Welcome to Video Marketing: 10 Ways to Use Videos in Your Marketing.

Why is video so critical for marketing?

YouTube is now bigger than primetime TV. More people watch YouTube than watch television at any given time. It’s an amazing statistic.

YouTube video search results also have a very high Google ranking so when you’re searching Google it often serves up YouTube videos as part of that search. So, if you’re having trouble beating a competitor out for a keyword, a YouTube video is a great way to sneak in above them.

Video engages the senses. Video has movements, visuals, and sound rather than just a text article or a landing page. And video marketing is a very low entry. It doesn’t cost a lot to start creating videos. A simple smartphone has high definition video that you can use to start your own video marketing program.

Unlike television, uploading to YouTube is free, so the cost or your video marketing program is minimal. The type of equipment you need is not really that expensive. It’s also easy to track what works. You can see which of your videos are getting the most traffic and which ones are also sending people to your sales funnel, which ones are resulting in people buying.

#1 How-to Video’s

Let’s talk about some of the kinds of videos that work well with video marketing. One of the first ones is how-to videos. When I am looking for how to do something I haven’t done before, I almost always start with YouTube and type in “how to” and then whatever I’m doing. I was gifted some sockeye salmon from a First Nations organization for some work I had done for them.  I had no idea how to clean these fish and YouTube came to my rescue.

YouTube helped me take apart my washing machine and fix it and there are many other cases of where I’ve used YouTube to figure out how to do something. If you’re selling a product or offering, a service or anything where there’s any bit of learning for your clients, a YouTube video is fantastic.

Think about if you were selling a power tool, showing people how to use that power tool more effectively to create great designs in wood. If you’re selling flooring, showing people how to install flooring would be great. If you’re selling an electronic device such as a Bluetooth speaker show people how to connect it to their phone, how to use it effectively, how to use it to create a dance party. These kinds of things would be helpful for people who are just looking for ways to use your product and service.

#2 Video Product Demos

Videos are a great way to demonstrate a product.

If you had a woodworking tool you could demonstrate it, for example, a Dremel or other tool.

We’re in the software business so we do a lot of software demos and we do them by video and that works well. Now we still do live video demos for clients who request for us to do a live demo with their team and answer their questions, but the great thing about a video demo is that we can upload somewhere like YouTube and the video works 24 hours, 7 days a week. We can easily point people to something quick. If they need some information right away, people can find it on their own. We didn’t have to send it to them. We didn’t have to tie up our sales team’s time to be able to get them out.

So, having a video for demonstrating your product or service is fantastic and when people can see what your product or service or your software can do, that’s very powerful. You can also add tracking to see how many people are checking out your demos. You can find out if anybody looked at it. We often use videos to show real-life use cases. For example, how are our clients using our products? How are our clients using our software? And we’re putting together videos on that so that our clients can see real-life ways that our software is able to help them.

#3 Storytelling

Storytelling is one of the oldest marketing methods in the world and stories have been told around campfires by our ancient ancestors. There might be a little more equipment around today. Now we can record our storytelling and there are more ways to have your storytelling go around the world. But telling a powerful story is still one of the most amazing things you can do to find a way to tug at people’s heartstrings.

Show them something behind the scenes they wouldn’t see otherwise. Show them a day in your office. If you’re involved in a charity or a non-profit, highlight your engagement with that. Highlight how you’re helping people. You want to connect people to your business, your product, your staff, and your brand. So, this type of storytelling video marketing is very powerful.

#4 Accept Video’s from Users

You can also encourage your users to send you videos. Often users are so excited about your product that they will just go ahead and create videos showing other people how they’re using it. I’m currently testing out some new productivity software and I found a ton of videos from people online who are testing it out. And these are not coming even from the brand, they’re not coming from the company selling the software. They’re just from people who are really excited about the product, love it, and they kind of become evangelical about it. So, a user who’s passionate about something, that’s very authentic, very real. It comes across incredibly powerful for people, more so often than a brand just trying to sell you something.

One very strange popular user video that’s out there is a style called unboxing video. Someone will buy a new camera, a new piece of equipment, new shaving equipment, whatever it’s going to be. They’ll do a video of just what’s in the box. They’ll very carefully take it out. They’ll talk about it. They’ll give their first impressions and then maybe they’ll do a short demo after. These have become incredibly popular and even though there are tons of them out there, people like to share their reactions when they get their cool new thing in the mail or from Amazon and unbox it.

#5 Vlogging

Vlogging is short for video blogging. A vlogger basically does short videos and uploads them to his website and just basically talks about whatever topic they’re passionate about. In this case, I’m showing a picture of someone who could be a food blogger. The topics can really be anything, but blogging has the benefit of establishing yourself as an expert. They’re quick to do. A lot of vlogging articles are really under five minutes each. It is a very fast way to create some interesting content. If you’re interesting enough people will follow you. People will want to see your latest vlog.

I follow vlogs on productivity, on photography, on a lot of different areas and hobbies that I’m interested in and I have favorite vloggers who are out there doing this. People who are funny. People who are entertaining. People who share interesting stuff. People who have a different slant on things, because I don’t always want to be getting the same approach to things.

#6 Livestream Video

You can also live-stream your video. You could be out there live doing interviews. Doing “ask me anything” questions. Doing events, breaking news or working live on a project and you could be sharing that real-time with people all over the world.

#7 Video Interviews

You could be doing video interviews of people. Video interviews are another great way to create content quickly. It’s great because you don’t have to come up with all the content. You don’t even have to be the expert. You just ask an expert some good leading questions and let them talk. They will share a wealth of information for you. Doing video interviews is a great way to do this. It can help you connect to experts and build your own credibility in a field over time. Also, you can have somebody transcribe the audio from the video in the text and use that to create a blog article, a written blog article.  

#8 FAQ’s

Many websites have frequently asked questions on them and these are questions that are often asked by clients. This is a great way to allow people to find stuff on your website without having to ask your support team.

You can do the same thing with video. You can offer video FAQ’s on your website. People can see a video on how to use something.  You can answer people’s questions this way just by creating the video FAQ. This is great because customers can get the information right away instead of having to contact your staff or send in a support ticket. This is a great way that your clients can get that information quickly and it saves a lot of support time from your staff.

I would strongly suggest any question you’re getting more than once that you create a new video for it and put it up there and then your support staff can also point to those video FAQ’s.

#9 Visitor Waiting Rooms/Facilities

When you’ve got people in your waiting room or your facility, they’re waiting, they’re bored they’re looking for something to do. You’ve got a captive audience for video marketing.

You could have a monitor up on a wall and you can inform them, entertain them, or market to them. It makes the time go faster for the people waiting as well so you get fewer complaints. And it can further inform them so if you’ve got somebody waiting to meet with you who may be purchasing your product or your service, and in the waiting room you’re showing real-life use cases of your products or showing testimonials from happy customers. It really helps those people connect with you and go “Wow! I didn’t know that this company was using them, and that company was using them. I hadn’t thought of that use case.” So already you’re kind of pre-selling them while they’re in your waiting room.

#10 Drone Videos

Drones are getting incredibly popular and the photography they take is stunning. It has become very affordable. It used to cost you insane amounts of money to get aerial photography done because you had to rent a helicopter or an airplane. Often, they couldn’t just hover and be there for that much time, and you had all this extra sound. And the cost of renting a helicopter and a pilot is crazy. And then you would have to have a live person up there recording and pointing the camera at things. With a drone, you can easily move it around. You can see what the drone is seeing. You can go up multiple times and you can get lower than a helicopter could safely. You can go around different angles. Drone photography and drone videos are a great idea.

Give some thought to how you can connect your brand or how you can connect your products or services to something that you could be doing drone videos about.

Bonus tip: Personalized Video

This is a bonus. I want to talk about personalized videos. What if each of these people were able to get a video that was personalized for them. Something you knew about them. Something based on their interests, maybe their age, maybe their gender, maybe their name even could show up in the video or some of those kinds of information.

Presently here at PresentationPoint, we’re working with some new systems to make it easier to create personalized videos. We have a client in the financial field who does personalized videos free to each of his clients based upon their financial situation. What if all your affiliates were able to have personalized videos, each with their own affiliate link or their own branding? We’d love to talk to you about personalized video marketing.

If you’ve got questions about anything we’ve talked about here please leave a comment in the section below and please hit the like and subscribe button because it really helps encourage us to do more videos. Thanks for listening and for more information contact us.