Video marketing has quickly become a major player in content marketing for SMBs, enabling businesses to reach their targeted audiences in a fast, convenient and more personal way.
Whether you’re sharing sneak previews of new products, highlighting client testimonials and success stories or hosting a live Q & A with your audience, it is important to consider just how impactful video marketing can be for your firm.
Of the small businesses that are using video:
Video marketing has also had a positive impact on conversion:
Also, user response to video has been favorable:
Finding the “best” social platform is unique to each business, and the deciding factor is your customer base. What types of video platforms are they most likely to watch?
As you select the online platforms to showcase your videos, keep in mind two things:
Pro Tip: You don't always need a professional camera to shoot quality videos. Your phone's camera is all you need on most occasions.
Employing social media strategies are crucial in the realm of video marketing. Here are main players to consider:
Facebook is slowly but surely becoming a full-blown video platform.
(Watch out YouTube! Facebook is gunning for you and now favorites native video over YouTube links.)
Statistics show that Facebook generates about 8 billion views of video streams daily. A number that is only going to continue to grow.
The great thing about Facebook is the sense of community it creates; it’s easy to for users to share your video, allowing you to reach a larger audience (135% greater organic reach than photo posts) and connect with people on a global scale.
Facebook has also capitalized on in-the-moment content and has gone live (Facebook Live). As a result, Facebook is officially leading the way in video compared to other social networks.
Instagram has grown to more than 500 million users who collectively share over 20 billion posts.
Instagram taps into a personal market with users sharing videos or photos of them doing something (i.e., cooking a recipe). When it comes to video marketing, what you place on Instagram forms a more personal connection with viewers and gets them more interested in what your company does—rather than what it just says it does.
However, unlike Facebook, video posts on Instagram receive less engagement than photos. For this reason, it is suggested that you not create videos specifically for Instagram.
Instagram has also been pushing businesses to create videos for Facebook with the mobile user in mind.
Facebook and Instagram want you to go square with your videos and leave the landscape videos for the television. Studies have found that users are 67% more likely to watch a 1:1 video in full than a horizontal video.
Snapchats video traffic is on par with Facebook, with users producing more than 7 billion videos per day.
Snapchat’s videos only have a lifespan of 24 hours. This urgency plays a huge factor in getting people engaged; if you know you only have a limited time to see something, you’re more likely to check it out before it disappears.
Despite the fact that Facebook is gaining extensive ground on YouTube's territory, the original video network still boasts over 1 billion users and is the second leading search engine right behind Google.
As the go-to source for pithy, digestible marketing, YouTube is great for reaching global audiences of all ages.
In this highly visual age, there’s no doubt that video is the future of the internet marketing industry.
As you begin to implement video marketing into your content strategy, consider utilizing some of the most compelling trends, such as branded video content, the use of GIFS, and live streaming.
No matter the industry you're in, investing in small business video marketing is one of the key ways to stay ahead of your competitors and keep your customers leads pouring in.