• 27 January 2023
• Tiffany Carey

Best Practices for Video Marketing for Your Small Business

Video marketing is one of the most popular ways to build brand awareness. Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, along with YouTube, encourage users to create short- and long-form video content to communicate, educate, and entertain. And according to a recent study by Wyzowl, 86% of business owners have embraced creating video content as a marketing tool.

Video marketing is an extremely effective way to connect with your customers, market your products, share your story and get more customer engagement. Last year, 59% of marketers said that video marketing showed a positive ROI, and 64% said that video helped them build brand awareness. But some business owners are intimidated by it and don’t know where to start.

The good news is creating video content for your small business is manageable. In this post, we'll walk through seven best practices for incorporating video into your marketing plans. If you adopt these practices, you’ll be ready to use video and see a massive payoff in your business.

Seven Best Practices for Using Video Marketing

1. Get started with what you already have. There’s no need for professional video equipment or editing software. Business owners often use their smartphones to make, edit and post videos without ever buying an expensive camera or software, and garner great results. Want to step it up? Great video recording gear including a camera, microphone and lighting is surprisingly affordable and the results deliver professional-grade video content.

2. Commit to video content. Before creating videos for marketing, know that consistency is crucial to increasing awareness and building trust within a community. By consistently rolling out video content, your business can position itself as an expert with educational videos. You can increase audience retention with great video content, and your audience is six times more likely to share great video content than static content.

3. Plan content ahead of time. Outline your content per quarter based on important seasons, sales initiatives, and product or service updates you have planned. Once you have a schedule, you’ll be able to create curated messaging with specific call-to-action (CTA). CTAs lead to conversion, which means more sales.

4. Keep it short and to the point. It can be tempting to talk about your business at length, but recent studies have shown that depending on the channel you’re broadcasting your video, the maximum length is two minutes. Viewers like videos but are easily bored and will click away if yours is too long. Keep your message concise.

5. Always use captions. Videos should be created in ways that ensure all members of an audience can access the content. Including captions or subtitles in your videos make them more accessible, allowing you to reach more viewers. Several studies also show that most videos are watched without sound. Having captions on your video assures yours won’t be overlooked.

6. Get your team involved. Video marketing is an excellent way for employees to bond and customers to get an inside look at your business. Team members can be used in demo videos and to share new information about your business in a way that feels more personal than other forms of communication. If a customer has been following along with someone at your company’s journey from day one, they’re sure to feel connected to both the employee and your brand.

7. Don’t be fooled by vanity metrics. Vanity metrics are statistics that look spectacular on the surface but don’t translate to meaningful results. Metrics, such as “likes” and “follows,” can make you feel good about your video marketing but won’t help you create quality content for real customers. Instead, focus on actionable metrics like conversion and engagement rates to track long-term success.

Abiding by these seven simple practices will help you acquire new customers, build lasting relationships, and grow your small business with video marketing.