What style of online video is best for your business?
- Ray Welling
- 23 March 2010
Photo credit: bjearwicke @ sxc.hu
Video options
The more senses that are involved in gathering information, the more engaging the process. If the experience of watching a video is stimulating, customers will stay on your site longer, increasing the opportunities for them to do business with you. So what types of video content can small businesses create to engage their customers online?
News
Advantages: Building brand awareness, generating leads
How to get it right: Avoid talking heads. Mix things up, such as using an opening shot before the speaker appears; insert charts and PowerPoint slides where appropriate; use music. And remember, make sure it's really news, not your company's credentials or history.
Greg Jarboe, president of SEO-PR and the author of YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day, says: "Avoid visual banality. If you want viewers to pay attention to your video, show them something they have never seen before."
Demonstrations
Advantages: Direct selling, customer service, building traffic
How to get it right: Video is a great way to show your product or service in action, educate your customers and make it seem more real. Using video, it's easy to show them how to assemble or operate your product. Add text overlays to take them through the process step-by-step.
How-tos/solutions
Advantages: Building traffic, direct selling
How to get it right: How-to videos put your product or service in context. For example, if you sell oatmeal you could produce cooking videos where someone uses a recipe that includes oatmeal. If you own a bike shop, you could produce a series of travelogues on interesting bike journeys in your city or suburb.
FAQs
Advantages: Direct selling, customer service
How to get it right: Let your customers tell you what you should make videos about. An example, says Kaplan, is an insurance company that produced a series of videos based on the most commonly-asked questions at their call centre. They performed A/B testing and directed web visitors to either a text-only page or the FAQ videos. The conversion rate via the video page was 240% higher than the text-only page, and average purchases via the video page were 13% higher.
Testimonials
Advantages: Building brand awareness, changing brand preference
How to get it right:We're social animals and you're more likely to build trust with customers by presenting them with believable people who like your product or service. But don't make them staged or too slick; keep it real, even if it's a bit rough around the edges.
"The most effective testimonial videos are those that show loyal users of your product or idea testifying to its virtues - when they don't know they're being filmed," says Jarboe.
Entertainment
Advantages: Viral effect, building traffic, building brand awareness
How to get it right: This is the hardest type of video to get right, but if you win, you win big. It needs to be memorable or funny, but in a way that reflects your brand, appeals to your target audience and gets them talking about your company in a way that encourages engagement and, eventually, purchase.
Advice when making your video
- Don't cover off more than one or two points in your video.
- Keep it short: attention spans are short online and you need a good reason to make a video longer than a minute. Kaplan says: "Don't assume that just by capturing your company presentation on video that someone will sit through a 30-minute on-demand version. Find the juicy, bite-sized bits and make them available in a format that's easy to digest."
- Use a concisely-written script and rehearse; unless you're a polished speaker, ad libbing doesn't work.
- Don't get too many people involved. Remember the old adage, the camel is a horse designed by a committee.
- Keep it authentic and use your own employees or customers rather than actors. Videos are all about creating trust; make sure the content gives your audience confidence in your products or services.
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