How to use video for small business
Video. It’s not just for influencers anymore. Video for small business was a powerful, cost-effective tactic for cultivating audience interest long before small business owners started dancing on TikTok.
The problem is these days, most of the advice on how to use video for small business marketing caters to people using TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts to become influencers.
Using video to cultivate a social media following is the most difficult way to make video work for you because there are too many aspects out of your control.
Here are my three favourite ways to use video for small business; no choreography required.
- Define Your “Why”
- How-To or Problem/Solution
- Customer Review
Here’s how these 3 video types might help you.
READ THIS LATER: We’re doing something new this week: downloadable PDF versions of this blog. If you don’t have time to read this article right now, you can download a PDF to your phone or computer and read it when you have time later.
Video Grabs Our Brain
As I’ve been talking about in Whole Team Habits lately, I recently began a master’s degree in neuroscience to study how consumers make decisions. Something I have learned again and again is how video might be the perfect medium for convincing people to act.
Our brains process a video’s visual and audio signals differently than we process information we read or learn from an in-person experience. A 2020 study in the journal Psychology and Marketing indicates that the way our brains process video results in closer attention and better memory of brand information.
1 – Define Your “Why” Via Video
Forging a connection with your audience is crucial in getting them to choose your business. If you’ve read Start with Why by Simon Sinek, you may already know that the most effective way to cultivate this type of connection is to explain why you do what you do in a way that resonates with your audience.
Sinek notes that consumers have virtually infinite options, and they’re just looking for a reason to pick one over all the rest. Being inundated by advertisements and high-pressure sales tactics makes their choice even more complicated and creates what we call audience overwhelm.
As I mentioned, video is a highly effective medium for attention and recall. By using a video to describe why you do what you do, you have an opportunity to resonate with this overwhelmed buyer and cultivate long-term loyalty.
2 – Create a How-To or Problem/Solution Video
How-to videos or problem/solution videos are about helping people understand a complex issue in a way they can absorb with minimal effort. Answering audience questions is a reliable way to help them feel confident about choosing what you have to offer.
These types of videos are also among the most likely to be shared. You’ve undoubtedly seen this in your own life. If you find a video that solves a problem and makes your life easier, it’s instinctive to want to share it with others you know would benefit.
These videos do well on social media, especially Pinterest. They can also be tools for your service department. For example, you could send a link to a video to clients who have a related question, which increases brand credibility by making that customer feel taken care of.
If you’ve joined my mailing list recently, you know that I include links to some of my marketing videos in the welcome email to help people answer some common marketing questions.
3 – Shoot a Customer Review
Social proof is a fundamental way to overcome buyer objections and make the sale. Researchers who study reviews note that “electronic word-of-mouth” or “eWOM” marketing is increasingly important to buyers. We want to know what other people thought of that thing we’re considering now.
Of course, as eWOM marketing grows, the impetus to game the system increases. Unscrupulous businesses that want to secure new clients are coming up with various methods for getting positive reviews, including fake ones.
Video reviews help circumvent this. It’s much harder to reliably fake an on-camera review. Audiences have an uncanny way of knowing when someone is being insincere. If you choose a genuinely happy customer and ask them if they’d be willing to review you on camera, their sincerity will come through and give you the social proof you need.
These are my 3 favourite kinds of videos for small business marketing. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t explain exactly how to make these videos. That’s what I’ll be writing about next week.
