If a picture tells a thousand words, then video is … priceless! Marcus Seeger presents six of the most powerful and effective marketing video concepts that have been proven to create a steady stream of leads and profitable sales for businesses just like yours
1 Promotional video
The promotional video is the most common and powerful video and is typically on the homepage of your website. If you only make one video, then this is the one most people will make. A promotional video is a fantastic opportunity to present your unique selling proposition, or USP.
Often, the first contact a customer has with your business is your website’s homepage. Ninety per cent of customers who land on your site will prefer to watch your video rather than read text.
The key to making your promotional video successful is to engage your audience, and this can be done with a story. Let them know who you are and how you best serve your customers.
Consider this message as coming from a customer’s perspective, and avoid the words ‘me,’ ‘mine,’ ‘I’ and ‘we’ – it’s not about you! By simply focusing on how your customers can benefit from your product or service, you will increase your promotional video’s effectiveness. The promotional video can be quite broad; it gives your customers a general overview.
2 Products and services video
In this video, it’s important to start to drill down and provide more specific information about the benefits of your products and services.
The success of this video is largely determined by how well you can communicate the ‘what’s in it for me’ information. Again, approach this video from your customer’s perspective. It is very common for us, as experts in our field, to over-complicate information. Keep your video as simple as possible, and focus on the benefits rather than what your products or services are.
3 About us video
Typically, a website will have an ‘about us’ page that is full of text and only talks about themselves – what a waste of time! If your competitors are doing this, then you are in luck, and I encourage you to start working on your ‘about us’ video right away.
The ‘about us’ video is actually not about you at all, but is about the customer. The trick with a successful ‘about us’ video is to focus 100% on reinforcing and clearly demonstrating your USP.
It is important to move as far away as possible from talking about yourself and focus instead on the benefits your valued customers receive when they do business with you.
4 Testimonial video
We all know that testimonials are valuable, and they do help potential buyers arrive at the decision that you’re a safe, reliable and trusted business.
However, what we’ve seen to date is mainly text-based testimonials, sometimes with a photograph, which makes them a little bit more believable, but most people these days are quite skeptical about the authenticity of these testimonials. If you replace these with video testimonials of live people, then it’s going to be extremely powerful for you. Your customers are far more likely to believe these testimonials and see them as valued sources of information, and they will positively impact their buying decision.
5 Social video
Have you noticed a steady increase in video content on popular social media sites? This is considered by many to be the year of social video, so it’s a good time to take advantage of this trend.
For example, Facebook is rapidly growing its video capabilities. According to the company, since June 2014, there have been more than 1 billion video views on Facebook every day, on average.
With the auto play feature, videos are now even more engaging. You could consider posting Facebook video ads, publishing videos to engage your fans or perhaps even creating user-generated content by running online competitions.
6 Video email
The statistics around video emails are compelling. For example, simply using the word ‘video’ in an email subject line can boost open rates by 18.5%, click-through rates by 65% and reduce unsubscribes by 26%.
Instead of sending a lengthy sales email in response to an inquiry, you can send a single video or a series of informative videos that add value and position you as somebody your new lead would like to do business with.
It is quite likely that very few of your competitors are investing in video emails, and by doing so yourself, you will stand out from the crowd, and your customers will see you as being innovative.
Of course, I would encourage you to try to create all six types of videos for accelerated results.
Marcus Seeger is the number-one Amazon bestselling author of Video Marketing for Profit: 14 Proven Strategies for Accelerated Business Growth. Seeger is managing director of the video marketing and production agency Video Experts.
