage that videos have over text:
“There’s… more room to set the tone. A lot of things can get lost in a tweet. I might say “thnx” but that person isn’t 100% sure what my tone really was. But with… video, the message comes across loud and clear.”
Conveying the essence of your brand is important because then your audience can discern your true and benign intentions. They will know that they can trust you as customers and that you are worth their most valuable asset: time. Plus, an endless supply of social media websites and apps are moving their focus toward video.
In early 2015, YouTube received 7 billion views per day, Facebook 4 billion, and SnapChat 3 billion. It’s time to wedge your business’s unique personality into that valuable space!
6. Videos Confirm
The proof is in the pudding. Thousands upon thousands of individuals and businesses have built their success through videos. You’ve probably heard of stars like Lindsey Stirling and Vsauce who have used YouTube to launch their career, but major companies like ESPN and Yahoo are also jumping on the video marketing train.
National Geographic is one of the few companies on SnapChat Discover. CNN is sharing live videos on Periscope. Facebook has made it easier for businesses to target a specific demographic with their videos. These companies know that only businesses that connect with young audiences using these video platforms will be successful.
No matter what kind of business you have, use video. Today. If you own a jewelry repair shop, SnapChat about your monthly discounts. If you are an author, share techniques for brainstorming topic ideas on Twitter video. If your business rents cheap textbooks and supplies to college students, make a YouTube video series about how to survive college financially. Find a way to implement video into your marketing strategy, and the stats will confirm your business’s growth.
Of course articles, images, tweets, podcasts, etc. are all important for your social media marketing strategy, but many businesses neglect the power of video. You don’t have to start a whole YouTube series or chart out expensive projects to integrate video into your business. All you need is a creative idea and some drive.
Start today.
Scribble an outline for a tutorial video on cooking crème brûlée, figure out how to mingle blogging and dog training into a witty explainer video, do something.
Because, as you know, videos only captivate, communicate, compel, circulate, convey, and confirm.
…and isn’t that what you want for your business?
[Images – Main Photo by Matheus Bertelli from Pexels ; other images from their respective websites and/or social platforms]
Hello! My name is Brenna Clarine and I write articles for various websites. The two main companies I work for are Valoso.com and MyLocal3DPrinting.com. Check them out!