May 5, 2017
Video Marketing and Your Website
Video Marketing: It’s Not as Hard (Or Expensive) As You Think!
Many small to mid-sized business owners here the term “video marketing” and think two things- no time to do it along with giant dollar signs. It’s just too intimidating. Well, this post is designed to debunk that myth because that’s what we do here at Make It Loud- debunk.
First, some businesses need to be convinced that video marketing is worth the time and energy. Here’s some of the data we found:
- 100 million people a day watch at least one video
- 90% of online shoppers say a video helps them decide to buy
- Better retention- 80% of browsers recall watching a video on a site they visited
- 46% of that 80% took action-looked for more info, visited the website or purchased
- 64% of browsers are more likely to buy after watching a video
- 403% Australian realtors reported listings with videos received that many more inquiries
- Forbes reports 59% of executives would rather watch a video than read
- 65% go to vendor’s website
- 45% contact the vendor
- 50% purchase
- Videos on email marketing campaigns have been shown to increase click through rate (2-3x)
- Reduces opt out rates (~75%)
- Has been shown to increase subscriber to lead rates by about 50%
Video Marketing Tips 101
What have videos been shown to accomplish? That’s simple. Videos can help you demonstrate your product or service faster and more clearly than written text. It’s a great way to introduce you or your business, and it keeps browsers on your site longer which contributes to better search rankings. Plus, when you have a video in the search results, we know that improves click through rates and helps drive people to your business. Some experts even predict that in less than 3 years, almost 75% of all traffic online will be video!
The point of all this is simple- your competitors are most likely using videos, and if you’re not, you could be missing very important leads.
We outlined three ways to create a business video. First, there’s the old-school way of getting a video camera, shooting and uploading that video to your computer where you’ll need to edit what’s there. This is effective, but can be time intensive. Next, grab your cell phone and shoot what you need to. Upload, edit and share. Easier, but still can cost you some time. Last, there are image based videos where you take 10+ images and use software like Animoto to build a video for your business. This is the least time intensive approach and can lead to beautiful results.
YouTube Can Change Your Business and Here is Why.
Have you ever found yourself standing in front of the numerous social sites wondering which are right for your business? So many times, I hear business owners overwhelmed with the amount of options for social media they have that they decide to either pick the wrong ones or not be involved at all. The key to deciding which sites to be involved in lies in how much you know about your target audience. When you can tell me the most obtrusive and invasive information about your target audience (How old are they? How many kids do they have? Do they vacation in the South of France?) then you will know how to properly market to them. This information will clearly show you where you need to focus your digital marketing efforts.
YouTube is the 3rd most viewed website after Google and Facebook and 4 billion videos are watched EVERY DAY on YouTube. YouTube acquires more than 800 million visitors per month, so your business has one of the best chances for exposure on this platform. People assume that they have to be professional videographer to participate in this social media site but do not let that deter you from participating. Not only was this site designed around the video “selfie”, but also there are also numerous different video-editing sites that allow you to put your photos into a video format to add a little something else to your marketing.
Professional Marketing Tips
YouTube has multiple applications for customer service as well! Think about the surprised and impressed potential customers that you will have when they call in to ask about solving a particular issue and you can point them to a YouTube video you creating specifically addressing that problem. You have now gained a customer for life. Embedding those video tutorials on your website will improve your SEO dramatically due to the increased time people will spend on your site to watch the video. Google will have recognized the increased time and boost your ranking accordingly.
Top 5 Reasons to use YouTube for a business would be:
1) Creating original video content improves your SEO
- a) Embedding a video increases the quality of your website, visitors stay longer which helps rank better than competitors.
2) Video Content is a powerful branding tool
- a) Adds emotion and visual attributes taken out of purely written conversation.
3) Great potential to get your message in front of a wide audience
- a) Videos are much easier to syndicate via social media, industry websites, and brand partnerships to reach potential customers.
4) Video Content is easy and inexpensive or free to produce
- a) Many viral videos on YouTube were produced by webcam or smartphone.
5) Video plays better on mobile devices
The # of webpages accessed via mobile devices is growing rapidly. All smartphones are optimized for video content.
Plan what you want to accomplish with the video- demonstration, brand awareness, etc. This will help you decide what images and text to use, but with some software, you can have a video in as little as 10-15 minutes! Let the staff at Make It Loud show you how. Call us today and ask for Make It Loud Academy session on video marketing! Imagine if you will, being able to tap into conversations with specific keywords and such that directly relate to your brand, your business and exactly what you do. It would allow you to be more efficient with the time you spend on social media. Welcome to, well, this blog post! Sure, it’s cutting edge stuff, and most businesses don’t understand it all that well. And, don’t think this kind of prospecting is cheap my any means, but there are some tools out there than the small business owner can use to accomplish some of the same things- finding conversations that directly relate to your business. 
It works like this- there are bazillions of conversations that occur on all the social media channels, and a percentage of them either indirectly or directly relate to your business. If you provide a vital service (like say, digital marketing. Hmm!), you would naturally have a list of keywords that pertain to what you do (web design, website design, social media marketing, SEO, etc.). Developing this list and referring to it while using these tools can alert you to conversations that are related to those terms. You can then insert your message into that thread which can lead to higher engagement, conversions and mo’ money!
Now, some business owners are still thinking they don’t need to be on social media- that it’s just a fad, it’ll go away, etc. My response to those people is simple. Is your target market there? If the answer is yes (which it obviously is!), then if you’re not there talking to your people, your competitors are. That means you’re ignoring a major avenue to the very people that are looking for what you do. To us, that’s leaving money on the table.
But, the question always comes around to “How do I know if I’m doing well?” It’s a good questions certainly, but it also depends upon your goals for social media- increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your site? Make sales? Regardless, measuring your efforts requires you to look at some data or social analytics.
The cheapest way to check your social analytics is to look at the data each channel provides. That tells you at least some basic numbers like “likes”, “shares”,” +1’s”, etc. Besides what’s available there, you can always check out these:
- Google Analytics-if nothing else, you can see which channels are feeding your website
- Cyfe-free to start, upgrade to $29/month
- Agorapulse- helps you measure your FB & Twitter, some free stuff, $29/monthly
- Sprout Social-pretty analytics $60/month
- Social Media Monitoring
- Different from just measuring how well things are going, social media monitoring is where you’re actually plugging in to conversations about your business. Think of it as listening to Twitter or the others for posts about what you do so that you can jump in there and engage at the right time with the right people. Powerful stuff! As with any other listening, there are two types- active & passive listening.
- Active listening/monitoring is where you go to a website and plug in your keywords to see what people are saying. Here are some tools that seem useful:
- Addictomatic-let’s you browse a variety of channels across the web
- Social Mention- gives you “mood metrics”
- Topsy-search out trends, topics & discussions about your subject
- Icerocket- lets you search out and find people mention keywords
Passive social monitoring is where you go to a site, set up some keywords, brands, etc and these tools notify you when a conversation is taking place that might interest you. Some of these tools include:
Google Alerts
- Buzzsumo-has tools & free account
- Mention-free account, will give alerts
- Hearsaysocial-good for financial, insurance, etc
- Bottlenose-maps the trends
- Gnip-starts at $500
Some of these tools offer both social analytics that’ll help you measure how well you’re doing with your social media as well as social monitoring abilities.
The point is, there are a host of tools that exist to help you become more efficient in what you do to attract people to your business. This gives you a good list to start with to match your business goals and your budget. Now, get out there and start listening!
If you need a consultation about SEO or Web Design, our company, Make It Loud, can at the very least help you to discover if SEO or a good website fits into your budget. It doesn’t cost anything to find out and we’d be honored to serve you, face to face when geographically possible. Feel free to contact us by email at: info@makeitloud.net, visit our website at: www.makeitloud.net, or call us at: 678.325.4007. Even if you’re not local to Gwinnett or Atlanta, we’d be happy to do an assessment.
