Small Business Video Marketing Guide

The great thing about video marketing is that any organization can use it to achieve excellent marketing results. This includes small businesses with limited budgets and no prior experience in video marketing. Sounds too good to be true? Not at all.

The cost of producing quality video marketing content has gone down in recent years thanks to affordable recording equipment, cheap stock video footage libraries, and low-cost video production tools. In other words, it costs next to nothing to produce a video.

Still, there is the issue of expertise. Most small businesses don’t have prior experience with video marketing, so they’re reluctant about using it. We believe that this is simply prejudice, albeit an understandable one.

In reality, video marketing isn’t all that complex or difficult. It’s a marketing strategy like any other. With a little bit of knowledge, you can produce marketing video on par with your competitors. And if you stick with it, you can do even better.

If you’re interested in giving video marketing a try, keep scrolling and check out our small business video marketing guide.

What is Video Marketing?

Video marketing is the strategy of using videos to accomplish various marketing goals, which include:

• Branding – raising awareness about your business.
• Sales – convincing customers to buy your products and services.
• Website traffic – getting customers to visit your website.
• Social media engagement – getting customers to interact with you on social media.

The key components of a video marketing strategy are:

• Video content ideas (see marketing video types below).
• Video production software (web or desktop applications)
• Video distribution channels (website, social media, email, mobile app).

To summarize, video marketing is the practice of producing and distributing video content to accomplish marketing goals.

Marketing Video Types

Marketing videos comes in a variety of types, including:

• Product demonstrations
• Product announcements
• Explainer videos
• Tutorial videos
• Social media videos
• Video podcasts
• Testimonial videos
• Q&A videos
• Event videos

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it will give you an idea about how small businesses are using video for marketing. Check out this link to find out more about business video types.

Video Marketing Benefits

Video marketing offers a range of benefits to small businesses. Let’s go over each briefly.

Increased Website Traffic

Videos can help you greatly increase your website traffic. By hosting videos on your website instead of third-party platforms such as YouTube or Facebook, you get to keep all the traffic you generate.

Improved Lead Generation

You can generate leads from marketing videos by using email capture forms. The videos serves as bait to entice customers into signing up for your email newsletter upon watching.

Better Engagement

Marketing videos are an excellent opportunity for engaging with potential customers. They provide tangible value, which makes for a better user experience than text.

More Conversions

If viewers are both satisfied and engaged, it is much easier to sell them products and services. This makes video one of the top conversion tools.

Easier Analytics

Video supports a variety of metrics you can track and analyze to determine the effectiveness of your video marketing. You can then use this data to adjust your marketing video production to achieve even better results.

Tips for Creating Marketing Videos on a Budget

Creating marketing videos on a budget is not only possible, but it’s also fairly easy. Don’t be intimidated by slickly-produced corporate advertising videos. They may look great on first glance, but viewers have grown accustomed to this kind content over the years, so they’re not as effective as they used to be. Viewers today want content that feels raw, authentic, and DIY. And the best part is that this kind of content is much easier to produce on a budget.

Here are 5 tips to help you get started.

1. Keep it Simple

The best ideas are always the simple ones. If you can come up with a simple idea that translates well to video, you are in a better position than most corporate marketing departments. Not only are simple ideas easier and cheaper to implement, they also make for clear, intelligible videos that anyone can enjoy. In terms of actual production, don’t go overboard with visual effects or complex editing. Keep your subject matter in focus, both literally and metaphorically, and stick with what you know.

2. Keep it Short

Short videos are easier to produce than longer ones, and viewers tend to respond more favorably to them. The web is already brimming with video content, so you only have couple of seconds at most to catch the viewer’s attention. Shorter videos also means less time spent on production, so you can crank out more of them. This makes it easier to maintain a consistent content schedule.

3. Use Free Video Tools

In the past, small businesses had limited options when it comes to video production tools. Basically, it was a choice between professional video editing tools such as Adobe Premiere, Final Cut, or Vegas Pro, which come with a hefty price tag. Today, this is no longer the case. Affordable, web-based video production tools such as Binumi make it easy to create marketing videos on a strict budget.

4. Use Stock Footage

Recording your own video footage can be both expensive and time-consuming, and that’s assuming you already own all the necessary recording equipment. A much cheaper alternative is to use stock video footage and customize it to suit your needs. If you decide to use Binumi for marketing video production, you’ll be happy to know that it comes with an extensive stock asset library, including video clips, images, sounds, and music.

5. Publish on Social Media

The cheapest way to publish video marketing content is through social media. Posting video content on your website has its advantages, but it will keep your hosting expenses high, especially if you have an extensive library of HD video content. It’s much more affordable to simply post videos on your social media profiles. In exchange for giving up some control over your content, you get unlimited hosting, free promotion through algorithmic recommendations, and an existing userbase.

Conclusion

We hope we’ve convinced you that video is a viable marketing strategy for small businesses. It’s effective, budget-friendly, and there’s a high demand for it. Start using it today, and improve your business outcomes.