Small Business Video: 8 Creative Ways Your Small Business Can Leverage Video Marketing

Ready to elevate your small business today? Then it’s time to get serious about video marketing. Don’t worry: you don’t need a scriptwriter, film crew, and headstrong director to create compelling videos. In fact, all you need is right here in this small business video marketing tips guide. 

Why are videos so important? Video production and content has come a long way since its original motion picture format, yet the allure is dominant as ever. Movement, action, and drama are what catapult a story into an artful, emotional experience — one that builds connections, enlivens viewers, and generates hype. 

49% of people watch a minimum of 5 videos every day. The takeaway? People are hungry for video content, even if the type of video differs.

So, how can you bring awareness to your brand with minimal resources and fierce competition? With a solid video marketing strategy, you can establish trust with your target audience, elaborate on the uniqueness of your brand, and invite them into the kinetic message that is your brand’s story. 

Ready to project your brand on the big screen of the internet? Grab the popcorn and dim the lights: your small business’s screen time starts now.

1.) Use an Introductory Video To Tell Your Story

As a small business in a sea of other small businesses, the proper thing to do is introduce yourself properly. What better way to do that than with an introductory video?

Whether it’s an on-the-fly Live Q&A social video on Facebook, a behind-the-scenes look at the operations of your business, or a business profile video on your website’s home page, introductory videos start a dialogue with your audience. Create an online video to answer frequently asked questions, share a behind-the-scenes look at daily operations, and illuminate your brand’s story.

Take a look at this video marketing effort from Warby Parker, which shares the common problem that inspired the company and tells the audience how their process offers an affordable solution. 

Now, adopt this concept to share your brand’s story. Focus on the problem you offer a solution to and the inner workings of the business, its history, beliefs, and mission statement.

2.) Get Creative with Customer Testimonial Videos

Although the first video you should focus on is an introductory video, the next step in effective video advertising involves getting creative and inviting your customers to talk about your product. Customer explainer videos and review videos offer immediate proof of your company’s value on social media sites, and allow you to develop unique content that does not seem overtly sales oriented. 

Customer reviews are a unique facet of video marketing, in that they are natural and unstated, and provide a more authentic window into customer experiences with a product or service. When encouraging customer videos, consider looking for simple video chats that involve the customer in their own environment. Videos can be shot at home, or in your office, but the dialogue should be organic, rather than scripted. 

If customers are not creating customer review videos, feel free to reach out and request that they create a review video. If you are able to gather the contact information of people who have already left written reviews, use this as a jumping-off point and read out to request that they create a video review to be featured on your sites and socials. 

You can also browse the social media mentions of your brand. If you see your name pop up on someone’s posts or stories, you can reach out and request to share the video, or you can reach out and ask if they have any additional video marketing pieces they have not previously posted. Reaching out to your customers in this way starts up a conversation between existing customers and your brand, which can improve and increase engagement rates.

3.) Shine the Light on Your Employees through Video

From video calls to a demo video, video marketing benefits tremendously from the types of videos that involve your company’s team. People love to see the inner workings of companies they are interested in, and even if the types of videos you create do not directly feature a product, you are still creating compelling content that invites engagement with your audience. 

Using your internal experts, you can create video tutorials to help potential customers understand your product, or develop a stronger awareness of the possibilities of your services. You can also create video blogs of daily operations, and allow your customers and social media followers to see how hard you work and how your team works together. 

Short video clips of your employees’ “day in the life” can also be compelling, as they personalize your brand or company and allow your potential customers to feel more connected to your employees and brand. You can also use short clips to show how fun your company is. during workdays and company events, and to demonstrate the relationships between your company’s employees. 

People want to purchase from and work with brands that invest time and energy into improving company culture. Employing a video strategy that highlights your company culture while encouraging new and current customers to feel as though they are a part of your brand can offer tremendous strides in your overall marketing efforts.

4.) Create Shareable Product Videos for Social Media

65% of people learn visually, which makes creating video tools an invaluable strategy. Keeping this in mind, how can you capture someone’s attention within five seconds? That’s the question marketers must address when creating content for social media. 

The answer is simpler than you might think: engaging video content that’s short, to the point and simple will resonate with viewers. People intuitively scroll through their news feeds until a post intrigues them enough to stop and take a look. If your message and content are convoluted, confusing or bland, they’ll continue scrolling without a second glance. Bite-sized, shareable videos, on the other hand, will grab their attention and keep them hooked till the very end. Fortunately, even companies on a tight budget can use this approach to video marketing. 

KIND shows us a great example of a product reveal video on social media.

As simple as this video is, it’s highly effective. The video poses a question: what will the next KIND bar flavor be? A simple slide transition reveals a Sweet Pretzel Crunch bar. Although the video is only four seconds long, it plays on the viewer’s natural curiosity. Best part? You can easily create short videos like this to promote your products, even on a shoestring budget.

Create videos from scratch using product images, and bring them to life with moving elements like text and graphics. Or, you can browse thousands of video templates in PosterMyWall. All you have to do is add your logo and use the editor to easily match the text, colors, and imagery with your branding. You can use the resize feature to quickly repurpose content to share on all your social media channels. Not only is it completely free, but the easy-to-use editor makes repurposing easy. With your branded video in tow, let the social sharing commence and show internet users what your company is made of!

5.) Leverage User-Generated Content from Your Customers for Video Ads

One of the most affordable and effective ways to bring in new customers (while building customer loyalty) is with consumer-generated video ads. People trust the opinions of consumers, which is why the first thing they do when vetting a new product or service is read reviews. As a matter of fact, 46% of U.S. adults trust consumer reviews online. 

How can you use video ads to bring in new customers to your small business? Ask existing loyal customers to take videos of your product, or share their testimonial in portrait mode, which you can then convert into an ad. Not only can you use this content to promote your brand’s online presence; it’s social proof that you’re a reliable, trustworthy business. 

Leave it to a cleaning products business, Grove Collaborative, to bring this concept to life. The company attracted 37% of new customers from Instagram Stories ads according to a now deleted case study from Instagram. How’d they do it? 

By creating vertical Instagram Stories video ads from consumer reviews and coverage. Grove Collaborative targeted consumers interested in eco-friendly cleaning products delivered to their doorstep. The result? A Stories ad featuring a consumer testifying why they love the product, and how they used it in their home. Just like that, social proof doubled the brand’s click-through rate without exhausting a sales team or trying to chase new leads. 

Here’s how you can do the same:

• Ask customers and small or rising content creators to film themselves with your product and share their testimony.
• Use online software to customize video templates, or easily create video ads from scratch.
• Highlight key features of the product that illuminate the customer’s review.
• Finish with a strong call-to-action including a “swipe up” to learn more about your product.

One of the benefits of video is that when you incorporate consumer-made content into your targeted video ads, you inherit the trust potential customers put into real reviews.

6.) Don’t Have Enough Customer Videos? Time to Leverage Influencers

The benefits of video have long been harnessed by influencers, and your company can leverage the user-generated content created by influencers. Although most people are at least marginally familiar with influencers, there is still some inherent social proof involved in influencer marketing’s personalized setup. 

Brands often utilize influencers to incite word-of-mouth marketing on social media platforms, and you may have to go down this route as well if your customers have not created as many videos as you need–or the kinds of videos that you need to effectively market your brand or product. 

Whether you are trying to improve your reach on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or another social media platform, there are plenty of influencers creating content that is engaging and compelling. Harnessing the power of these content creators can be a powerful way to improve your brand’s reach and reliability.

7.) Hit Them With A “How-To” They Can’t Refuse

Educational videos and tutorials aren’t a new concept, but they remain at the forefront of video marketing. Why does it work so well? There’s something your target audience doesn’t understand or know how to do, so why not help them out? 

The formula for tutorial content is simple: provide valuable insight into a common problem in a short, sharable way. The lesson is usually straightforward and specific, as demonstrated in this series of short napkin-folding tutorials by Blossom.

Whether you sell a product or service, you have the expertise that benefits your audience. What better way to share it than with videos? You might think creating educational video content requires a fancy camera and lighting equipment. This is simply not the case. Making videos has never been easier, especially considering the fact that there’s a video camera on your smartphone. All you have to do is record the lesson. 

Once you have the footage, you can easily add step-by-step instructions and stimulating audio in PosterMyWall.

Why is audio important?

Most people watch videos with the sound off, but once the viewer turns the sound on, they want a comprehensive audio-visual experience. There’s no better way to set the mood and pacing of your video than with music! Stock audio tracks are available for every mood and setting. Your design will have its very own soundtrack for a fully interactive experience. And that’s sweet music to your ears!

8.) Repurpose Existing Content into Video Format

As a small business owner, content is the spine of your marketing strategy. Instead of spreading yourself thin on the hamster wheel of content creation, refocus your efforts to maximize your time. Do you already have social media graphics or blog posts handy? Why not repurpose that content into shareable videos?

For example, blog posts and listicles are excellent content to convert to video format. After all, 72% of people prefer videos over written text. It’s time to give the people what they want. PosterMyWall is a video design software that makes repurposing content a breeze. Here’s how you can easily convert blog posts into a video:

• Focus on 2-3 key takeaways from the blog post to highlight in a slideshow video.
• Stick with a bite-sized, 1-2 minute video that’ll generate the most user engagement.
• Create a custom video, or use a free video template in PosterMyWall .
• Customize your message, fonts, and colors to match your branding.
• Finish with a strong call-to-action that encourages viewers to sign up or shop.
• Share the video on all of your social media channels.

See, making videos is much easier (and more affordable!) than you might think. With PosterMyWall, you can create a branded marketing video for just $14.95 per video. Within minutes, you’ve turned written content into branded video content to share on your social channels. And that’s not the only way to share videos on social media.

Start Sharing Video Content Now

If you’re ready to breathe new life into your marketing efforts, it’s time to set your message into motion with video content. Videos open the door for people to truly see your brand. In turn, you build a relationship with your customers that’s based on authenticity. The stage is set and the camera is rolling–all that’s left to do is tell your story. Fortunately, you now have five ways to do it. Time to get sharing!

This is a post written by one of my marketing partners.

Hero photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash