Many people think video marketing is reserved for large brands with Super Bowl commercial budgets, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Video marketing is an invaluable tool for small businesses in the early stages of growth. It’s designed to help you expand your reach, build an engaged audience, share your value proposition, and support sales—all things that are especially important for small businesses.
Not quite convinced? Here’s our elevator pitch for small business video content.
Benefits of High-Quality Video Production for Small Businesses
Video marketing has proven benefits for all kinds of sales and marketing goals, but a few are especially relevant for small businesses.
First, engaging content helps you stand out from the crowd. As a small business, you’re likely competing for market share with brands that have more established audiences. Video content helps set your brand apart, giving you an edge in a crowded marketplace.
Next, one of video’s most important benefits is boosting SEO success. Improved SEO helps you take advantage of search queries to build a customer base and get more eyes on your content. Every algorithm boost gets you one step closer to a thriving web base.
Finally, video helps increase your brand awareness. When more people are familiar with your brand and offering, you’re bound to gain customers and build a loyal audience long-term.
Key Video Marketing Strategies Small Businesses Need to Know
If you’re just getting started with small business video marketing, a few distribution strategies are crucial to your success.
Here are the three channels we’d recommend starting with, along with some best practices for each one.
Social Media Platforms
Posting on social media is one of the best ways to get started with video marketing. Why? Social platforms are designed to help you expand your reach. When you don’t have a large, loyal base to tap into, you can lean on social algorithms to help find a wider audience. Over time, you’ll build your own following.
Plus, while going viral should never be the explicit goal of your video content (and going viral is more of an art than a science), gaining traction on just one video could transform your entire business overnight. It’s worth giving yourself that opportunity by experimenting with video content on at least one platform.
Website Integrations
Next, make sure to incorporate video content on your website. Brand videos or “About Us” videos work especially well for your home page, and product videos and testimonials are effective on product and service pages.
Having video content on these pages makes your website look more visually interesting, and it provides an alternative for people who would prefer to watch a quick video instead of reading a wall of text.
Having video content also helps keep users on the site longer, which can boost your SEO results further. Win, win!
Email Marketing
Last but not least, using video in your email marketing helps you stand out in a crowded inbox. When your prospective customers are receiving hundreds of emails a day, every aspect of the experience matters.
Video is underutilized in email channels, so it’s a welcome surprise to users who are expecting to have to read. Learn exactly how to incorporate video in your email content in this article.
Cost-Effective Video Production Tips
DIY Options
It costs almost nothing to use a smartphone to shoot a basic video. There’s a reason so many content creators have massive success with little to no background in video production—it’s anyone’s game!
If you’re just getting started on a scrappy budget, don’t overthink it. Focus on an engaging hook and do the best you can in terms of production. At this stage, don’t be afraid to experiment as much as you can to learn what works and what doesn’t work for your audience.
If you’re the DIY type, there are also tons of budget-friendly tools on the market to help elevate your video marketing content without breaking the bank. We’ve outlined several options in this article.
Outsourcing to Professionals
If you’d rather have support for the process, outsourcing to professionals is another great option. You can outsource your entire project by hiring a video production company or a full production team, or you can outsource specific parts of the project to freelancers (like a freelance editor or a freelance scriptwriter).
Just be aware that you get what you pay for here. If you’re outsourcing to the cheapest options on the market, you’re unlikely to end up with a world-class video.
Video Success Story
Whether you know it or not, video content is responsible for small business growth every single day. Here’s just one example of a small business’s journey with video, as reported to Business Insider.
Nectar, a hard seltzer company, had been going door to door looking for stores to carry the product back in 2020. They faced constant rejection and decided to try out TikTok and create some video content. One of the founders started by creating a simple video: an overview of how the business got started with a CTA to text the company to show interest.
A few videos later, the company made a video about the seltzer’s production process and earned 415,000 views within a few days. At the same time, thanks to the CTA, it was building a subscriber list of phone numbers from interested customers.
The best part? The founders took the viral video to two local liquor stores, texted the subscriber list to come check out the product, and sold out within the first hour. That’s the power of video marketing!
Getting Started
As the Nectar story proves, small businesses don’t need anything special to start video marketing today. It doesn’t take deep video expertise, fancy equipment, or even much time to get started.
If you haven’t tried video marketing yet for your small business, let this article serve as your proof that video is worth the investment! And if you need help getting off the ground, Lemonlight is a professional video production company that has made thousands of videos for small businesses just like yours. Just hit the button below to schedule a call with one of our experts, and we’ll take it from there.
* This article was originally published here
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