Online Video Marketing for Small Businesses

Video can work wonders for your marketing.
Source: Flickr

Video marketing is an easy and effective way to market your products online instead of spending thousands of dollars on advertisements that might not reach your target audience. It is an ideal platform for small businesses to showcase their products and services to a larger audience. 

Analysts say that every minute of video is worth over 1.5 million words. Also the effect videos generate is quite high as opposed to a blog post or a copy. Here are a few reasons why every small business website should make online marketing videos a part of their marketing strategy.

Why  use video?

• Almost every internet user watches at least one online video per month. 
• On an average, every internet user is exposed to about 30 different videos each month. Therefore there's a good chance that your video might reach out to them.
• Over 100 million users watch a video online every day. 

Let's face it - most of them are probably watching one of the latest viral videos of kittens and sneezing pandas. But that doesn't change the fact that at least some proportion of them will be watching educational and product or service oriented videos. Even if these people are a minority, when compared to the 100 million viewers the number is still pretty huge.

Is video marketing right for me? 

Many businesses are of the opinion that online video marketing is only meant for retailers. This is definitely not true. The only difference between retailers and other businesses is that the retailers have made maximum use of videos and others have not.

Surveys have suggested that a vast majority of online shoppers appreciate product videos that help them make better decisions. It has also found that retailers that have product videos on their site are more likely to make a sale compared to those that do not have any demos on their site.

Video marketing is not limited to any particular niche. Anybody can use online videos as a part of their marketing effort. One of the best examples is the real estate industry where videos can be used to take visitors on a virtual tour of given property listings. This enhances user experience and you are likely to get more leads out of your efforts.

Some basic rules of video marketing:

1. Keep them short. Three minutes is perfect. 30 minutes - in most cases - is too long. People have short attention span; especially online.
2. Don't worry too much about production value. You're not making "Life of Pi"; people realise that you run just a small business. All is forgiven.
3. Make sure that the sound is nice and crisp. You might go for a cheaper camcorder but make sure that the microphone is good. People need to be able to understand what you are saying.
4. Optimise the file before you upload it to YouTube. Put keywords in the file name.
5. Describe the video in YouTube using keywords you want to rank for.
6. Put a link to your site / product page in the description 
7. Embed the link in the video as well
8. Google reads text so include a script for your video in a text form
9. If you have a blog - embed your video in a post for your subscribers to find it
10. Publicise your video on social media
11. Think beyond YouTube - is there anywhere else you could upload your video with good results?

Video marketing has the potential to give your leads and sales a big boost. Adding it to your marketing strategy can ensure high engagement and click through, resulting in higher conversions. If you don’t leverage it, there is a good chance that you might lose sales to more savvy competitors.