Online videos are a great way to help market your business online, and can help separate you from your competitors, giving you that leg up that you’ve been searching for.
I know, I can see many of you cringing already at the prospect of having to invest thousands and thousands of dollars in video production to result in little more than a few minutes of product. However, unless you’re making a statement of wanting to show everyone how flashy your videos can be, a huge production investment in online video is not necessary. Think about the most viewed online videos over the last few years – what is common about them? To answer, they’re all, for the most part, executed with little more than a laptop, a $40 webcam, and a creative idea…think YouTube! This raw production style helps connect with others because the vast majority of us don’t have the resources to invest in anything more than this type of footage.
This said, there’s no reason why an inexpensive video production can’t look great and deliver a fantastic sales message. It’s all about identifying with your audience and supplementing the content of your website with an interactive message. Not all of us, after all, learn the best from reading straight text. Many people learn best through video or audio, or a combination of both. Just remember, the point of integrating online video onto your site is not to make your site look flashy, but to help improve sales and conversions. To do so, here are some quick tips to consider when producing such a video:
1. Keep the video as short as possible. Edit, cut, edit, cut, then edit and cut again. An effective sales video should be under 3 minutes in length – just long enough to deliver your core messages.
2. Start your video by presenting a specific problem that the viewer will identify with. Present challenges and fears that will encourage the viewer to keep watching, suggesting you can help alleviate these fears.
3. Pose a solution to these challenges, and consider using a happier audio overlay or a more positive tone of voice during this segment of the video. Describe how much easier the customer’s life will be with this solution in place.
4. Conclude by letting the viewer know that you are the only one who can provide them with this consumer satisfaction, that nobody else has this solution. Brand yourself during this portion of the video and make your brand/business known.
5. At the very end of the video, drive home the call to action. Show a clip of a toll-free number to call, or present a short URL that the viewer can visit to take the desired action.
If you’re using a platform like YouTube to deliver this message, consider not making the video public after first uploading the video. Chances are, you’ll be making more revisions and you won’t want the public to see you’re unfinished copy. Once you’ve got it all straightened out, publish your video to the viewing public. Lastly, it you’re integrating this video onto your website, you need to have text on the site to support the content of the video. Just sticking a video on an otherwise blank web page is not doing yourself any favors, as the viewable content within a playing video is not SEO-able. What I encourage doing is creating a short text page, highlighting the main points of the video as well (remember what I said about catering to different types of learning) and providing more options for the call to action at the end of the text. Here you can create clickable links that you can’t, for the most part, do within a platform like YouTube. All that’s left to do is put the video on that page and you’ve got yourself a bona fide multi-dimensional marketing page!
Need help creating or integrating a marketing video on to your site?