5 Surprising Ways Your Business Can Use Video Marketing

How to Make Video Marketing Work for Your Business

Consumers love video. Over a billion people use YouTube and a full one-third of the time people spend online, they spend watching videos.

All that love of video isn’t exclusive to videos made purely for entertainment purposes; video marketing also offers impressive results:

• Videos in an email increase clicks by 200 to 300%
• Landing page videos increase conversions by 80%
• Watching a video makes consumers 64% more likely to buy a product online

They may cost more to make than some other forms of content, but those statistics make a clear case that the investment is worth it.

Of course, as with any type of content format, you have to worry about the issue of oversaturation. If you do the same things with video that every other brand in your space is doing, you’ll have a hard time standing out.

Here are a few approaches you can take to video marketing that are a bit less common and can help you break through the noise.

1. Create a regular talk show.

The talk show format’s been around for decades, but it’s not something brands have made much use of. That means there’s a good chance you’d be the first (or at least one of the first) to tackle this format if you do decide to give it a try.

A talk show format will work best if you commit to doing it with regularity – for example, a new episode every month – so you can gain viewers over time that know when to look forward to a new episode being released. And you’ll need to put the work in to research relevant guests and start cultivating relationships with them to make them more likely to accept an invitation to be on your show.

The Wine Exchange, a wine shop in California, uses a talk show format to interview wine makers each week as a way to promote different wines and bring attention to both their own business and those of their guests.

Each video they release earns hundreds of views, and their YouTube channel has thousands of subscribers. The videos are entertaining, educational, and relevant to the Wine Exchange’s target audience: people who buy wine. Through the talk show format, they’ve managed to make their mark in a competitive space.

 

2. Use live video.

With the launch of Facebook Live, live video on social media has come into the mainstream. It’s a great way to reach your audience, since anyone that’s already liked your page on Facebook will see your video as they’re scrolling through their feed (and let’s be honest, we know people spend a lot of time scrolling through their Facebook feeds).

Live video gives you the opportunity to respond directly to your viewers as they watch, which makes it more engaging for your audience and more valuable for you.

Blue Apron’s live video introducing wines that would go great with Valentine’s Day dinners gave the brand a chance to answer both general questions that were useful to their audience, like what to do when ordering wine at a restaurant, and specific questions about their own products. They were able to be helpful to their audience while also increasing interest in a product they sell at the same time. That’s a balance brands constantly seek in content marketing and one that a strategic and well thought out live video can help you achieve.

 

3. Give your audience a behind-the-scenes look.

Most consumer interaction with a brand only occurs with the end product, or maybe through a customer service call or email. You can make your business more real and relatable to your prospects by showing them the atmosphere and work that creates the end product they love.

Most people use Google every day without thinking too much about how the service we rely on so much actually works. If you’re curious (and over four million people apparently have been), you can watch a video that shows a behind-the-scenes tour of the data centers that keep the popular search engine working.

Give your customers a glimpse of what your brand looks like from the inside so they have a new level to connect to you on. It makes your brand less of an abstract concept and more something that customers can visualize.

 

4. Make short videos highlighting your employees.

As much as we hope all our marketing will help consumers connect with a brand, most people have an easier time connecting with other people than any company. Luckily, your business is made up of people. Video gives you a chance to introduce your customers to some of the personalities behind your brand.

Freshbooks shared a short, playful video of one of their data analysts Fernando solving a Rubik’s cube, along with likeable videos that give viewers a look at the Freshbooks office and a little bit of information into the personalities of employees that work there.

Both types of video help to personalize the brand and put real faces to the company. Videos like these show your customers that their decision to buy isn’t just profiting some faceless entity, it’s keeping real, relatable people that (hopefully) like their jobs in work.

 

5. Create a branded web series.

To be honest, this option is likely to be more costly than any of the others listed here, but if you’re able to make the investment, it could be a great way to bring new interest to your brand. A number of brands have worked with creators to develop branded web series that are entertaining enough to gain wide interest from viewers, while relating to the brand behind them in some way.

GoPro, a brand that targets its marketing toward an audience of adventurous types, has a documentary series called the Searching the Maya Underworld that follows explorers (using GoPro cameras) as they delve into a hard-to-reach cave.

Meanwhile, Nike funded a narrative web series called Margot vs Lily about two sisters who make a bet about getting a new fitness channel off the ground. The series is subtle in its mentions of the brand, but is very in keeping with the types of topics the Nike brand emphasizes in its advertising.

Both of these examples touch on a couple of things that make branded web series work:

• They have to be on topics of interest to your target audience.
• They should relate to your brand, without hitting your viewers over the head with brand mentions.

If branded web series get the right traction, they can be big. A Contently analysis found that the average number of views for an episode of a web series is over 200,000 (although smaller brands probably shouldn’t count on a number like that, the median number of views is closer to 3,000).

If you’re up for the challenge, a well-made branded web series could be a powerful way to reach more people and promote your brand through video.

If you can figure out the right idea and approach to create a video that attracts attention and really speaks to your audience, video can be a powerful tool to cut through the noise and encourage more engagement with your users. Carefully consider how best to work video marketing into your content strategy and try to think outside of the box to bring your audience something new and interesting.