Video is the current buzzword in the marketing world, but why and how can small businesses get involved? We spoke to Alex Dreiling, co-founder and CEO of Clipchamp, to find out about the advantages of video for small-business owners.
ISB: First, tell us briefly about the benefits of video over more traditional forms of marketing.
AD: Video marketing has become a fundamental component of running a successful business, of any size. People prefer to consume their content through video as opposed to reading, and we only need to look to findings, such as 45 per cent of people watch over an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos per week, to recognise video’s growing influence. Looking ahead, by 2022 online videos will make up more than 82 per cent of all consumer internet traffic, which is 15 times higher than it was in 2017.
“Getting started with video doesn’t require you to buy a professional rig, or even be a tried and tested host on camera.”
For users, videos are now an integral part of the decision-making process, with more than 60 per cent noting they are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video. Moreover, the numbers reveal that video in an email leads to a 200–300 per cent increase in click-through rates. In short, if video marketing is the chosen medium for end-users, those producing it need to be on top of their video content creation game.
ISB: How does video marketing help a business, specifically when it comes to establishing and reinforcing their brand?
AD: As the demand for engaging video content across a business’s website, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and email grows, there is a huge opportunity to dynamically establish and reinforce your brand, in a way that achieves the best cut-through for key audiences and drives home their perception of your brand. As video is the way audiences now want to consume, engage and learn more about your brand, you need to ensure all aspects, such as language, tone, logo reinforcement, colour, design and content-matter relevance, are aligned and consistent across all your channels.
ISB: Most small-business owners have very tight budgets – how affordable is video marketing for small businesses?
AD: Many small businesses want to work with video but carry unfounded assumptions about how much it’s going to cost, or the type of investment they need to make. Getting started with video doesn’t require you to buy a professional rig, or even be a tried and tested host on camera. Here are a few points to keep in mind that help break down the misperception that video marketing is too costly:
- If you have an iPhone or Android smartphone created in the past few years, or even an HD camera, you have enough to get started.
- To start, don’t commit yourself to a long series of videos if you realistically only need a handful for your website and socials to describe your service to customers.
- Authenticity does not have to be pricey. Videos recorded by CEOs themselves holding the camera can be better received by customers because they aren’t pretending to be flashy or particularly fancy.
- Editing software is extraordinarily cheap, and you can even edit single video shots directly on an iPhone if you don’t care so much about adding other effects or music. However, if you do need to, there are plenty of affordable services online you can use to edit and spruce up your clips. These services have become much more user friendly and have ready-to-go templates and drag-and-drop functionality for anyone to use.
ISB: Similarly, small businesses operate on limited resources, so is video marketing straightforward to implement yourself, or easily and time-efficiently implemented with the help of a third-party provider?
AD: This was once the case but technology has advanced so much in the past few years, as have people’s camera skills. The camera on an iPhone today is more advanced than some cameras that Hollywood blockbusters were made on not too long ago. Also, thanks to social media, users have become a lot more skilled at using the camera.
Hiring a professional videographer to produce product shots or shoot interviews with employees, customers and founders to be used within the business over the next few years is not as expensive as you may think. For a full day, you can get someone for a few hundred dollars. And if you use that time wisely, you can get a lot of footage and content shot in a day that would last quite some time – some of the footage you take could last you a few years before you need to update it.
If you have no budget, then you can certainly be creative with the iPhone or asking friends and family who are interested in photography/videography if they have a decent camera you can borrow, or they can help you with shooting.
ISB: What impact has video marketing had on the acceleration of lead generation for small businesses?
AD: In today’s multi-channel world, small-business owners and marketers need to constantly churn out content for their website, email and social media channels. If you have a video set up ready to go in your office, it would actually be quicker and cheaper to make a video message than to create professional graphics. Every time you post new content with a clear call to action, you are increasing your lead generation. Remember that not every email you send out or social media post you post is necessarily read. Only a fraction of people will see any social media post before it gets buried, so constantly churning out content means another opportunity to create new leads.
ISB: And how does it facilitate a higher conversion rate from the leads it generates?
AD: A couple of revealing findings that point to the direct correlation between video and higher conversion rates include:
- viewers retain 95 per cent of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10 per cent when reading it in text
- 72 per cent of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video.
This story first appeared in issue 26 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine.
