Small businesses are agile. They’re known for being innovative and creative. They’re able to test and try things far easier than a larger company. As a small business, you want to use this to your advantage.
As a small business, you can use video to engage your customers and make more personal connections. While your competitors are trying to sell with text on their barely functional Web site, you establish yourself as a company who gets it. Using video allows you to speak directly to your customers, looking right at them and using your real voice to tell them why you’re the best at what you do and how you can help them.
How do you use video for your company?
Create informative How To content and video tutorials that you can market to help you get links and visibility. For example, if you run a local pool company, create videos explaining how to do all the in between maintenance that’s required before your next visit. Show them how to use that new vacuum, how to set up their filter, how to winterize or summarize their pool, how to chlorinate their pool, how to set up the perfect pool palace, etc. Take all the questions you get from customers every day and turn the answers into video content for your Web site. It’s a powerful differentiator that will set you apart and make you even more useful to your customers. But that’s not all it will do.
Google searches show that if someone does a search for [how to winterize my pool], the video that you created and uploaded to YouTube may begin to rank very competitively, gaining your business a considerable amount of traffic and links that will help you rank in local search. And if the searcher lives in your area, then you can be pretty sure they’re going to contact you for services. Because now they know you. They know your name, they know what you look like, they’ve heard you explain to them in a friendly tone all the benefits of using your company. That’s how you differentiate your small business from all the other “me toos” out there.
Video ProductionFor local and small businesses, high-production quality does not bring the customers (in fact high-production quality is as likely to alienate customers!). Traditional videographers will sniff at this, but it’s simple, down to earth production where your prospects can really see you that has the greatest impact. What you should be aiming for is a “good, but not too polished” result. Your video should be authentic, real and down to earth. As soon as it gets too polished you lose that personal connection with people and they’ll see it as just advertising.
The rule of thumb is that you need to be somewhere north of 30 seconds to provide sufficient information to motivate a contact action, and somewhere south of 3 minutes so as not to bore everyone to tears.
Video is perfectly suited for small businesses because it’s just like you. It’s relatable, it’s friendly and it’s all about who you are.